Rapture Swirling Round Metal Folding Chairs...

We went to a Black History Month Celebration yesterday where Jaelyn's African Dance Troupe was performing. The event was held in the large gym/multipurpose room of the community center at the Urban League in one of the poorer neighborhoods in town.

The speaker gave a really appropriate and really insightful speech, and then it was time for the Dancers. The setup was not ideal for them. They only had room to squeeze between the makeshift platform and the first row of folding chairs. It was barely enough room to manage all of the synchronized line motions that define this branch of African Dance.

I had watched enough rehearsals so that I started to imagine the next part and the next part.  Halfway through the routine I started to worry. What would happen during the part of the dance where they step out of their lines and transform into spinning wheels of dance?

The troupe can't afford uniforms -- most of the students come from a very poor school just across the street from the community center. Ms. Watkins believes in inclusion and community so some of the dancers are better than others, but they all know that they are responsible for each other's success. At practices older members help new members. Everyone's movements are threaded together by watching the person before them and next to them.

So when the moment happened -- and the lead dancers squeezed (almost impossibly) between the two drummers and led vigorous lines of dancers right through the middle aisle of our folding chairs and then the spinning circles of dancers, half running, half skipping, half dancing, started to spin around the audience -- everyone was astonished.

Logically we understood the mechanics of what had happened, but experientially? It was magic. Audience members leapt to their feet emphasizing the applause that had taken us all.

I love those moments where people take the meager means available to them and transform them into some kind of abundance.