Modern Dance -- A tribute to Isadora Duncan.

Modern Dance -- A tribute to Isadora Duncan.

I have always enjoyed dancing. Its not one of those performance-oriented drives, no, not for me. Its the perfect moment -- crafted to keep the flame alive, you can never dance to fit a social environment, then it becomes artificial -- and what kind of a dance is that? Watch and tell.
Dance occurs inside somewhere, near your brain -- there where you write with blue ink from. It is the deep concentration of the sea, inside, inside.

I like to imagine, dancing to be part of nature -- in the wind of the sea, in the body longing to walk on the run-down streets of Karachi and when the car is driving down Mai Kolachi, I like to imagine dance in the wind itself. There is laughter, a break of form & decorum. A need to exist, mark the moment. To say someday, 'yes I lived here' (and here, and here, and there!)Having told you these essential attributes of my mind, it should come as no surprise, that the 'dance classes' I attended, made me lose my appetite for "Dance" itself. This was a very sad thing.
Not to want to dance anymore...quiet roads, city sullen street-stares. Nothing to say-back to the world. Its terrible!

The first time I felt I was breaking out of all old patterns of dance -- was when I stood alone in silence once, and dreamt of Isadora. At that instance, my life changed. I felt her come inside my being, and we started - dancing, to silence, please understand this is beauty that should not be shared -- and yet, my compulsion as a writer, makes me want to take this bold walk out into the boulevard. Thing is, the body changes -- while dancing. After I met her in my dream I could never be the person that I used to be, my relationship to life itself changed, forget Dance!

The body was movement, it was essential in bones, resembling patterns of trees, branching out of every bone, a silhouette of a bone - inhuman, non-existent, existing, present - this dance has transformed my life. Later, much later, I found out it had a name, that someone had felt it before. But in that moment, I felt nothing but my own name. They call it, "Modern Dance," - for me it was, "Expression," a kind that I had never known before.
I moved to silence, there was no music. There was nothing, in fact, except for me standing out there, facing the Universe alone. The ability to see into the dark? No, more. The body-transformation of form? No, yes, but more!

In class-room settings, I have attempted 'dance classes' a few times - and each time, I've felt like I was drowning - its that nerve of social existence at which I suddenly turn to stone. I don't say a word. This has happened often to me, several times in bars -- where i can never dance.
Its not that I wouldn't want to, its just that my body refuses to. Its the 'comon, be social' vs. 'I really don't want to.'
The nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs
the stiff heart questions was it He, that bore
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?* -- Emily Dickinson.

Its rather like that time I was intrigued by this add labeled, "Learn Argentinian Tango." It was one of the most depressing nights for Dance itself, and more than even that, for Woman. The dance began, but in-itself it never begun -- it was all skill and craft, and nothing interior, exterior that resembled the soul: the lie or the truth, neither. In fact he said, about the beautiful woman who spun with him, into the turquoise form of a blue swan:
"She is doing nothing, It is I who am making her spin."

I found myself wondering how that complicated foot-work could be 'done' by someone other than the person doing it - however, the woman was, as usual, silent. Saying only in awkward blushes with her eyes, ears and hands, apologetically: yes, yes, yes.
Reminds me of the time I read Andre Breton's "Mad Love" and found myself wondering 'where on earth is the woman's voice?" He has written the whole book dedicated to a woman's 'mad spirit' and yet 'her own words' appear perhaps twice, and they too are half-phrases.

Returning to 'Dance' - the form has been misunderstood, it is not a display, it is not a social artifact, nor is it to be socialized. It is individualistic - no two dancers are the same, no two moments either: this is at least what the bulletin points of "Modern Dance," are.