Let's Do This Like A Prison Break

A while back a buddy of mine was critiquing the whole "white people can't dance" thing. His point was that so many black kids, historically, grow up in conditions where all you have to control is your body. You have no other real way to demonstrate power, and so "body control" becomes a measure of power. Indeed the great popular dancers in our cosmology--James Brown, Michael Jackson etc.--had so much control that it almost seemed like they weren't even exerting any. They looked they weren't trying.

Anyway, he was saying that whenever he hears black people brag about being able to dance better than white folks, he has to laugh to himself. It's like a kid from Harlem bragging to some Wall Street dude about the width of his gold rope. "You have to be able to dance," my buddy said.  "because you have nothing else." On the contrary, when you see that white dude out on the floor, he's free to just enjoy himself. He has nothing at stake--nothing hanging in the balance. For us it's ritual. But for them--it's just a good time. And they're free to do that. Hell, we wish we lived in a world where we couldn't dance.

I thought of that convo watching this beautiful YYY's performance. Karen O is jumping around, doing what we imagine when we say the "white girl thing." It's quite thrilling--she's leaping all over the place, and there's a kind of submission to herself at work, a sense that she could care less who's watching. And the crowd just loves it. As for me, I desperately wanted her to stop. Because the whole time, thrilling as it was, I was afraid she was going to fall...

UPDATE: For the record, the kid can't dance a lick either. My folks didn't celebrate holidays. I missed all those chances at family dinners to get my coordination right.


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