kompa

1-9-11

by now I am supposed to be pulling into my driveway at the “north forty,” the farmhouse we call home in new hampshire...but the weather had other plans so I am spending the night with beautiful and gracious friends and trying again tomorrow...well, in a few hours...

thanks to their generosity and hospitality, I spent the 12 hour plane delay visiting and then dancing in my red high heels before getting a few hours sleep in a cozy bed...all of which totally beats at night on the floor of the atlanta airport :)

in a group of people I had mostly never met, dancing a style very new to me but known intimately to them, to music in a language I am still learning but spoken since birth by most everyone else in the room...at first I felt very awkward and a little out of step, which was both funny and humbling as a dancer and dance teacher. Part of me was so drawn by the music and the desire to move but another just wanted to hide. I studied the movements of those on the dance floor, their arms, their feet, their hips...the effortless way their bodies interpreted the music and conversed with their partners. I tried to compare it to anyting I knew of dance, whether I had a dance in me as fluent as the kompa was the bodies of the men and women I watched.
My face must have betrayed my deep concentration because eventually a gentleman I had been introduced to earlier came over to ask if something was wrong. Laughing at myself I told him no to which he asked “then why aren't you dancing?” It WAS a dance after all....I told him maybe later, to which he responded by setting down his drink and reaching out his hand. I haven't been so nervous to take to the dance floor since the 6th grade when girls were all a foot taller than boys and no one knew what to do with their hands! but being a dancer and dance teacher, letting someone else lead has always been a challenge for me even when I know what they want me to do...and here I was with a man I didn't know and my only kompa lessons had been in the streets and salt flats of jubilee blanc, given by barefoot haitian children!
We got off to a decent enough start but I could feel myself working to hard at trying not to make it feel (and LOOK) like work.
I suddenly remembered my trip to driftwood beach earlier in the day, my last minute stop to soak up some georgia ocean magic before heading back up north...while walking with kathy and shelby we had closed our eyes and let the beach tell us where to go and talked about all the times where closing our eyes had helped us find the rhythm, to find the way.
I decided to try something.
Hoping for no disasterous fall...i closed my eyes.
It was like someone had turned up the volume. Not of the music or the sounds of the party, although I could hear the nuances of both much better. the thing I could suddenly hear so clearly wasn't a sound at all, it was the movement. The moment I closed my eyes, I was aware of exactly where and how I was being touched. I could sense from the pressure in one finger of my partner's hand how he wanted me to lean, move, or turn. I could feel his next move come from his shoulders and be ready to make it with him. even without seeing, I could feel his head tilt or his feet shuffle in the air near mine, drawing me to come closer or sending me back.
The most amazing part, even with my dance movment therapy nerd hat on, I wasn't THINKING about this, it was just happening. His body was calling out instructions to mine and mine was obeying. Later as I danced with others, mine would do some instructing of its own and feel the response of a body that heard loud and clear--way more effective by the way than a warning glance :)
At the end of each dance, I would laugh to myself because I could tell both my partners and I were surpised that this white girl could kompa well enough to keep up with them...
it gave me a whole new take on the old brag “i could do that with my eyes closed!”