Dancing Across Space and Time

An experiment in form

“You’re pushing too hard on me, stop being so rigid” Ivan gently said. “Here, feel the tension that you’re giving me”. He pushed my hand with an unknown force, something that could harm the bones of a small bird. “That’s what you’re giving me” he said, in his calm and reassuring tone. “Dancing is like a conversation. If you’re giving me that much tension then you’re not listening, you’re not letting me in. It’s like a silence”. 

“Wir sollen am Dach tanzen” said Emma, in an excited tone well out of practice in the tongues of our Viennese compatriots. Every part of her glistened as she turned to Theo and I. Our eyes lit up with fury. Lost in the tides of the moment. Ready to voyage further in our journey that night. The stars muffled the brutalistic skyline, giving a glimpse of the primal nature that was about to unfold below. 

“Keep your arms to your sides, you can feel yourself better” said Johnny Lee, as my body reluctantly followed her to the back of the room. “You have to be like an astronaut. Let me move you. Don’t stop on your own. You have to float instead and only when I stop you can you yourself stop. We sauntered and simmered to the back of the room, enjoying microbursts of the to and fro of the dance. “Walk ahead of me”. So I did. In a sober movement that you would expect from someone dancing in a protestant church, I walked forward, but my arms left my sides. “See what you’re doing there?” she said in a tender tone. “You’re not keeping your arms at your sides, let me move you”. I did as I was told and lo and behold I was spinning. Off my current trajectory and back to the other side of the room. We never got to a boil during that song, but the bubbles were bumping into each other waiting for the frenzy that never came. 

The music expressed the sounds of a long-forgotten wasteland. Dust blew in a cruel breeze as the song rose out of its slumber. Reaching for the outside but unable to grasp the doorknob leading outside. Something was stopping it. We curled ourselves up on the roof. We were limp, unable to move. I felt the cold tiles of the roof pressed against my arms. I felt the balmy Viennese wind on my face, on my hair. You could feel the dormancy in the air, the wind of the wasteland whipping us into a deep somberness. We felt the song rise, anticipating the hinges of the door to break on sheer force, to finally rise ourselves. Instead, the song stopped with a jolt and there was silence. 

I was on the sidelines of the karate church. I wanted to dance with someone, but I felt like the other person would be pointing things out to me. I would never be able to turn up the heat to more than a simmer. I saw others dancing around me and I thought about what my partners had told me. I thought about how I don’t let people in. How I can sometimes have a rigidity that makes me conceptualize everything I can. That makes me want to seek control. To be on my high horse. As long as I stay hidden, I can make sure that I won’t be humiliated. My body won’t lose itself in another. Something is pushing against it. A coldness that stops the bubbles from rising. A conversation was going on next to me. “Once you get good at dancing, everything becomes second nature. You’re able to get to the actual expression of yourself in the dance” said Eli as Tate and got up to dance. 

“Touch. I remember touch. Pictures came with touch. A painter in my mind. Tell me what you see. A tourist in a dream. A visitor, it seems. A half-forgotten song. Where do I belong? Tell me what I see. I need something more”. The song had begun its first verse. We had risen, exploring our surroundings as if we had just walked out of the womb. The door had been opened but we hadn’t yet left it yet. 

“Do you want to dance?” I said in a shaky tone to Polina. “Yeah sure!” she said in a half-approving tone. Her shoes betrayed a professional air about her. We clasped each other's hands together and started our jig. “How long have you been dancing?” I asked her. “Not that long together, but I’ve been doing solo dancing for 8 years”. I was intimidated, but we carried on. Our moves were simple but we caught onto the beat. One step here, one step there. A flourish burst through the malaise of steps every blue moon. The red lights above gently lapped our clothes, submersing them in a dazzling ambiguity. The stove had been turned on. We had bubbled, but we hadn’t boiled for a long time. 

“Kiss, suddenly alive. Happiness arrive. Hunger like a storm. How do I begin? A room within a room. A door behind a door. Touch, where do you lead? I need something more. Tell me what you see. I need something more”. Our hands were moving in a viscous and discordant flow. We were all looking at each other with faces of suspicion and inquisition. The breeze had become quiet. In an act of existential vertigo, the roof had become smaller. Our background dissolved and we were left to explore each other’s inner worlds. The door was open but we had only stuck a toe out, cautiously inspecting our next step, yet feeling reassured in taking it. Each step felt like a step that could move the weight of worlds. The world bore down on us and in a feat only comparable to Atlas, we held it together in a drunken longing for something more. 

