Good news! People still dance at weddings! Thankfully, the deep necessity of doing so has not yet succumbed to the currently ongoing, well-funded global project of human robotification and control.
Dance remains a force for liberation, impossible to outlaw or completely regulate. At a wedding, even people who otherwise tend to stay within the confines of socially conditioned habit will often, in whatever way they can, shake all that stuff off so that life can better flow. Permission is given. It’s encouraged.
But really, doesn’t it just make all kinds of sense that people would dance at weddings? Some things really matter. A wedding is one of them. Long term, the community is counting on that couple for its stability, enrichment and continuity. And it goes both ways: the couple needs its community.
To dance at a wedding is to open to one’s life energy and thus to make an offering of that energy to the sacredness of the occasion.
And by the way, it can be a lot of fun. Ultimately, life is an expression of joy. Nothing else works.
I remember at our friends’ wedding some years ago we were all out there on the floor, having a blast. They had two different live bands, one for dinner and one for the dance, with the dance band being an impressive multi-piece ensemble including some brass horns. Quite a shindig. And they planned for it: A large section of the reception area had been set aside for the dance floor. Large as it was, it was barely big enough. At length, of course, I needed some water and a break. So, back to the tables, over to get water. Then, some wandering around visiting with people. Then finally, over to the bathroom. The dance floor stood in the path on my way to take care of some of these necessities.
And here’s what I found: you can’t cross a crowded dance floor without dancing. That left a couple options. I could wade through the tables and onlookers surrounding the crowded dance floor, or I could re-enter the dance and move through that space as it was defined and structured by the dancers out there. I could not simply walk across the floor. Even to attempt to do so would be rude, wrong, and possibly even hazardous.
This was a huge life lesson. Because in reality, get this: We’re always dancing.
The art of dance draws its power from the fact that we’re always dancing just as the art of painting draws its power from the fact that we live in a world of color, just as music in all its forms draws power from the fact that we live in a universe of harmonics and vibration, just as poets rely on the fact that the world speaks to us in poetry. In other words, the art forms of dance, painting, music and more are just subsets of these larger, more universal patterns of existence, and from these larger realities do the arts as we commonly think of them draw their expressive capacity.
So, back to the wedding. Consider the people “not dancing” — including me, having just stepped off the floor. The people “just walking around”. Folks sitting in chairs. They’re dancing, too. They’re just doing the “sit at a table” dance or maybe the “walk around holding a drink” dance. So, similar to the dance floor, negotiating those social spaces requires us to harmonize with those patterns. Unless we’re three years old. Then we can crawl on the floor, climb under the table, or stand on our chairs. And people laugh. They know a 3-year-old is still learning the dance.
“I don’t dance,” I’ve heard people say. Usually, men.
“Yes, you do,” is my thought when I hear someone say this. “You can’t help it.” And even in saying ‘I don’t dance,’ well, guess what? You’re also speaking poetry, whether you know it or not. It might mean different things with different people, but it says a lot.
I was inspired this week to see a collection of engagement photos that my niece and her fiancé recently shared online. They’d won a photography package and drove up to Michigan’s Traverse City for the shoot. As it happened, they had some outdoor time during one of the very few snows that had fallen up there this year. From what I could see, the photographer was an amazing talent, capturing the playfulness of the couple as those big, soft, friendly snowflakes set the scene. Looking at those images, I could see by turns the couple’s easy connection, their tenderness, their exuberance and their love. All of it, beautiful.
And it occurs to me now that much in the same way that the arts draw their sourcing and energy from the larger spheres of existence in which they are embedded — painting from our colorful world and so on — so too with weddings, which could be seen as an important local feature of an ongoing marriage ceremony that is universally comprehensive in scope. If so, it seems any promises made in any particular wedding would likewise have to partake of the larger Promise of life itself. We all know this, really. We feel it, deep inside. And it adds another layer of meaning to the wedding celebration.
This great promise is like a rising sun that all can bask in. And the universal wedding never ends.
What’s it like to suddenly wake up right now and realize, “Wow! Today is my wedding day!”
…every day?
Is it possible to connect with the depths of life’s promise and to draw upon that larger promise to support us in keeping our own promises, and by this I mean, each and every promise big and little that we make, even the promises we make to ourselves? I ask because in the long run, that’s what it’s gonna take to keep those promises.
And is it possible to dance in celebration with the dancers on the floor, and yes, even to dance with those who might not know they’re dancing, who might imagine themselves to be standing off to the side?
I believe it is. At least, in my better moments, that’s how it feels to me.