DANCING WITH DA ISTARIROY

There was a Will Smith movie I caught on tv one time - I forgot the title - where he plays opposite this funny guy from King of Queens - I forgot his name. Smith is a romance consultant (or something like that) and the other guy is a hopeless romantic who badly needs some consultation on matters of love, get the drift? Not Oscar worthy story, really, but there's a scene where Smith's line was worth all the time I spent watching it.

As part of the consult, Smith teaches the guy the right way to dance to catch the eye of his prospect - a technique used by male animals to attract the opposite to jumpstart the process of mating. First, the client shows his own stuff. Ugly. Then the consultant slaps him awake and tells him he dances the way wild animals do. And so the smooth Smith shows the client the steps that befits his persona - a simple swaying of the body left to right through a rhtyhmic play of the shoulders, with quiet finger snaps cutting through the pattern the way the Pips' do to back Gladys Knight up. While doing the simple, gentle steps, Smith tells the guy, This is where you live, baby, this is your home.

Not known to many, the family included, The Dance is where I sometimes live, baby, The Dance is where my home is, even if just for vacation. Dance is one Art, one Forum, one Medium where people can find me being closest to myself. I was probably born to dance if not for my suspicion that in the process of my birthing the obstetrician twisted my ankle, resulting in the corruption of my destiny to be the next Baryshnikov or Hines long before the journey had the chance to begin.

Despite the chuva, my love for dance remained. Homer spoke to me, through Illiad: You will certainly not be able to take the lead in all things yourself, for to one man has given deeds of war, and to another the dance, to another the lyre and song, and in another wide-sounding Zeus puts a good mind. You, c, must dance.

In deference to Homer, I took lessons in Cuban Salsa and Dominican Merrengue and put the knowledge to task in dancefloors that spanned the Atlantic from Miami to Manhattan, Ft. Lauderdale to Paramus. One winter night in New Jersey I danced to my heart's content that I even caught the cataratic eye of a 60ish lady, eekk!

During holiday parties I make heads turn, sometimes drawing people to comment, Darn, Is that YOU, c? Did you moult? Where is the skin? Did you get out of the shell? Where is the shell?

Truth is I had been dancing since I was a kid. In Grade School I did La Cucaracha, and lucky enough after that I did not dance like a confused cockroach. I went up the dance ladder and in high school I taught The Gang the latest steps (el bimbo salvacion, no shit) so we could showcase our horny legs to the girls of our sister school (the dancefloor is our crib, baby, the dancefloor!)

Years ago at the Festival of Merrick Park in dontown Coral Gables, the family went to watch homegrown jazz dancers do their thing. Everyone could not decipher what was going on up the stage, the music, the steps, as the sound system offered no clue but a paced beat of thump, thump, thump, and the dancers were doing something that was a cross between the wave and the epileptic steps of an 80's dude dancing to the tune of Mr. Roboto. The crowd did not know the hell that was going on, until I summoned some common dance sense and announced, Hear Ye! I think they're trying to mimic the circulatory system of man and the music is nothing but the beating of the heart. (Trivia: the event was televised and my nieces and I were on tv. After that my 15 minutes were down to 13, but who's counting? The local cardiologist?)

Ahh, dance. Alvin Ailey is a true hero. And so is Nureyev, and the River Dancers, and the Bayanihan Dancers. Ethnic dance gives me a different way to see some people's culture, like when I saw this documentary in Plum Channel called Ne Hula Kane (the Men of Hula). Contrary to popular belief, men in Hawaii dance the hula, too, not the way we always think of their movements - a la haka or war dance of some cultures. Which makes sense, really. Hula is one dance that is traditionally tied to the text; every step speaks of a scene and every dance tells a story. And guess who forms a huge part of the story?

The man, baby, the man. In the great narrative of The Dance, he shows where he lives, the place where his home is.