When You Dance

Years ago I had a sexual dream about Donald O'Connor.  He was wearing that horizontal striped shirt Gene Kelly wore in Anchors Aweigh. I woke up feeling hung over and baffled: not only do I dislike stripes anywhere besides bedsheets,  but my male crush-template at the time was maybe Scott Weiland.  

Over the years I've had a few iconic, memorable actual dreams that feel epic-- cinematic-- long, complicated narratives with specific settings and locations that felt like inventions-- all featuring some Hollywood actor-- Brian Keith, in one-- who had no real association with anything or anyone.  I'd wake up feeling-- well, a little surprised... but connected. In high school I'd occasionally have a random dream about some boy I barely knew and then blush when I passed him in the hallway.  Little did he know, we'd shared some private intimacy which would remain part of my psyche. 

Of course, they say the people in our dreams are substitutes, like when we dream about a neglected dog, it's actually about our self. Regardless of where these come from, there's a literal hangover-- we replay what we recall in real time; we are affected. 'A dream is a wish your heart makes, when you're fast asleep...' sang Cinderella on my Disney album soundtrack. Children have nightmares... the lyric was confusing.

I just finished the superb new James Baldwin biography.  James participated in the famed March on Washington where Martin Luther King gave his iconic 'I Have a Dream' speech.  MLK had not just a dream but a vision and a moral and social platform.  On a much more personal scale, my son recently realized his 'hoop-dream' of creating an urban basketball platform.  Of course this took incredibly hard work, planning and stress... fundraising, organizing, building, turning small failures into success narratives, and a coming of age. More than a dream, it's a passion he parlayed into a career ambition.  

My father, the war hero, was a fantastic dancer. Not like Michael Jackson or Gene Kelly, but he had incredible grace.  Watching him with my Mom at family weddings and celebrations, they were like movie stars in their own world... waltzing or samba-ing with harmony and skill.  It was sort of a revelation, seeing my parents this way-- transformed.

The US Open always reminds me of my father who was also a superb tennis player.  In fact, his dancing skills were probably honed because the tennis club where he worked as a boy recruited the young single employees to dance with random single women at their evening entertainments. He had plenty of practice, and experience with women in his pre-military career.  I'm sure that helped win my Mom over.  

'Do you love me, now that I can dance?' asked Dave Clark in one of the first 45's in my little collection.  My first real romantic experience was a slow-dance at a summer-camp mixer. I went to an all-girls Catholic camp that year and they integrated us once per season with a boys' camp from across the lake.  It was well chaperoned and the lights were bright, but the DJ put on 'Surfer Girl' and a tall boy held out his arms to 10-year-old me.  I could feel his heart beating, among other things.  But I realized dancing was sort of a physical metaphor. 

'When you Dance...I can really love' Neil Young sang and reinforced this metaphor.  There's an irony-- besides entertainers like Michael Jackson, rock musicians commonly do not actually dance much. Think Dylan, Tom Petty... Clapton, even Hendrix. They move around and weave a kind of sexual veil with their performance but they don't don't do steps. I've dated a few and offstage they can be a little awkward. 

Over years I've thought long and hard about the Donald O'Connor dream... were the initials significant?  Was this a substitute for my father?  As a young girl my father taught me a few steps; this was surely one of the few 'tender' moments between us. Knowing how to partner-dance was a part of our education. I was also sent to ballet-- to tap and jazz and modern dance because it turned out I loved learning steps and the choreographic role-playing.  Not to mention the music.  But dances-- parties-- this seemed to be a much more prevalent courtship ritual in 60's and 70's culture than it is now.  A slow dance with a new crush was a devastatingly sexy experience. I'm dating myself.  My college boyfriend and I loved dancing; it's what brought us together the very first night.  I miss this.

While I can't remember my father ever watching any of my dance recitals (and he certainly boycotted band gigs, lol)... he was very attentive at those of my son's school basketball tournaments he managed.  Although he doesn't really dance, my son shares a kind of athletic grace with his grandfather.  While I never shared my literal dreams with parents, I imagine my father might have been amused by the Donald O'Connor appearance.  I know how they relished watching those musicals...  and besides the Fred Astaire kind, he loved seeing James Brown, Sammy Davis Junior, and later, Michael Jackson. 

All these years later, I recall that old dream like an actual memory. Maybe it was a reference to my father I couldn't understand at the time. I'm trying, years after his passing, to smooth out the rough patches-- not to dance on his grave but to process the legacy with a little remedial choreography and the softer echo of old dreams.