I hope the answer expected of me is not a rational one. To dance and to continue to dance is to move first and think later. The corporeal intelligence is so profound that it negates the mind's interventions - as it should.
What makes me dance? What is my reason to dance?
Dance has saved me from myself. From the grief of my father's passing when I was too far away, snowbound in Minneapolis, to return in time to the performance in Hyderabad about the five elements when my mother was releasing each of the five into the beyond - the world of dance has supported and challenged me.
Through the final moments of my parents' life, I was dancing full out, unaware of their blessings in the last burst of breath but fully present in the moment under the lights. I live my life as a dancer, antennae up for the texts and subtexts that is life
Dance has helped me heal the festering anger against many people and incidents. When I dance, I reveal myself. I cannot dance out of the sides of my mouth. In life, I am a recluse. On stage I am all passion, stillness and focused energy. I can do many things besides dance but it is dance that anchors and defines me.
To dance is the experience a sense of freedom. A freedom that is not granted by real life. To dance is to believe in being useless at times. To dance is to know beauty in the bones. To dance is to believe. To dance is to make oneself vulnerable willingly.
Let me conclude by tampering with the French poet Baudelaire's advice. “Be drunk,” I feel, “just dance… to ease the pain as Time's dreaded burden weighs down upon your shoulders and crushes you to the earth, you must dance without respite... Just dance, nothing else matters.”
(July 30, 2008)
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