-- Transformed By A Christmas Dance and a Christmas Goose
This Thursday's choreography, "Your Christmas Goose Is Cooked" is Inspired by the popular Christmas book by Charles Dickens (my favorite author) A Christmas Carol, ( Click HERE to read the original and see my previous post below) celebrating the transformation of an archetypical heartless soul Ebenezer Scrooge, into a generous man. At THAT time the traditional Christmas dinner was a GOOSE... but if you read to the end, Mr. Scrooge is so overcome with Generosity, that he instead substitutes . . . well you’ll just have to read to the end to find out! In my kitchen, I stand with my back to my zoom webcam so my dance student John can copy my moves, as I demonstrate the finer points of the Goose Waddle. “Crouch down. Your bottom big and heavy. Step slow web-footed steps to the beat. Now waggle your tail to finish.” I can’t see John on the screen behind me. But when I pause and look, his glowing giggles show he caught my silly goose spirit of the dance — success! Dancing makes our hearts merry. As we move like a silly goose, it can’t help but overflow our cheer to others. A merry heart does good like a medicine” Proverbs 17:22 Back in our Christmas Goose Dance lesson, we share a laugh, good medicine indeed, for our Covid-weary souls. Then continue to waddle and polka our way through the rest of the choreography, more or less together. ========= One of our most beloved Christmas stories (besides the completely illogical Nutcracker dance!) is “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens. Dickens shows the spiritual transformation of modern literature’s most iconic cold-hearted cheapskate -- Ebenezer Scrooge. Scrooge was a wealthy man who had lost love for anything but money. He could not comprehend the value of merriment in his own, or anyone else’s life. Until . . . until an evening of Christmas dancing and a Christmas goose dinner sparked a transformation of his spirit to be filled with love and generosity. In an evening of jolly dancing at Scrooge’s employer Mr. Fezziwig’s Christmas party, young Scrooge capered the night away, enjoying his happy fellowship. But in his following years, his heart forgot that innocent joy and hardened instead into a cold obsession for money. Human love and happiness was a waste of time, only taking people away from their urgent purpose of earning more money Scrooge believed. I too, was a young Ebenezer Scrooge, it seems, before I discovered the bliss of social dancing, I had seen people happily dancing in movies and TV shows. But this phenomena of sharing joy in social dance made no sense to me, just did not compute to my brain, and seemed completely illogical to my pre-dancing sensibilities. Until I tried it. BOOM! My life was transformed So illogical, yet so rewarding! Back to Ebenezer Scrooge’s tale. Visiting ghosts lit the flame of love in his spirit, with the help of social dancing and a goose, by leading him to feel the sharp contrast, of the happiness of such loving experiences with the pain of his preferred cold empty life, and the results of his miserable indifference to others. Seeing the stark results, Scrooge chose to reform, and immediately found his new purpose in life -- using his previously hoarded wealth to generously shower other people with happy gifts. Dance rebirthed his dead soul with the joy of life. Don't be a Scrooge! Come dance with us.
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FOOT Notes from Teacher PeggyAuthorPeggy Pollard has been teaching social/ballroom dance in Santa Cruz since 2010. Archives
September 2022
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