Amazing Cultural Dances

Sad events made me cancel my travel plans and volunteering at the Yosemite National Park this summer, but gave me the opportunity to play back all that I had experienced from my trips earlier this year, and page reflectively through the photos and videos I took.   In the process of these reflections, I began to realize that I took a bit of every place with me.  It affirms the answer to the question that somehow I already knew.   One of my favorite travel writers, Freya Stark wrote, “Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or a gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear.  Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art.” 

I could write a novel about one of the dancers, the little girl from Burma. She has a sad life story. While the other kids were playing, I saw her alone in the corner with sadness in her eyes. When she heard the music from my I-Pad, she started dancing. All the sadness lost in the dance.

In an effort to encourage you to savor the joy of travel, I leave you this video of cultural dances from different parts of the world that I sewed and linked together and set to the music of my favorite singer-poet, Leonard Cohen, “Dance Me to the End of Love”.

                                                                                                                                                                             
http://youtu.be/6xae_VpGeko

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