On one of those beautiful June nights last month, I decided to walk to Fountain Square in downtown Cincinnati, Ohio. The band had already been playing for a while when I arrived, and after a song or two they took a break. A man and a woman came on stage: “Do you want to learn to salsa?” they shouted at the crowd. “Yessssssss!!” was the overwhelming response.
We gathered en masse in front of the stage, in rows nearly twenty people wide and 10 deep. I looked around at the others in this disparate group: young, old, in-between; homeless people and young professionals; families and singles; all shades of colors and sizes; goofy outfits and clothes that just about could’ve walked off a runway.
The music started, slowly. Our instructors coached us: “Step two three rest, four five six rest; step two three rest, four five six rest.” There we were, us dancers, a glorious mess, stepping on each other’s toes, bumping into hips and heads, stumbling and bumbling our way through the somewhat complicated steps in a crowded and cramped space.
The guy in front of me was clearly a left-brain thinker, intent on counting and configuring the dance, and was working himself up into a frenzy because nothing was happening the way he thought it should. I wanted to give him a nudge and say, “Don’t work so hard. It’s supposed to be fun. Just feel it.” His partner, on the other hand, was dancing around like the bus that was taking her to Woodstock 1968 took a wrong turn and landed in Fountain Square 2011. I got tired of her bumping into me with her wild and crazy moves, and moved in front of the stage.
We took a break, and the dance instructors did a shout out: “Hello Cincinnati! Nice to see you all here tonight!” Then they queried the crowd: “Who here is from Puerto Rico?” About 30 hands shot up. “Dominican Republic?” Maybe 20 or so hands. “Cuba?” Ah, that was one of the groups that clearly knew their salsa moves. “Peru?” A surprising number of hands here. “Mexico?” Another strong showing.
When the teachers had moved through the relevant Hispanic countries, they asked, “Who here is from the United States of America?” A huge roar went up, and even those who had previously responded to Puerto Rico or Mexico or Cuba now waved their hands about and shouted loudly.
In his song, Democracy, Leonard Cohen writes: “It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,/ the holy places where the races meet;/ Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.”
I thought about what I saw on salsa night in Fountain Square yesterday as we celebrated Independence Day. Cohen’s right; democracy today is dancing in the streets.
What is your vision of democracy?*******
Featured Photo Credit: xedos4/freedigitalphotos.net
Girl dancing photo credit: photostock/freedigitalphotos.net
Mary Carol Kendzia is a product development director at St. Anthony Messenger Press. She lives in Rhode Island where she is able to occasionally dip her toes into the Atlantic and reflect on the mysteries of life, among other things. blog comments powered by 