The Arcata based samba troupe, Bloco Firmeza, gave me my dancin dogs about two years ago.

"BOYS DON'T DANCE!"

Oh, man. That is SO painful. I often bemoan the fact that in the U.S., men don't learn to dance or worse, it is unmanly to dance. Comparing that sentiment to, say, Macedonian or Hungarian cultures, where men dance and it is really macho, I think how unfortunate it is when our culture makes dancing a gender - identity issue.

I remember being somewhat shocked at being told by a couple of women how rare I was - a guy who can dance. (This was at a dance festival, too.)

Craig in Arcata

"All Along The Watchtower" played by the Grateful Dead, OAKLAND 1994

later...

"Mother Earth" by Dubtribe Sound System. Played by DJ Big Sam (XXXL) at NYC, Santa Barbara 1996

I kinda sorta used to dance -- I remember having a great time at the college pub, learned the hustle, loved Parliament Funkadelic and the Gap Band...but I didn't get "serious" about dance until I went to California (I was living in New York) to visit my sister. She took me to all these wild and crazy places...a Zen meditation center, a club where all the performers were Latinas who used to be men, Disneyland, and I got my first astrological reading. The astrologer asked me what I did for a creative outlet, because he said I had all this creative energy in my chart. I said "Nothing." He said "You have to do something -- paint, write, play music, do something." So that's when I decided I was really going to dance.

I got back to New York, found the School for Creative Movement, which helped me find my own dance rather than learning someone else's, and I also found Barefoot Boogie, which was a community as well as a place to "do your own dance." I also started studying African dance, the one structured form I have stuck with over the years.

Then I got involved with Dance New England, moved to Boston, got involved with Dance Friday and Dance Freedom, and then moved to California, where I got involved with Dance Jam and Dance Spirit and Barefoot Boogie SF, and then started the Northern California Dance Collective so we could have dance camps out here too. Lately I've been taking waltz lessons and going to vintage dance events, all dressed up Victorian-like -- who woulda thunk?

So it wasn't so much a song, or an artist...it was a discovery and an intention and then it became a way of life. I think of my life in terms of BD and AD -- before dance and after dance. It sure is a whole lot better AD! Now I dance and deejay and organize events that get other people dancing, because I think dance and community are powerful ways of healing ourselves and this planet.

christina