During a terrific lunch with Lorrie after a radiation treatment this last week. (Three down two to go) I talked about the amazing dances that I would go to on Friday nights at the Moss Park Community Centre. Today this 3.4 hectare downtown park at Queen Street East and Sherbourne Street features a lighted ball diamond, two tennis courts, a basket ball court, a wading pool and a children`s playground. On the east side of the park is the Moss Park Arena and the John Innes Community Recreation Centre. Back in the sixties and seventies, it was the center with lots of green space, hockey in the winter and swimming in the summer. It’s where I learned to swim and stand on a pair of skates. The center was monitored and maintained by dedicated people who cared about the youth in the community and attempted to engage, encourage and stimulate us to see a future. They believed they could make a difference. For some of us they did.
The recreation center was the gathering place for us kids to meet socially let off some steam and for me the best part was to dance on a Friday night. To set the scene you need a little emotional physical and environmental background to fully appreciate how these dances modeled our lives.
I was probably around 13 when I use to seek out to these dances. I would climb out of a second story window onto a roof over the door, and then drop down. Getting back in was a little trickier. I was born into a family of biracial kids. Our mixed genes allowed my siblings and I to present as exotic, tall, and sensuous people with golden skin tones in an environment that was mostly white Irish and European. We were extremely beautiful and attractive to the opposite sex and of course we had rhythm and could dance. We were like the beautiful peacocks with feathers all in plumb, strutting around with the glorious tails to attract only the best and it worked for we were never without a partner to dance. Dancing was free to learn and the center Friday night dance was a quarter to attend.
To prepare every week we would be glued to our television … oh yes, black and white TV, watching Soul train and Dick Clark American Bandstand following and nailing down the latest moves which came so easy to us. We had James brown and my idol Dianna Ross. The early seventies were about the music and the beat that took over your body right down to your core. The dance was almost tribal in its movements on the floor. Everyone felt it and unlike the dances of the teens today. I’ve supervised a few high school dances for my daughter were you had a few dancers up all doing there own thing and everyone else standing around against the walls. Back then, the dance was a ritual and a right of passage. Everyone moved no one sat the sidelines. We slipped, swayed, slide and dipped in our line dances and oh my … did we grind to the slow tunes. That was the dance of young passion and it definitely generated competition among the sexes. For my siblings and me, we ruled those dances. My brothers had a following of poor infatuated girls, just fawning after them on all levels and as for my sister and I; we weren’t really interested in the boys other than as dance partners. The boys did not mind, they were dancing with the hottest girls and we were amazing wonderful dancers. With our without the boys I easily got lost in the music and could dance in a room full of people, in a world all my own to a beat and rhythm that was part of my soul.
Sometimes, when I close my eyes today and I hear the wonderful dance pulse, I feel the music, see the dance and feel the rush of the beat coursing through my body. Dancing was and is a feel good emotion for your body and soul and of course when I’m having a good day, I still get up and swing and sway it’s in the blood, only sometimes I have to remember that things don’t quite bend in the same way. So, when no one is looking turn on your favourite music and do a slow, winding bump and grind… or better still grab your partner and waltz them around the kitchen. It’s a guaranteed simile for the day