“Would you like to dance?” I asked Eli. “Sure”. We trudged to the front of the room, waiting for the song to pick up speed. He led me slowly, but unconsciously. His arms rose with each break in the song. He held my hands with a firm softness. His presence was reassuring. Our bodies contorted to the music. We spun around each other, moving through room, losing ourselves in the process. I felt his body on mine. His eagerness for expression. His every movement was faithful to the song, yet still his own. He interpreted the song like Thomas Aquinas interprets the bible. We were in a conversation. I hiccuped a few times in my utterances, unable to interpret his flow. We were moving together. I forgot about the red lights overhead. I forgot about the blue lights ahead of me. We had boiled, our bubbles escaping any prediction of their movement. 

Our bodies were swirling together as the music broke out. We had entered the world. Our steps were lighter. We had whipped up a frenzy. The wind felt like a blanket as we rushed toward each other. With each approach, we grew more and more free. More and more in sync. Nothing else mattered. We had fully woken up from our slumber. We had bloomed, with each flourish we realized that nothing else mattered. Emma moved through the roof at breakneck speed her dress used as an extra instrumen. Theo’s body had moved from robotic to hypnotic. His elated and inward gyrations expressed the community of the song.  We had picked up speed, each of our bodies dashing through the groundlessness of the world. 

“Ok, its time to snowball.” said Johnny Lee. We were all in a circle together in the Karate Church, looking at each other with faces of apprehension and wonder. A lurking curiosity opened up the room in a clearing amongst the forest of faces. “I’ll dance with someone and then someone will say ‘Snowball’ and we’ll switch partners”. I was a wee bit scared, I was worried that I would burden my partner with my awkward movements, my incoherent gestures. I was worried that I our bodies would awkardly converse with each other, filled with innumerable constraining silences. The only way my worries could be assuaged was through the panacea of action. The first dancers had entered the ring. 

“Snowball!”. Someone lunged forward at me, ready to dance. Our arms intertwined, Emma and I had entered the circle, our bodies lost in the music. “Snowball!”. I was back in the Karate church, dancing with Hannah, her leading me through the waves of bodies. “Snowball!”. Theo had pushed through and started dancing with Emma. “Snowball”. The red lights caught the glint in Sierra’s eyes as I cupped my hand on her shoulder blade, leading her through the maze of people. “Snowball!”. I linked arms with Theo, sharing in the bachanalia of euphoria expressed through his gestures. “Snowball!” I was back with my friend Tate, adjusting to his every movement, spinning to the luxury of the sonic landscape protruding from the speakers. A chorus of bodies peppered the glowing pot in which we found ourselves. Everyone was open to everyone, nothing contained our lucid grasp of each other’s bodies. “Snowball!”.

And I was back on the roof. The song had braked without a spark on the track. Lost in the swirl of groundless bodies and thoughts we were delivered back to reality. The stars above and the field below resumed their impressions in our minds. The buildings around us came back into view. The floor holding us aloft impressed its cold solidity on our bare feet. We had entered the room of reality once again. The choral glows of the last verse were still on our minds, but the abruptness with which the song had changed sent us back to the ground. 

The snowball had melted the icy tundra in which I found myself mere hours before. The dancing was now more expressive, more assertive. I could feel my partners more. I could dance with them and feel their style. I wasn’t pushing back as hard. My movements were more fluid, and less brittle than before. Mistakes were made, but they didn’t break the flow nearly as hard as before. I could feel the others’ body on myself more clearly. Sometimes we didn’t look each other in the eyes, we just felt. Our fates were intertwined for that moment. It felt so much deeper than a conversation, so much more intimate than sex, but so fleeting. “Thank you for the dance” 

“Touch, sweet touch. You’ve given me to much to feel. Sweet touch. You’ve almost convinced me I’m real. I need something more. I need something more.” We were on the ground. We were like puppets whose manipulator had left. We fell to the ground gracelessly. Feeling the weight of the words thrusting us down with a force stronger than gravity. Relinquishing the ecstatic freedom we had taken part in and going back to our individual rooms of solitude. We were reminded of the fleeting nature of touch. The fleeting nature of those dances. Did we need something more in that moment? I don’t think so. 

I could feel the cool summer air in Bellingham as Tate and I walked back to his apartment. “It almost feels more intimate than sex” Tate said, knowing that I would agree. “It feels so intimate for such a short period of time and then it’s done.”. “It feels like you’ve connected with someone on such an intimate level and then it’s all over. You thank them for the dance and you leave”. “It’s as if you don’t know them before, you know them deeply during, and then you go back to being strangers”. These dances connect us to people in modes we couldn’t have fathomed before. We reflected on how small our worlds are and how many people we won’t be able to know through the night. As I sat down to write this, I thought about how I can push back against people and not let them move me. How I can be rigid in my tracks and not let another change my world. Those moments of touch transcend the boundaries of conversation that seem to connect me so deeply with others. They unleash a whole new modality of experience. They transcend the time and distance we have between us.

The song in Vienna:

Touch by Daft Punk