Midlife Meditation

I see connections. At the music festival, in the performances we have every night, the way school girls dance when they chance by our compound and hear us drumming, there is a particular Ghanaian style of thrusting the elbows back, then forward, while stepping on the beat in a crouch that is almost a squat, and somehow gyrating the core and glutes. Dancers want everyone to join in, and draw in spectators to their performances, pulling them out of their seats or away from the shade tree from which they’re watching. Kofi calls the move “breaking the back,” and likens it to pulling away from a knife attack from the front then the back, over and over again. In some ways, it resembles the chicken dance, though much more active and full-body. In terms of coordinating all the movements, it feels to me like trying to get the Charleston basic step right: my body just can’t pivot on that many axes at once. Or, more likely, I’ve never learned to. Most of Orff movement training take...

Yeah--I didn't see that coming, either. A drum circle got me into Orff. The dancing part didn't happen until I had my Level I training, and even then, I was far from comfortable with it. But I pushed through my discomfort, and began seriously incorporating movement into my classroom. Many more workshops, two more Levels, a Jazz Class, and my first national conference later, I can seriously say--finally, at the age of 52--I love to dance! Few people who've known me outside of the Orff world would believe this about me. Yes, I took a full year of ballroom dance when I was in grad school, and it has informed my playing of any music that swings ever since; but I had few opportunities to practice those moves, and over time, they atrophied. I can still do some basic swing and Charleston steps, but anything else I have to make up as I go. Prior to that year, it wasn't just that I didn't have dance skills. I hated dancing. I especially hated party dancing of the kin...