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5-year-olds dancing with hula-hoops and beach balls to James Brown. Some parents are dancing along, but most are standing around the edges of the dance floor.
Intermittently, a handheld rat puppet pops up to tell a “knock knock” joke and to introduce the next song. Next add a quartet of 20-somethings dressed in crazy costumes, and you’ll be able to picture the highlight of my Fourth of July vacation.
Dressed in vintage dresses, swim trunks and anything with sequins, my three friends and I participated in taping of “Chic-A-Go-Go,” an “American Bandstand” type show for “kids of all ages.” They encourage anyone who can move and groove to come and be on TV. The four of us comprised nearly the entire demographic of people between the ages of five and 45, and we had a blast.
I got hooked on “Chic-A-Go-Go” thanks to a friend of mine from college. She would frequently appear on the show in Chicago and come back to rave about how fun and, more importantly, how unpretentious the experience was. They play music. The rat puppet makes corny jokes. People dance. It’s that simple. No one judges whether you are a good or bad dancer, and no one thinks you are too young or too old to join in. Those kids certainly didn’t mind that we were doing the Twist right alongside them.
At a tennis camp where I work in the summers, one of my male colleagues, Dan, has a story he tells that comes from his former job teaching elementary P.E. classes. He would ask a group of kindergartners who among them could dance. All of the little hands would shoot in the air. Dan would turn on the radio, and everyone would jump up and begin to move and dance. He mentions that, granted, some kids were more coordinated than others, no one would sit out because they didn’t think they could dance.
Then Dan would pose the same question to a group of fifth-graders, “Who here can dance?” Except this time, only a few hands would go up in the air — the kids who were considered “good” dancers. The rest, despite the fact that they could still move to the music, chose to sit still because they were not the “good” dancers. Over the five years between kindergarten and fifth grade, these kids have judged their dancing abilities based on the
reactions of their peers or their own level of confidence.
My co-worker uses this story to illustrate the protective shell of self-consciousness that we adults surround ourselves with. Sometimes, being so self-conscious can get in the way of a fun opportunity that comes our way or can even impede us from reaching our full potential. He applies this concept to playing tennis, in that teens and adults have the tendency to overanalyze and assess shots as either “good” or “bad” instead of simply letting our bodies complete the strokes that it already knows how to do.
Instead, Dan advocates taking a more childlike approach to judging athletic performance. In a staple line of his sports psychology talk, Dan says, “When you ask a kid after they’ve been at the playground, ‘How was your day?’ they would never respond with, ‘Well, I did pretty good at the slide, but the monkey bars needed work.’ They just go and play!”
All this begs the question of why we choose to do something, whether a sport or art or a job. Hopefully, we choose do something because it’s fun. Because we enjoy it. I think the “Chic-A-Go-Go” theme song puts it best when it says, “We’re laughing, and we’re dancing, and it’s fun!”
I doubt I would be considered a “good” dancer by any standard of artistic measurement. Heavens, why would I want to ever bring back memories of those awkward high school dances?
But I loved being on “Chic-A-Go-Go.” And being around all the kids with their hula hoops who were also jamming to music in their own ways helped to break down the barriers that any self-restraining adult would stand behind.
This year could very well mark the end of my chances to act like a kid on an everyday basis — playing tennis with them and acting goofy to get them to pay attention. Maybe by this time next year I will be wearing sensible shoes to a 9-to-5 office job. That, nevertheless, doesn’t mean I have to stop enjoying life with the wholehearted spirit of a child and taking a moment now and again to dance.
A former Winona Winhawk, Sarah Merchlewitz is a recent graduate from Sarah Lawrence College in New York, where she studied literature and writing. She currently lives and works in Minnesota.
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