DELORIS KOAN | Everyone can dance. They just don’t admit it

Dancing. So many people shrivel up like a walnut and say: “I don’t dance.”

But you do. Just not in public.

At some point in your life, you tapped a heel, did a jazz jiggle, bopped your head slightly, clicked your fingers, hummed a tune, did some silent, raspberry lip-synching of an anthemic chorus line looping in your brain.

The shrinking away from public space is a metaphor of the times; few people, but for the very brave or mendacious, appear to want to take a public stand or make a statement.

Hell, I remember topless dancing on late-night SABC TV once in 1995, but let’s not go there today.

Let’s clear up that stupid platitude that dancing is a vertical expression of a horizontal desire.

That is the dark ages calling, a time when ideas and expression were discouraged, but every culture seems to have some form of disapproval of intimacy, and it’s mostly always about power and control — and freedom being crushed.

In my day, we loved the saying, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.”

I am more than delighted at how dance is utterly embedded in SA culture, it is part of culture, and no matter how poor or downtrodden we may be, when people sing and dance, they do so beautifully.

In the ’80s I recall being choked up at the soaring intensity of the singing at funerals across our province.

And, of course, the distillation of public response into the fierce — and fearsome — anti-apartheid war dance, the toyi toyi.

There is an endless array of dance forms, from celebratory events, to tightly-organised dance-card ballroom affairs, to twerking and high art — Jeannette Ginslov danced naked in the early ’90s.

Her work is far from sleazy, it is painful, disturbing, yet also liberating, evoking a ritual of self-discovery and liberation through the body and the way we move in it.

Sensual? Erotic? Well that is in the eye of the beholder, but I’d prefer to make that decision of interpretation myself, rather than some Praetorian censor from any ilk or corner.

As a banned Eastern Cape journalist in 1986, I watched censors ban a cabaret, Famous Dead Man: He Will F.. You Up by Matthew Krouse and friends, which pilloried the violence of apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd.

They were offended by the searing, raw critique of their assassinated leader.

I was offended by the row of three or four grey-suited men, one of whom had a balding pate that caught a crack of light coming into the Black Sun venue from Hillbrow’s Abel Road.

Getting back to Calvinism and reverberating cross-generational fear, I took an 83-year-old friend to a night of song at our local senior’s complex on Friday night.

Wittily billed as “Karen’s Kitchen”, and it was to be an “evening of entertainment with the well-known Kerry Hiles”.

My date and I hacked our way between the houses, to get to the hall and, bingo! It was totally full.

Hiles is more than a singer, she is a multifaceted social builder.

You will hear her voice in radio adverts, possibly lifts “Mind the closing door”; see her rocking out on base with her kief crew, doing a popular musical at the Guild Theatre and just being an all-round mensch.

I had no idea what to expect. The audience was senior, high age, and then I had a look in the mirror — that was me too. Not long to go now.

What? No base? She arrived simply with a breadboard-sized computer and a tall tech gumpole, some kind of futuristic speaker.

All she had was her art and a lovely jazzy outfit to match those long curly locks.

Hiles is all about heart and connection.

She paid homage to her music teacher, the groovy, incredible educator Alan Webster, ringmaster at the jazz festival at the National Arts Festival for so many years and now headmaster at St Joseph’s Preparatory and College.

It was like the universe opened up. In this hall, where I usually vote, the songs she sang were turning on those magic dancing shoes.

The ballies had no hesitation. They were out there swingin’ it.

Compare that to the tight, terrifying parties I went to as a young teen where the thought of asking a girl to dance made my heart leap out my chest — thank you so much for spin the bottle you EL gals, for that is where I learnt to snog, teeth gnashing, the works.

Tonight was extraordinary. Jiving and turning, not wild or excessive, but with such swaying purpose.

These people had come to jol. And they knew how to. No hesitation.

Hiles was their cultural lighting rod. The dance floor was open.

Suddenly the lights flickered and it went dark.

“Loadshedding,” quipped Hiles. Yet her sound stayed on?

Then the lights were on again — this was the compere “doing the lights” for the show.

My date was not a dancer, but, whew, she was alive, chatting, and having a good time. A social dance all on its own.

Supper was 130 plates of small bites and bits, lovingly prepared by a chef and kitchen chieftainess. Ten bits per plate, 1,300 pieces plated.

The Coke was flowing, sugar rush deluxe, but why not? This was Friday night in KuGompo ...

And … the final song — after the Beatles, some Stones? Abba? — was the classic Revaux, Thibaut, Francois Comme d’habitude, made famous by Frank Sinatra in the English translation: I did it my way.

The entire sea of grey seemed to nod, not falling asleep even though we were digesting, but in a moment of recognition.

Not so much nostalgia — this is the generation that was young in the ’60s when Hendrix, Joplin and Led Zep were letting it all hang out.

It is a generation, according to my dagga oil merchant connection, that does a lot of alternative pain medication.

The best market, I was told, was among seniors.

This was a point when we were all asking ourselves, not how many summers, but how many dances we had left.

Will the next dance be in God’s ballroom?

It is so telling, so poignant, that when the clock starts running down, and we are starting to use up our ninth life, dancing is the ritual that keeps it all flowing, gives us meaning, makes us happy.

I found Jeannette Ginslov on the Internet and here is what she has to say about dance: “Freedom is about stepping into ourselves, and the full expression of ourselves, it’s about finding our boldness and brightness and our brilliance, about not shying away from who we are and what we are and becoming how we think other people see us and how we should be.”

So, in the selected lyrics of David Bowie: “Let’s dance. Put on your red shoes and dance the blues, let’s dance to the song they are playing on the radio, while colour lights up your face. Let’s sway through the crowd to an empty place. If you say run, I’ll run with you. And if you say hide, we’ll hide. Because my love for you would break my heart in two. If you should fall, into my arms and tremble like a flower. Let’s dance for fear your grace should fall, for fear tonight is all. Let’s dance under the moonlight, this serious moonlight.”