Chechen boys dance Lezginka

These kids blow my mind. I could enjoy watching this over and over. I hope you like it as much as I do.

What is it about this? I can't put my finger on it. Pride. Showing off. Precision. Why don't we have something like this?

I like that they don't nail the landing following their spins. When they throw their chests forward and their arms back and leap, they lack the power and weight that's required to burst forward and shoot a canon ball from their chest, or conversely, present their torso as target, but they have the idea and as they keep doing it they'll stick their landings and when they do that move that says, "ME!" They will look like Superman leaving the planet.

My favorite parts are when they pair off and lively step forward in synchronous moves.

When they grow up into a dance troupe they get to wear wigs like Dr. Seuss Thing 1 and Thing 2 except black. And their moves are so powerful you go, "What? What? This is folk dance? This is ballet? 

Man. If we had a war, based on the fierceness of their dances, they'd kick our butts.

Except turns out, they're all gay.

Come on! Butch it up. You're embarrassing us. But look at this guy's moves. Sinuous. Like he turns into some kind of snake. 

This guy just now took me back 44 years.

Want to hear something?

It's a series of pictures that reside in my mind.

I was twenty-one and had been going around to all kinds of cultural things.

But you know, there is only so much culturification a guy can take.

Then we revolt.

Enough!

At Christmas time over the years, at that point I must have seen the Nutcracker five million times.

Or possibly five times.

I lose count.

Now, as you know this play is a favorite for local dance groups to perform. And you will see them do all sorts of different things with it depending on the talent at hand. The play offers a very wide range for creative potential to express.

For example, the magic uncle can do all kinds of things. In one play they had the Christmas tree in the house set up as a series of concentric rings. I only saw this once. Strands of green stuff like a feather boa, except longer than that were attached to the center and like spokes of a wheel attached to the outer ring and all the rings in between to form a fuzzy green cone with spaces between the green fuzzy strands and decorations of an actual Christmas tree. The star is attached to a cable that goes to the top of the stage. When the magic uncle waves his wand at the tree, someone offstage pulls the cable lifting the star and all the concentric rings that are piled on the bottom lift up so the concentric rings that looked like presents under the tree are lifted with the original cone to show a larger cone with a wider base and the tree triples in height in two seconds flat. It really is a stunning visual display.

It really is magical.

And there are all kind of stage devices like that available for production so long as they have the imagination, the space and the funding.

Another year the dance group might have a lot of little kiddies signed up for dance instruction and they're all put into mice costumes and they take over the stage when the kids go to sleep on Christmas Eve. And they're the cutest little things all running around creating havoc onstage. Just adorable. Not much acting just running around. Ew, you could just squeeze their guts out. I love those mices to pieces.

Then there's the portion where they do the dances of cultures around the world, and that can really make or break the whole thing.

That year that I watched it, the dream took them to India where a male and female dancer have the stage for a pas de deux which is French-talk for dance for two. The dude is dressed in a white military uniform with white tights and he looks like he has a giant erection but it's really his dancer's cup to protect his giggly bits.

The woman is dressed like whore. Frankly.

But this young woman is stunningly gorgeous. Built like a brick shi... built like a brick ... built like nobody's biz wax. Just f'k'n gorgeous. That's all I can say. Long black hair. Perfect pure face. Body to die for. They do the usual thing and he lifts her as they do in the usual way. But then he sets her on his shoulders like a plank and she goes limp on his shoulders and she drapes her body across his body in the manner of contortionist, as if she has no bones, so sinuous it defies human anatomy. I'm not exaggerating. And she slowly and sexually sensually slithers downward and across his body circling his torso as a snake. Then his hips, then his thighs, then his lower leg bones whatever those are, fibula and tibia, then lays on the floor coiled around his feet. Right before our wondering awe-struck gaping mouth and bulging eyes she turned into a human snake and coiled around his body to the floor to his feet as he stood there paralyzed, frozen by this woman using him as armature and then she coiled back up! In positive defiance of gravity. The audience was stunned. None of could see how she did it. There was dead silence. Then thunderous applause. None of us had ever seen anything like it.

And I haven't seen anything like it since.

The performance in Denver was over.

My date and I then drove to Boulder for a very large party at a fabulous party house outside the city just into the foothills. It is a mountain home. Very beautiful inside. Everything was new. The owner quite proud of it. The owner was telling us about bears that he's seen on his property. It is a stack of levels built into the side of the hill. You walk into a glass atrium with tall plants all over and the first floor is like a regular home. But it is open to the floor below it and above it so the ceiling in a portion is impossibly high. Music is filling the whole place. And there were people crowded on every floor.

And there she is!

And there he is too. Both dancers were close friends and they were both at the same party.

I had to meet them. I just had to. I was effusive in my praise and the woman was all, "I know."

Right?

"We practiced very hard."

They were both very young. Younger than me. She went by the name Deserae and her face was so beautiful, so pure, that I could hardly look at her.

The dude was short and muscular. I forget his name.

But her, I will never forget. I wanted to know her. I wanted to follow her. I wanted to see other things that she did. I wanted her to do her snake thing on me. But all that was impossible. She wasn't that involved with the ballet very long after that. Nothing came from the encounter. The best I could do was enjoy her at the party that one night. It was a lovely time, a lovely place, and lovely company. But it was only that one time. Only one single year.

That I know of.

If these people kept doing the same thing year after year without telling me, ew, I'm going to be cross.

So much has changed since that time. Good Lord, did we ever do a lot of things like that. Party, party, party all the time especially during the holidays. Christmas parties, White parties, New Year parties. Parties occurring the same weekend. The same night. Very often a couple of them in one night. One New Year I went to four parties.  We were junkies. Party junkies. And I met literally thousands of people. All party junkies like me.