I run into my good buddy and monumentally talented musician, Craig Fundyga, in the parking lot at Ralphs Grocery Store. Craig handled the percussion duties on my new ukulele CD with stunning panache. In other words, he’s totally awesome. The man plays drums, vibes, steel drums, piano and God knows what else. Is it any wonder Craig is always working and he invites hubby and me to his free concert tonight. With his Latin band, Lucky 7 Mambo. Outside. Under the dimming late afternoon sky. At the Promenade at Howard Hughes Center which is spitting distance from two cemeteries, the bustling 405 Freeway and L.A. International Airport.
So we hustle over, grab a couple seats close to the stage and watch the people-panorama unfold. I love Los Angeles and here is one of the reasons. It is Technicolor. We see folks arrive in all shapes, all colors, all ages with big warm smiles and very toned legs. Especially the women. Hubby and I think we are about to hear some great Latin music, but just as Craig runs his four mallets across the vibes and the other players thump and pluck along, people all around us leap to their feet and dance the salsa. Just like that. Wherever there is space. Girls dance with boys, girls dance with girls, boys dance with boys, a few dance by themselves as if to say “oh what the hell.” The music, the hot rhythms, the groove… You just have to move. I’m dying to dance too, but I can’t. And hubby won’t. So I shake my groove thing sitting down.
Then I see her. A woman who is, shall we say, vintage. She is wearing a hot pink sleeveless top, a short white skirt, tennis shoes and she dances. She dances with such unbridled joy that you feel good just watching her. And she doesn’t sit in her folding chair hoping someone will ask her to salsa. No… She happily shakes it up, by herself. Too. Is this some crazy elder wisdom made visible? A truth called “Don’t Wait.”
Soon my husband snags a picture of her with a much younger dance partner and she dances him into a sweaty mess. He’s wiping the wet stuff from his face with a handkerchief while she looks like it’s another dewy morning in spring.
After the last song I push forward through the crowd of people so I can tell her what a great dancer she is. She gives me a big hug. I can feel the age in her bones through that one warm embrace. She tells me she’s only 85 years old.
And so it goes. I watch another woman in a wheelchair with the incredible blue eyes and one leg and a grand-daughter (I think) who does a wheelchair mambo with her. The woman claps along like a drummer and moves her shoulders in such way that I wonder if she was, in the distant past, a great dancer too.
Near the end of the evening I ask the lady sitting in front of us where she learned to dance. She writes the name of the dance studio and a teacher on a post-it which I stick on my computer. Just in case… Because watching these people dance is like watching life, life.
And I suddenly remember a story the great mythologist Joseph Campbell shares with journalist Bill Moyers as they discuss his book “The Power of Myth.” Campbell tells of an American delegate at an international conference on religion who is trying to figure out what a Japanese Shinto priest is all about. “We’ve been to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines. But I don’t get your ideology,” the delegate says. The Japanese man pauses, as though in deep thought then slowly shakes his head. “I think we don’t have ideology,” he responds. “We dance.”
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