Dancing With the Stars!

It’s Monday night, eight p.m. and the bouncy, brilliant theme song of Dancing With the Stars beams into the room! Die hard sports fan are busy with Monday Night Football but I’m ready for a lavish evening of musicality, costumes and lights. Once the dancing starts, my feet will not stand still. No matter what command I give them. Dancing with the Stars is talking to some primitive longing that cannot be denied in the human soul. A longing to move, to feel, to be completely engaged in the moment. And the dancers are expressing it with passion and artistry.

The background stories on the stars and professionals are so interesting and amazing. Jennifer Grey, who performed an intricate Argentine Tango last week with Derek Hough, suffered for years from a neck injury she got in a car accident. Now she wants to prove that she can do what she had never expected of herself. Florence Henderson, TV icon, has been glowing with delight at the sheer joy of being one of the dancers…her already huge eyes growing even bigger…revealing the intense drive of her spirit. Others have told stories of hardship and pain and frustration, sharing the extreme difficulties involved in practicing so many hours each day. But something is obviously driving them…To excel? To achieve their personal best? To let the soul shine? To be so absolutely lost in the moment? Whatever it is that propels them forward, it’s real and it’s palpable and it shows in everything they do.

And their passionate desire to dance, to compete, to reach for the stars is complemented so beautifully by the AFFECTION they always seem to develop for each other. They are thrilled when they perform brilliantly but they are also thrilled when their fellow dancers do so. They celebrate each other, supporting, praising and encouraging each individual. They hug one another during moments of triumph and despair. Notice their eyes and you will see a world in which people have CONNECTED with each other.

This is an assembly of individuals where all the performers are expressing their emotions (in one manner or another) and dancing their hearts out and encouraging and applauding each other. Watch the way this group swarms around the couple that has been eliminated at the end of the Results Show on Tuesday night. With warm and affectionate hugs. With a world of empathic emotions on their faces. They are a family of friends and they want the best for each other. A microcosm of a beautiful universe. The one we would all love to live in…where everyone is a part of the greater whole and knows it…embraces it…loves it.

When head judge Len Goodman announces at the beginning of the show, Live From Hollywood, maybe he’s really saying Live From A World To Come!