So You Know You Can Dance!

Everyone can dance.  And they should!

For dancing gets you moving and helps you get rid of the stress and tension you are storing all over your body.  Dancing also helps you heal your soul. 

 

While listening to music, my mind momentarily stops thinking about hurt and pain and frustration as I allow my body to take over and lose itself in the rhythms and sounds of whatever is playing.

 

Dancing is definitely therapeutic!!  And today, in Washington, DC, you can go to The Kennedy Center and dance pretty much all day to your heart's desires.  Or you can do what I intend to do which is dance wherever you are and go with it.

It's National Dance Day, an official and recognized event started in 2010 by Nigel Lythgoe, the co-creator and judge of the television show "So You Think You Can Dance."  His purpose in founding this day was simply to get people dancing and inspire others to get on their feet and move and discover the wonders of dancing as a healthy lifestyle.

 

Lythgoe will be in Los Angeles today for that city's celebration of dance.  Besides DC and LA, there will be performance, tutorials, and flash mobs in Austin, TX, Vail, CO, Montgomery, AL and Rockford, IL, among other locations.

 

The DC event at the Kennedy Center is free and today will feature hip-hop, salsa, modern, Bollywood, flamenco, African, tap and ballet from 1 pm to 11:30 pm.

 

"The whole concept is to have fun, to bring people to dance, to start knocking down the barriers we  build," Lythgoe said.  "You know, you put any piece of music on and a baby starts dancing, just quite naturally.  And somehow we lose that as we get older.  We start to feel embarrassed about ourselves and embarrassed about our bodies."

 

So get up and strut your stuff and boogie all the time for it's great for your body and your sweet, sweet soul!  Here's an oldie from one of my favorite groups, Earth Wind & Fire, singing a hot song, "Boogie Wonderland."  If this doesn't make you move, I don't know what will:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jLGa4X5H2c

 

 

 

Love Peace & Soul -- Don Cornelius

Soul Train was something you got right away or you didn't.

If you had to explain why you watched it, then you knew Soul Train's appeal had escaped the other person.

From the get go, the very first time I watched Soul Train I was hooked.  Every Saturday morning I would turn it on, turn it up, watch it and dance.  How else was a white girl gonna stay on top of the latest dance moves?  News stories say that Soul Train was a black American Bandstand but really we all know that Soul Train was so much more.  American Bandstand was predictable and Soul Train never was.

Don Cornelius, Soul Train's conductor, was soooo smooth and soooo cool.  His voice was distinctive, sortof Barry Whiteish, and he always dressed in a sharp suit and tie.  When I first saw the breaking news that he had been found dead, I immediately went to Google to find out more.  Los Angeles police said Cornelius died in California of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  It was incredibly sad to think of him being by himself in such a desperate state of mind.

Soul Train was Cornelius' concept and with $400 and a lot of funk, he lined up the advertising dollars, hosted the show and changed television programming in a mighty, mighty way.  Every week the hottest black entertainers were featured: Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye and The O'Jays, among others.  From 1971 to 2006, Cornelius produced more than 1,000 syndicated Soul Train episodes.

But the best part of the show was the line dance!!  This is when the dancers would form two lines and leave the middle open so that one or two dancers could sashay, shimmy, twirl, kick, jump or just plain get down and dance their way towards the camera.  And the dancer's outfits consisted of unitards, halter tops, shorts and lots of sequins and fringe.  My friends and I were talking about the show's line dance yesterday and we unanimously agreed that when we watched the line dance we all pretended we were on the show and we all knew how we would dance down the line if given the chance.

This morning I listened to people call in to WHUR and talk about how infectious the line dance is and how the line dance eventually happens at all kinds of parties and family reunions.  Soul Train and Don Cornelius are icons that will never be forgotten.  As my friend LeVette would say: Soul Train, you were the bomb.com.

Love, Peace and Soul to you, Don Cornelius and as you would say on every Soul Train episode, "Bet your last money, it's all gonna be a stone gas, honey!"