Well, I have always reacted to music. I wouldn’t recognize my first college crush if I passed him on the street, but Indigo Girls belting out a soulful Ghost? I’m seventeen and hopelessly boy crazy once more, riding the ups and downs of each of the longings in the lyrics, from the “pinprick to the heart” all the way through the “rush right through that drowns me”!

Music moves me SO. Photo by David France.

The music reaches a thundering crescendo and I’m melting inside. It’s Spring. David and I are on the dance floor, rehearsing our duet for the upcoming Transcendence show. I am choreographing the first half of the show, bringing together the male and female energies into a symbolic union, the transcendence.

Bringing a raging love to the stage

We are practicing a particularly haunting melody with lyrics that could move a stone to emotion and, even as I translate the words, David is translating the dynamic between the characters we are portraying.

David gets us down on the floor and we sweep in unison, the male energy spooning the female. It’s the best move we can think of to bring a raging, fiery love to life on the stage.

Am I drowning?

What kind of love is this?

What kind of dream is this?

A sea of emotions and, am I floating?

Is this day or night or, am I drowning?

Two strains of music, we meet where we blend, neither one above nor below the other. We are equal tunes in this melody.

When the music peters out after six minutes and forty seconds of this song, it takes me several moments to open my eyes. Oh, they’ve been open alright, but they were seeing inward, tracing the paths my soul was traversing, in some other world. The other performers are totally touched by the duet too, I can tell by how everyone is quiet and their eyes are turned inward as well.

We all come back to the present at our own pace and in our own time, and the others are smiling at me and David. My throat is full of unshed tears and I’m crying inside. I don’t know why, the music just does that to me.

What kind of words would I use and how many pages would it take to tell you how love manages to blossom between Medieval lovers brought together by political machinations and with war raging all around them. How love makes it possible for them to dream under fortress ramparts drenched in moonlight. It would take more talent than I possess to speak or write of this in a way that makes sense to you. I can only show you, the music channeled through my body and amplified by the perfect stage chemistry my duet partner and I have worked countless hours on. And even then, it will take you and your own memories of beautiful love to color it in in a way that will make your heart melt and your throat fill with good tears.

It’s just something you have to feel to know. Like love. Of the purest kind.

Thank you, David P. France and our fellow dancers for Transcendence- A performance which will forever remain a highlight of my life as a part-time dancer.

I spy with my little eye, the Transcendence poster.