QICQA #2

Now, not all of the questions I ask are obviously theological. But most of them, when considered carefully, yield some opportunity for theological reflection. Here's one in that category:

Why do we dance?

Think about it. Almost everybody does (however clumsily), and those who don't are considered weird or somehow deficient as human beings. But I think we've been made for this somehow. At the very least, I don't think you can attribute dance to the Fall. In my opinion, this is part of the mystery of creativity. Think of the incredible variety of dance forms (ballroom, tap, ballet, folk, disco, hip hop, and my personal favorite, krumping) and occasions on which they're used (social occasions and as performance art). But here's what really gets me: I have no real experience with dance, yet when I see a dance performance, it affects me. How can that be? Creativity is a part of God's amazing design for humanness, and it is quite mysterious - to me, at least. I wonder how we'll express creativity in heaven. Will we dance?

(p.s. of course I'm excluding grossly sexual expressions of dancing from my fascination. Unlike others from my tradition who tend to see almost all dance as inherently sexual, I rather think that these are perversions that are in the minority anyway. Yet in principle, even these are a part of the mystery of dance.)