Art Walk

Maybe you go to Art Walk for the free sips of wine and small bites. Maybe you go to forget your troubles, our country’s troubles, the world’s. Hopefully you go to appreciate the artists’ work. Definitely you go to support them.

This evening, Art Walk is crowded. Everyone is out. And the reason, I think, is because as the news of the world rages and there is fear below the surface of a lot of us, we yearn to think about other things. Better things.

I can see by the way a crowd gathers mid-way down Winslow Way that a band is playing. And there, front and center, is Anna.  

If you’ve lived in King or Kitsap County for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed Anna. Anna is wherever the music is, her presence as much a part of the festivity as the ground on which she dances. Life is for living, her limbs seem to say, fun is for having, and it’s up to you to get right in there and enjoy yourself.

Regrettably, there was a younger time in my life when I thought an adult dancing on the sidewalk, alone and with abandon, was an attention seeker, perhaps, or even a little lost. But life has shown me that not only do I have zero interest in making this kind of assessment anymore, it doesn’t take long to realize how boring it is to think like this.

I appreciate Anna even more tonight because there are things, unbearable things, about our current administration that are getting me down lately. Honestly, some days, I could just lie down and cry.    

At first I blamed my not dancing on the fact that I had a book signing to do, but in the end, I couldn’t think of one good reason not to join in. I danced in place, but I didn’t hold back.

I like to tell my dance students that dancing was the original form of expression and that it’s easier to convey joy with our whole body than even with a smile. I also tell them: This is why dancers don’t need therapists.

Next to me, a teenager is recording Anna, but I don’t like the way she is laughing at her. But I don’t say anything. It always seems like the right thing to do in the movies, to scold someone for their tactlessness, but in real life, it just antagonizes both sides and nothing changes.

Sad but true.

I had hoped that Anna’s longing to dance would connect this girl to her own, but as she posts the video, I see another someone with the wild idea that we all need to be famous on the internet, who will spend God knows how many hours of her precious life trying. It’s not her fault. She’s grown up in a time when people value your number of followers over the level of your measured compassion.

As for me, memory serves. And better at connecting our brain to our heart. So I keep Anna in mind to remember why I dance. Not why anyone else does, or even exactly why she does, but why I do. As I see it, this need to dance is bigger than any desire some of us have, or have ever had, so we walk right up front to be near the music. And we dance.

Mary Lou Sanelli

Mary Lou Sanelli’s latest book, An Island Called Bainbridge: People, Places, Conversations, was recently released by Chatwin Books, from which this writing is an excerpt. She also works as a speaker and a master dance teacher. For more information visit www.marylousanelli.com.