Spinners Waltz

My friend Dan Landrum wrote this tune for his then 4-yr-old daughter, whose criteria for dresses was that they must float and twirl like a dancer’s when she’d spin. There’s a beautiful video at his site that shows ballerinas dancing to Dan’s playing.

I have been doing art and music in some form all my life. Then in high school art class, while flipping through the wide variety of magazines for ideas, I found myself so drawn to images of dancers. There is something so much more fully expressive about dance than even music or art — it’s more whole body (even though my whole body is involved when I play music, it’s not quite the same). There’s something about that controlled, intense, wild energy, such power, such ethereality…

I got to dance all four years of college for my P. E. credits. The classes I took were all modern, with a strong ballet influence. Of course I wasn’t terribly good at it, but I loved it so much. No other exercise has come close to what I felt when I danced. Dance isn’t exercise — it’s not movement for the sake of physical health, it’s movement for the whole person’s health, and for other people’s health, for beauty and truth. It’s more cathartic than anything else I’ve ever done, and made me feel about as beautiful as I’ve ever felt.

(I don’t feel beautiful very often.)

We even had live music for our class; I would love to play for a dance class, and even more if I could then take a class in exchange. I just think dulcimer would be too sustainy for a dance studio. We had a piano player. Before I knew Ashokan Farewell by name, I danced to it and loved it.

And spinny dresses? Oh yes. Long and flowy things… I wish I could wear them more often.

And now I have a daughter; will she be a spinner? Will she dance? Will she find some other thing that is the most full expression, the most cathartic, the most beautiful-feeling thing she can imagine?