Vine vacanta…….. in curand (don’t hold your breath)

Ladies and gens, turn up your sound system to the sound of Carlos Santana, and live your life like a movie star!

My world of dance

I was fascinated by the world of dance since I was a child. I love the way ones body can tell stories, and send emotions, and make you cry, or laugh, or shivered. Without words. An universal language…

I opened my eyes on ballet. The choreograph was a Russian, Sadia. She didn’t speak to much and not very correct neither, but she was dancing. Long body line, long neck, long legs and arms, flexible, slim and strong, reaching for the sky. Ballet, in Russian, was born to entertain the royal court. It was elegant, eloquent and it fit them. Last year I have seen Anna Karenina. I cried in the end – no words, just gestures and I cried.

Then came Shakira. Big jump, isn’t it? Our genetic memories about oriental dances are somehow connected with ottoman empire and how all our leaders were trying to keep the barbarian outside borders of Europe. But Shakira made the dance occidental, believable. I wanted to dance like her. Belly dances were born from a symbiosis of religious and erotic, a tribute to the fertility cults of ancient world. No pointe shoes, but bare foots, no fancy costumes, but bare skin between the bottom of the bra and the hip line. I have attended an oriental dance class, last year. The trainer, a middle-age,chubby, Finnish woman – that you could never be noticed on the street, until she started to dance. The change was spectacular. You could hear the camels in the desert and the lover for whom she left her country, her religion, took the veil and devoted her life to him, and him only…

What about Ricki Martin? Do you remember his final look in Livin’ la Vida Loca? I could change Rafael with him… (you don’t know who’s Rafael?) So I went to Latin dance courses. Today I had a class. My trainer is from Cuba. Black like the night and with jewelries all over like Flavor Flav. Salsa, cha cha cha, rumba were a fusion between poor Europeans and negro slaves dances dated from 16^th century. Boy, but he knows how to dance! And to enjoy it! He keeps a class full with 20 women from 17 to 60 years old, at his small finger, and he is dancing and singing, that you can feel the blood boiling under his black perfect skin.

I have tried once, being in a club, to learn Flamenco. The dance of the proud and oppressed ones. Born in Andalusia, with gypsy flavors, guitars and tambourine breaking the rhythm, faster and faster and faster, until you don’t see around anything than large skirts and black hair and beautiful, beautiful hands.

I have not tried, but next on my list is the African dance. It celebrate the birth, harvest or death, ask for gods protection or ward of the evil spirits. Did you read Corinne Hofmann’s “The white Masai”? It is another world… Men are segregated from women. They are jumping, using large body movements, while women are bended, tied to the earth, closer to the source of life and energy, while the drums are beating in the same rhythm with their hard: dum, tododum, dum, tododum, dom…