Since Augustine did not become a saint till later in life, this may very well be by him. Dancing with your whole body and mind is after all surrendering yourself to life. I’m not sure, though, whether his mother, Monica, would have approved. I would have left the angels nonplussed, for I never really learned to dance, never was able to forget myself in a whirl of movement.
“In Praise of Dancing (attributed to St. Augustine)
I praise the dance, for it frees people
From the heaviness of matter and binds
the isolated to community.
I praise the dance, which demands everything:
health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul.
Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people,
who are in constant danger of becoming all brain,
will, or feeling.
Dancing demands a whole person, one who is
firmly anchored in the center of his life, who is
not obsessed by lust for people and things
and the demon of isolation in his own ego.
Dancing demands a freed person, one who vibrates
with the balance of all his powers.
I praise the dance.”
O man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven
will not know what to do with you.”
Erika Bizzarri 
Inspiring. We should all dance more.
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Tom Tiberio is “Anonymous.”
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Lovely – if only we could dance together.
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Erika
This paragraph struck me:
Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the center of his life, who is not obsessed by lust for people and things and the demon of isolation in his own ego.
For I fear the demon of isolation the most!
A another beautiful blog post! ♥️🙏 Sent from my iPhone
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My Grandma, born
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I love to dance especially when nobody is watching!
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My Grandma, born in 1898, was raised a Southern Baptist. I can hear her now: “I was taught not to drink, smoke, gamble or dance. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I don’t gamble but I never saw anything wrong with dancing.” — David Perry
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Dancing seems such a fundamental, timeless and ubiquitous human need. It’s so very sad that some societies, even today, feel that they have to ban it.
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Dance has been a long-standing touchstone for me. I was asked to write a few words about it to accompany a piece choreographed by a most beautiful dancer in my ballet classes.
” . . . my 77-year-old legs and I are the oldest to take classes here. But in a flash, I can still be the four-year-old Minnesota girl excited about her dance class, or the elementary school kid in the ballet class of terrifying Russian Miss Bimboni with her BIG stick.”
We may only get one body, but dance can be a way to remain in touch with it over the years. Via dance, I can become the four-year-old excited about her class in ballet, tap and baton twirling, the terrified elementary school kid studying ballet under black-garbed Russian Miss Bimboni with her big stick, or the happy tapper in the joyful class of Marya Kennet. Another milestone moment was just beginning to use my new pink satin toe shoes with Mr. Hirst from the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo who commuted from NY to try to teach us Middletown middle schoolers to be more graceful. It was an uphill battle!😊🩰
—xxx, Diane
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