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African Dance – Pearl Primus

Very early I learned that people who truly dance are those who have never bartered the fierce freedom of their souls, never strangled their hunger for rhythmic movement, nor frustrated their joyous physical response to music and song.  Furthermore, when such beings dance, for them all time stops; the air draws back and the past, the present and the future merge into a single indescribable jewel in eternity.

 When these people truly dance, there can be no observers, for those who seek to watch soon join one of two groups.  Either, numbed, bewildered, or frightened by the intensity of their emotions they subconsciously remove themselves back to their comfortable living rooms and shut out the scene that their eyes unseeingly follow or they are snatched, plucked up by an invisible force and hurled into the ring of the dance, their own heartbeat matching the crescendo of pulsing sound, their bodies becoming one with the sweating dancers.

 For them, the magic of all life is experienced!  Eternity captured!  An initiation! A belief! A voyage into Before and Beyond!

 Even as their feet caress the earth, even as their arms defy the waiting air, they know they must someday pay dearly for this freedom.  Yet, hypnotised in the ecstasy of dance, they are drawn nearer and nearer to the centre of ‘All Being’ and farther and farther away from the harsh paved roads, the carefully planned speeches, the friends who wait on the other side, anxious to share this experience.  A hunger consumes them and a thirst to reach the centre.

 Suddenly inside them there is an explosion, an infinitely silent flash of lightning truth.  Everything seems to stop.  All the music, all the dance, everything seems to stop.  The dancers look around.  They peer into the stillness and they know their tongues can never tell what their inner selves now feel