As many of you know, for more than a quarter century I have been dancing regularly, in a practice known as the Five Rhythms dreamed up by the late Gabrielle Roth. The city of Cambridge has a thriving class which meets on Friday evenings, but the fact that it is on a Friday night leads to a little ambiguity: Some see it as a “barefoot boogie”, with any teaching to be ignored, while others like myself value what is taught, and the process of going through a “wave”.
This has a significant consequence for the level of illumination provided. While the Five Rhythms practice requires one to be seen and make eye contact as appropriate, those just wanting to boogie, often prefer to do it in almost darkness (not wanting to be seen). The Five Rythms is about dancing what you are feeling, and not how you look! As for myself, I miss the eye contact and the intimacy that comes from being able to see who I am dancing with, and in recent years as my eyesight has dimishished, have always requested more illumination.
Now, with my rapidly developing condition (including a tumour on my brain’s Motor Cortex) I have completely lost the ability to balance my body through procioception, the very fundamental mechanism by which our body parts know where they are. The consequence: I will fall over unless I have strong illumination of the visual field around me. Futhermore, while I used to love dancing with partners, now the fact that their moving frame of reference now become a major (and moving) part of the visual field which I am relying on for my stability, makes my balance impossible.
I have no idea if I will be able to continue dancing as my condition progresses, but my solution last time was to provide my own workman’s lamp, strongly illuminating a modest bit of the wall of the venue, and dance against that. It is exercise at least, and dancing with myself is perhaps a metaphor for the final stages of my journey. For we are born alone, and die alone, but hopefully not lonely.