I love Gene Kelly. I can watch "Singin' in the Rain," over and over again, if just to see the immortal sequence of him prancing around in a downpour. Yes, I know he had the flu that day. Yes, I know they had to add milk to the water so the rainfall could be captured on film. But those have little to do with my point today. It is just the absolute delight on his face as he whirled around, splashing around to the music and the look of happiness on his face.
Dance had a funny place in my family. When I was a young child growing up, we weren't allowed to watch TV on weekday nights. There were exceptions, Star Trek(Original Series), Mission Impossible(again, Original Series), Battlestar Gallactica( perhaps I am showing my age?), but most importantly Top of the Pops.
Now we did watch it to see what was the new music coming out. Yes, MTV was just in it's early years and was mostly in the US back then. So for a kid growing up in England, Top of the Pops was what you got. Yes, we appreciated the Soul classics, the 80's New Wave, but what we really were into was the dance music. My parents would always drag us to out feet and got us to hit it. We were young and completely carefree so we just wailed around like lunatics. The living room was our dance floor, and we had a blast.
My dad was actually a very good dancer in his youth and still is to this day. Back then, he did all the traditional Filipino dances for his elementary and later on his high school. He would often tell us about how he wouldn't be allowed to go class unless he trained first and that they would pull him out of class just to represent the school in some dance contest. One of the other kids would always have an extra costume on hand, just for him.
When we moved to the Philippines, things didn't change. There always seemed to be an occasion to dance. In my younger days, I was always being pushed to represent our side of the family during our grand family reunion in December. I used to always play coy about it, acting embarrassed, but when my grand uncles promised a gift for doing it, I would give in and strut my stuff. They would always throw money in appreciation. Funny, I always took the coins but refused the paper notes. Shows how smart I was back then.
The funny thing if that I would have done it, regardless. Why, because it was fun. There was an absolute joy in just letting yourself go and not caring about what anybody else thought. Pretty much letting the music take control. Even if it took you into doing "the Twist."
