Dance calls, and we answer

 Community and Identity

 

who we are is not just who I am and who you are,

at its best community is who we are

in some splendid synergy of individual and group,

of the mingling together of the treasure

each unique person has within them

and the bounty that can be built

when we add our treasures together,

find and appreciate a vibrant community, together,

an incipient, potential tragedy, 

particularly for the middle schooler with whom I work,

is loneliness, to feel a disconnect from friends as companions,

as supporters and believers in who we are,

to help us embrace that which makes us different,

and to also embrace that which makes us share commonality,

dance and music, to me, are prime vehicles

for individual virtuosity to be celebrated within a larger whole,

and the art revealed can pull an audience back together,

the dance shared this weekend called

to the school’s larger community, the former students and their parents,

former staff, who have been busy with their own particular lives,

but who also feel and can respond 

to the call of connections deep within them,

this weekend of alumni dance relights a fire within many

to reconnect our past with our present and with our future,

I kept being drawn to the youngest watching, listening, moving,

those who are just as much of this community

as the previous generations who return to the Source,

the primal reality of a school with gifted, teachers, students, and parents,

who know that we can be more and will come together to make it so.

by Henry H. Walker

April 9, ‘22