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THE
DANCE BEGINS I
am alone with the dancers tonight. I
am no longer afraid of my fear. Teach
me then, dancers, in this absence of fear to
make every step a choice of precision and
of wild indulgence in the music of the heart. The
dance begins. Like a woman’s
name. I hold a rose in
my arms, later her crayon portrait of love.
I dance. She promised
freedom. Then the myth crept in,
the velvet-pawed confusion.
Say you are mine. Forever. My
useless “O.K.” Sometimes
only the myth gets broken, and sometimes the
dance begins. Deeper.
I dance. I am with you
tonight. 18th
Century Crete. The Cretans
conquered by the Turks. The
women lay down their usual tasks, their baskets, their
dreams, to dance inside this burden myth of ownership. Hand
in hand they dance, a garland of women. They
dance on the dust of clay goddesses. There
is grass in the crags of the rocks. Something
gives them this power. Their hearts beat
to the music, foreign to their conquerors, a bold beat. They
translate that it is a dance of celebration.
They laugh. They
have already laid aside their other laughter, that
of mothers braiding their daughters’ hair, or
of the dance steps of the plump-faced girls tumbling
to their first retsina at the age of three. They
laugh this new laughter and dance steps
learned in effortless play for a very long time, now
the effortless precision taking over. They
fill the amazed eyes of their new owners with lust. They
dance high into the cliff, the sea rolling below,
the mirror night. The cypress trees
are nervous in the wind. Ekaterina,
you falter. Hold my hand more
tightly then. We
must go through with this. Irene,
if you can’t smile, then
don’t, but move your feet as though you do.
Nana’s
face is full of tears. What can I
do? I love her! I
don’t mind my own so much. But
hold my hand more tightly now. Forgive
me, I invent. I do not hear what
they speak. Probably
simple words. The formal song they
sing is louder: “se
agapo zoe. I am in love with
life.” And
underneath, their bodies, in the wordless stunning, dance
this silence: that women cannot be owned, that,
one by one, they climb on their song into courage to
loosen the nearest dancer from their hand and
simply drop into the sea below, its roaring I
am in love with this life, and its silent echoing: death
is not best, but better than this
bondage you propose. So extinguish
the lamps of
the lupines and the myrtle, and of a life turned
terror under manmade myth of war and ownership. And
wash the broken bodies with the water of the sea. For
death is not best, but better than. They
translate that it is a dance of celebration.
I know. Just
as I know the kiss of moonlight on their mouths, sealing not
the whimper or the wail, but the song, the freedom, the I am in
love with this life. The cypress
trees no longer shiver in
the wind for them. The moon tears
light from the wild waves like
firebrands. They fall into the vast
abyss of memory like
seeds as I return to my own body’s knowledge that
the dance is everywhere where joy and freedom ring
out louder than all pain, where one need not pray for
mighty cliffs or knowledge of ripe waters, only that the dance be
strong enough
to bring the song of recognition to some women’s eyes, to make them want to spit
out all the dust of muttering “it is a woman’s
lot”, enough to make them want to fill their mouths with
claiming kinship with the dancers in marvelous confusion.
Were the dancers truly Cretan? Weren’t they instead
from Macedonia? Or Norwegian? Weren’t they the
witches who once leapt like lemmings to the sea to die, and to
remain alive forever, singing in
the steps of those who dance for them, and for themselves? I am alive with the
dancers tonight, never alone, as I
practice their promise of freedom. Through long years of
moments women whispered me their words, and
the solid rhythm grew in me: se agapo zoe.
I am in
love with life. The dance begins.
Forever. Now.
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