My recent blog post about dancer Bunny Briggs set me off on a voyage of discovery. I’ve loved dance forever, but I never knew there was something called “tap” and something called “rhythm tap” (a form of tap dance that includes percussive heel drops, instead of only emphasizing toe taps).
And I never knew about the men who were masters of this style of dancing. They’re quite amazing!
But here’s the thing. There is so much JOY happening when these guys dance! It’s palpable. They are having all caps FUN, but in a harmonious, cooperative, supportive, joyful kind of way.
I was marveling about this the first time I watched the second video below and then the thought came: “But I wonder what they were really like? Were they decent people? How did they treat their wives and children?” And I struggled a little bit over the age-old conflict of witnessing the ways an artist can achieve transcendence through their particular medium (dance, music, art) without being in any way a completely perfect being.
What I think, however, is that when a person gets a little taste of this kind of transcendent joy for even one moment, in just one area of their life, it makes a lasting impression. In some subtle way it leads to them wanting more.
And so the search begins, as we achieve perfection and transcendence first in this activity and then in that practice, getting another taste, another glimpse of the divine. Until we finally find the infinite love and joy we’ve been seeking by merging back into our true source.