Last night there was another Balfour party held at my school. The dance was call the Stop Light Dance in which everyone wore colors associated with their relationship status. Red signified stop, meaning that you were taken; Yellow signified slow down and that whatever relationship you were in was complicated; And green meant that you were single. This was its 2nd annual dance and it was already the most popular dance that people look forward to attending. We hired an outside DJ. He played primarily calypso, soca, and reggae music. There was hardly any variety. This was obviously the best observation period that I had at observing a lot of the dancing. One song that I have previously mentioned was Everybody Dance. Another was Tek wey Yaself. I wish I had brought my camera because it was amazing how many people new the songs and how they were all in unison dancing. One of my guy friends and two or three other male friends were all in a circle battling each other to one of the songs but at the same time having fun. While guys were dancing, many girls were on the steps, including me, dancing on there own and watching waiting for a turn to jump in a battle as well. Eventually one of my girl friends jumped in to dance and killed it. They dance with such attitude. Another point at the party, two girls were battling to another reggae song. The battle soon turned into three more girls showing up turning it into an even bigger “dance-off”. Pretty soon you had a swarm of people doing the same dance until the track was switched.
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Based on your blog, it is evident that you immersed yourself in Jamaican dance because it interests you and you are eager to learn more about it. By looking at different aspects of the culture in different ways, as you did, by going to the Jamaican restaurant to experience the food in a cultural setting and talking to individuals about Jamaican dance and culture you provide different levels for readers to learn understand and relate to your findings.
I have always experienced dance in a similar way that I experience music. Dance, like music has a way of getting to a person’s soul so nothing else matters. I feel the totally spirited Jamaican dance you describe is like this in the sense that the people feel free on the dance floor to express themselves however they want to. While Jamaican dance and Jamaican culture certainly has a unique identity, as you described, I am interested as to whether there may be some commonality among expression in dance for all cultures. Perhaps the culture of dance itself permits a form of expression for people of all cultures that are not felt the same way in other forms of expression.
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