A Journey In Black and Indian Love

I love to dance..in fact I probably would have been a good candidate on “Dance Your Ass Off” (nevermind how cheesy the show may be, there’s definitely something to the concept of having fun while losing weight..but I digress). Hubby does not dance, no how no way..at least that’s usually the case. However, this past week I was actually able to get him to try some dance steps with me. I came across the above video on youtube and it brought back a flood of memories from my high school days. It’s funny how silly some of these dances look to me now…but honies back in the day, Blindian was looking just as stupid doing the dances.

Anyway, now that I’m older and wiser with more brittle bones, I leave the new dances like “the stanky leg (wth?) and the “solider boy” to the younger folk. I do, however, still step as in this video (start around 2:38 forward)

When I was a little girl, my grandparents would do a form of this dance. Now it has evolved into names like the “Chicago step.” I loved watching my elders cutting loose in my grandmother’s living room. When I showed the video to M, and asked him to learn with me, surprisingly enough he watched and tried to emulate the steps. I’m hoping he can learn it by the end of next month so that we can do it at my family reunion.

Dancing crazily around the house as we cook  or hang out may seem like something odd to most people but for us it’s not. For me it’s cultural and a way to show happiness or celebration. Certain parts of our cultures are important enough for me and M to sustain and pass to our children. For me, it’s the little moments like hanging out with me  and M while we cook or watching movies and playing games together. It’s about being a family. I don’t let my kids watch music videos and most of the time, they don’t know the latest dance until another child teaches them. Some people may find this sad but for M and I, it’s about them retaining a slice of the innocence of childhood. Music videos these days have way too many unethical aspects, from the inappopriate lyrics to the skimpily clothed women. As it stands, they only watch 2 hours of television each week. There are just way too many things that come on t.v. now that as a parent I cannot in good faith expose my children to.  Until they grow up and can be exposed to more things, we have our youtube videos to show them the “old way” of dancing.  So tonight, go to youtube and find your favorite video and dance dance dance. … until the next blog.