Have you ever seen someone dance in the rain? I haven’t. Maybe it is just something for the movies. I would like to, someday before I walk into the light, see someone dance in the rain. I don’t mean a quick jive and shuffle. I want to see flowing movements. I want to see grace. I want to see someone move with enough fluidity to mimic the water falling all around them. If I were to picture the scene in my head I would imagine a summer rain. Big, fat, warm droplets that make a person contemplate taking a walk. The sound of these droplets is different. This is no aggressive winter sleet or furious tropical gale. There is a subtlety to the rain. Each drop is like a musical note. The sound comes out soft and lingers in one’s ear for only a few moments before departing. Individually each note is pleasant, but not pleasing. Together they form a symphony that urges one to move. The clouds above have been waiting like eager children for the sun to settle in for the night to begin their song. The drops fall in nervous spurts at first. Their imprints vanish like footprints in the sand. Slowly the clouds develop confidence. The droplets begin to fall with purpose, splashing into the world like mini aqua-cannonballs. CHARGE! The orchestrators above are bellowing. Soon the landscape is wet and heavy, high off the scent of fresh rainwater.
The earth is content to absorb all that brother sky has felt generous enough to give. Indeed, most people are content to absorb the rain. I’d like to picture someone who isn’t so passive. A woman. Tallish, twentyish, wearing a white dress as light and comfortable as the air outside. Her black hair is long enough to reach past her shoulders. She is in a far away corner of her house, curled up in a big squashy chair in an impossibly feline manner. A book rests in her hand but she isn’t reading the words on the page. The constant pitter-patter against the windowpanes makes her restless. Something about the rain fall calls her, compels her to move. She walks out of her house and stands at the edge of the hair thin space where her roof no longer blocks the sky. A gentle gust brings a fine spray of water to tickle her face. She accepts the invitation and steps onto her lawn. The ground is warm and spongy beneath her bare feet. She looks to the sky which is an amalgamation of soft blues, purples, and greens. She cannot recall seeing the clouds look quite like that before. They don’t seem to have a basis in this world. The colors are familiar but so remarkably different that they must have sprung forth from the mind of a painter, or better yet, a child. This is summer and it’s beautiful.
Her dance begins with a twirl. Nothing complex, she just spins on one foot and lands. It’s fun. Dancing is fun. The joy people feel in the act of moving arises from the vitality represented in that very movement. I am woman, watch me go she says. One twirl multiplies into dozens and before long she is in a full blown dance. I don’t know much about the art but I do know when dance is rehearsed and drilled into a body. This is no routine. The movements spring from within that space we go to when we are alone in our rooms dancing to the beat of whatever is flowing through our veins. Her hair is soaked through enough to cling to her cheeks in crescents until the moment she decides to spin her head, flinging out droplets in a watery halo. She is nothing but long limbs and graceful motion. Her internal dialogue has been replaced with rain-song and the minutes she spends dancing are heaven. Exhausted but exhilarated she leans against the sole tree in her yard. Droplets of rain play across her face, enticing her to continue dancing.
