I SHOULD HAVE DANCED

Years ago I heard a joke about a woman who was pregnant and the punch line to the joke was--I only remember the punch line--"I should have danced all night." That is almost the title to a song once popular--the song is "I Could Have Danced All Night." I think that the song is from a movie or a musical but try as I may I have not been able to find who the composer is. It really doesn't matter because the thing that brings me to this subject is the movie DIRTY DANCING filmed in 1987 by Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.

My niece, Jill, asked me recently if I had ever seen the movie saying that it is her all time favorite movie and that she saw it first when she was in the sixth grade. I imagine that my kids saw it too and it might not have even impressed me back then. Jill asked me to see the movie with her so yesterday afternoon I went to Wal-Mart and bought a DVD copy and took it to her house to watch with her. The story is set in upstate New York in 1963 at a summer resort for families. For recreation after hours the young staff members meet in the staff quarters and dance the hours away. The great rock tunes of the 60's and the vigorous dancing give the movie some wonderful energy. Later in the evening I watched the movie again--yes, I really liked it--with a friend. Seeing the movie made me think that I would have liked to learn to dance when I was young--really dance not just move around a little. I could be doing it by myself in my kitchen now to tunes on the Bose. As an adult I became a great admirer of dance and how the human body can move when trained. I find such beauty in the movements. So "I should have danced," or more accurately "I could have danced," as the words go "...danced, danced, danced all night."

The reason I didn't learn to dance was because of the strict religious taboo that I grew up with regarding dancing. It was supposed to be nasty and cause people to sin, but then so do a lot of things in this life. I missed the opportunity to move agilely around the floor and as a benefit get some much needed exercise to wonderful, wonderful music.

I think I may have mentioned in another blog recently that I had watched again the DVD TANGO which has such beautiful and lively dancing. I also recently again watched Richard Gere in SHALL WE DANCE which is a lovely movie about a man who stops off at a dance studio every week on his way home from work and secretly learns to dance with the end result being that he gets to dance with his wife and it is beautiful.

Do you suppose at this age I could learn to dance with enough proficiency so as not to embarras myself? I probably never will being a somewhat shy type but then who knows.