"Dance first. Think later. It's the natural order." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

My Saturday nights mean Latin dancing.  Dancing until I get shaky, stumbling to the nearest kebab shop for sustenance, and burrowing into bed until almost Sunday noon.   Its the poetry that punctuates my prosiac life.

I am a whirling salsa dervish, fast and abandoned to the delicious rhythms.  And -- oh -- the bachata.  Heart-haunting Dominican blues danced intimately in melanchology so beautiful that it becomes ecstatic.

Give me a partner who knows how to meld with music over any of the technically-gifted Toronto salsa dancers.  Oh yes, frigid Toronto is full of tropical rhythms most nights of the week.  The skill level is high, too.  They study patterns and twists and turns to perfected polish, and dance intently with each other -- with such flourish but often without a smile.   But these virtuosos look wonderful nonetheless, and women swoon at the chance to be led by them.  I used to watch and wait; meanwhile dancing non-stop with Latino "street style" dancers.  I've been dancing for a year and a half now, and trained leads have deigned to dance with me.  And I've discovered it was all an illusion. 

It's the street dancers who make my pulses throb, the ones who laugh equally at mistakes and triumphs.  In a shared moment of music, of forgetting the body that weighs us all down so, is an inexplicable transcendent joy. 

"Dancers are the athletes of God" (Albert Einstein)