Tariq's Tumble

I hope there’s no sarcasm in my dancing. Playfulness, certainly, but not sarcasm. Sarcasm is the opposite of dancing. Dancing is all joy and risk. Sarcasm, and its sidekick, irony, are mostly arrogance and fear. This occurred to be out the other night, at a dance party off of U St. The crowd is shuffling to indie jams, clad in flannel and skinny jeans and sperry top-siders. And if there is a clearly accepted uniform, there is also a prescribed dance - restrained, homogenous, narrow in its horizontal and vertical, un-remarkable in it’s relief, almost a ridicule of committed, full-body dancing. It’s like watching James Brown through an Instagram ironic detachment filter. But then there’s this one woman, god bless her shoes, who is all about it. Deep rolls back and pitches forward, half turns and hand twirls, pause and isolation, taking up unreasonable space, then contracting suddenly to stand one legged on the point of a pin. She is sincerity and vulnerability, and she cuts all the rest, bound up in their armored distance, to ribbons.