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Columnist Sally Kalson: I dance, therefore I am
Monday, June 01, 1998 By Sally Kalson, Post-Gazette Columnist
So I'm in the audience at the Pittsburgh Folk Festival last weekend, watching a succession of ethnic dance troupes, when I have an epiphany.
The revelation hits me shortly after the Carpatho-Rusyns storm the stage.
They proceed to offer as raw a public display of constructively channeled testosterone as I've witnessed in a long time.
Young men stomp the floorboards, leap this way and that as if the stage is a gravity-free zone, whirl in place with one leg extended until you half-expect them to drill straight down through the platform.
A big guy clamps two little guys under his arms by their ankles and spins around so fast the three of them almost achieve liftoff. The spectator in me holds my breath, but the mother in me screams omigoooooood!!!
The whole thing reaches a crescendo as a succession of dancers launch themselves into the air like projectiles, flying over the heads of their fellow troupe members, who are lined up shoulder-to-shoulder across the stage, stomping wildly.
The last one lands, they throw their arms out in triumph as the music ends, and the crowd roars its approval.
The dancers smile, rise, bow. They are flushed, sweaty, breathless. I look at their triumphant faces, and that's when it hits me:
What this country needs to nurture, protect and direct its young men is not a higher cigarette tax, a flag-burning amendment, a television v-chip or Internet censorship.
What this country needs is more folk dancing.
Not just folk dancing, of course. That's only the physical manifestation, a socially acceptable outlet for all the raging hormones and pent-up energy, the restless, attention-seeking aggression of youth.
But the dancing is also part of something deeper - namely, a sense of belonging to something positive that is bigger than yourself, something with a history and a meaning that has endured.
That kind of connection is too often missing in the lives of contemporary American youth.
In our mobile culture, where people chase jobs and dreams out of necessity and ambition, a lot of kids don't grow to maturity amid extended families that can help them find their place. The inter-generational linkage is missing. So instead of looking to their elders, they look to their peers, their TV sets and computer screens.
And while disconnection sometimes means freedom - the weight of tradition can be oppressive, not to mention sexist - it can also create a vacuum into which all kinds of risk factors rush.
I don't know if you can spot alienation on a teen-ager's face. Is it that studied look of boredom and contempt, or is that just posturing? But I do know pride when I see it, and that was the look on the folk dancers that night - not just the Carpatho-Rusyns, but the Bulgarians, Indians, Irish, Chinese and the rest.
The young men on the stage at that moment had strutted their stuff, no question about it. But their stuff wasn't just macho swaggering. It was a discipline that requires commitment.
The Carpatho-Rusyn troupe, I find out later, practices twice a week for three-hour sessions. The members must learn all the songs in a language many do not speak. They must master difficult steps that demand skill as well as strength.
I used to be one of those teen-agers who sneered at folk dancing. Only dorks did it, if you asked me. But the kids at the folk festival didn't have a dork among them.
They were all shapes and sizes, with varying degrees of conventional good looks. But to a one, they exuded a poise and self-confidence that said:
I am more than today's fashion, more than so-and-so's prom date, more than a B student in math, more than a tiny atom in an infinite universe.
I am part of something that stands for something.
I am here now, and I am dancing.
Sally Kalson's column appears every Monday in the Magazine; her e-mail address is skalson@post-gazette.com
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