I Hope You Dance...

I have been wanting to start posting for quite some time, but I neither had the time nor the right topic to start my blog. Today I finally found both. On Sanjay’s blog(I have stumbled upon Sai’s blog and her fellow bloggers’ blogs recently) I found the Friday word ‘Dance’. Dance is something that I truly love so I thought that it would be a perfect topic to begin my blog with.

I have always loved dance of any kind. Be it Indian folk dance, bollywood music dance or ballet, dance has always fascinated me. As a child my secret ambition was to become a dancer. Now this was not based on any intrinsic abilities or training . In fact I never got a chance to actually train in any kind of dance form. As a child I used to bug my parents to allow me to learn bharatnatyam (a traditional Indian dance form) but they never encouraged me since they thought that it would affect my studies. They did allow me to join a bharatnatyam class for a year when I around 10, but the following year I was sent to live with my grandparents and that ended my dance education.
My sister who also shared my love for dance had her own share of bad luck when it came to learning dance. When she was about 10, a new kathak (another Indian dance form)dance class opened near our home. Since it was a stone’ s throw away from our house, my parents allowed her to enroll. She really enjoyed her classes, especially since her teacher was a young enthusiastic lady. But within 6 months the teacher got married and moved to another suburb closing down the classes. Later, an older gentleman started teaching kathak in the same premises. Though my sister did not like this teacher as much as she liked the previous one, she learnt diligently for about 6 months. Then one evening as she showed up for the class and waited for her teacher along with her fellow students, a grim faced peon came there to tell them that the teacher had had a heart attack and had passed away. Talk about being jinxed! We often teased my sister about being jinxed as far as dance was concerned.
Even though we never really learnt to dance, my sister and I would often stand in front of the TV and copy the steps of the likes of Madhuri Dixit(a famous Indian actress and dancer). We may have been terrible at it but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Be it daandiya, New Year’s party or any other party, whenever we had a choice to sit it out or dance…we danced. Which brings me to one of my favorite songs by Lee Ann Womack, called ‘I hope you dance’. For those of you who are not familiar with the song, here are a few lines of the beautiful lyrics…

I hope you never lose your sense of wonder
You get your fill to eat but always keep that hunger
May you never take one single breath for granted
God forbid love ever leave you empty-handed
Hope you still feel small when you stand beside the ocean
Whenever one door closes I hope one more opens
Promise me that you’ll give faith a fighting chance
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance
I hope you dance…… I hope you dance

I love this song for its inspirational message. The things mentioned in the above lyrics are the kind of things that I’d want to teach my daughter. She’s only two now but hopefully someday she’ll understand and appreciate these words. Today she shares my love of dance. Whenever we turn on the music, she shakes her body. My hope is that she continues to love dance so that we can learn it together. But even if she doesn’t, I’d still say to her …“I Hope You Dance….” … metaphorically speaking!