D A N C E !!!

We just completed a New Year's wish for our number one non-family confidant that seems now to be rather sterile and incompetent.

The "greeting" offered wishes and prayers for a "Renaissance" of common sense to replace the straitjacket of  "correctness" that plagues clarity of emotion and 
communication these days.

That sounds really fatuous and condescending  as one  reads it back out loud.

So, let us amend it.

How about:  "More dancing,  less shuffling and plodding in 2016 ?!!

There is, in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, if my memory is intact, the reproduction of carvings and drawings on an Algerian  wall  more than 10,000 years old, that shows many people dancing with the same attitudes and the same utilization of  artifact in their dance.

In case you care,  Wikipedia is very weak on "dance" and "dancing". But it is pretty clear that the North African area abutting the Mediterranean and the subcontinent of India are the first places that evidence dancing as an avocation of "early" populations.

Long before people had language, they danced to convey emotions and beliefs that were natural and, perforce, brought  forth song  and then language and  communicative cooperation.

Therefore nothing could be more human and faithful than to make 2016 a Dancing Year.

The song or melody can be supplied by the individual "heart"--- Spirit  or  imagination.

But, in the face of fear, anxiety or dilemma, Dancing really is a valid prescription. There is scriptural evidence aplenty that dancing including the use of bells and castanets proceeded from prehistory to the time of Abraham. In the fourth century, BCE, Aristotle delineated "Dance" in his Poetics.

Traditionally, celebratory dancing filled the Temple. The first thing that happens after marriage vows and the kiss is The Dance. In the synagogues of old, all the men danced with clasped hands. They still do. 

The Druids danced at Stonehenge. Egyptian  hieroglyphics show ceremonial as well as single person expression in the dance.

Dancing, in some societies, is still utilized as potent anti--Demon fare. There is no shortage of demons among the seven continents as we begin 2016.

Dance is freely available therapy and protection available anywhere anytime. One must have a certain amount of fortitude and devil-may-care goodwill to apply the balm of the "solo" dance.  But we have all seen the secretary do her terpsichorean best when she gets a raise. Similarly an Oklahoma cowboy does a single whoopp-de-doo  after staying glued on the back of a heaving bull.

The best places to really cut a figure are: the kitchen, the bath shower, the baseball dugout, center court at Wimbledon, American Idol finals, and commencement week at any high school or college.

So Dance, all you children ! 

But, don't stomp, whirl or leap to sounds of your ancient  Walkman or modern iPhone in the company of.… A Muslim friend.

It might cause "hurt feelings".  Centuries of Qu'ranic, Hadith and Sharia Law bans the use of musical instruments, song, or dancing by observant   Muslims.

Any twisting, shaking prancing or wiggling in Islam is reserved for seminaked slaves and a handful of devout  Sufi Dervishes who whirl in circles until they reach ecstatic oneness with a many-splendored, woozy climax.  

One can only understand the severity of this sanction if one had a hardshell Baptist, anti-dance  grandmother.

But in these parlous days, She would cut quite a figure, herself, to get some Serenity ! So, Dance !