Saturday night Fever
It’s dark, and the floor is trembling under the frantic jumps of the crowd. It has been two years since she put a foot in a nightclub. And tonight, by surprise, she found herself moving around a place full of memories.
She looks at the stage on which should have performed that man she loves and who’s gone. She looks up, toward the balconies near which she used to dance so much with another man, years ago. She remembers the smoking room in which she once bumped into an old friend, a ghost of a past she no longer knows.
But mostly, she looks around at the moving bodies, frantic, transcended by the music’s waves. They dance, in ecstasy.
She ties her shirt to her waist to feel the heat a bit less and starts to dance with them. She drowns herself in the crowd, pressed against strangers whose energy is communicative, and she closes her eyes. The music is too loud, but for once she doesn’t mind. It is not “too” loud, but loud enough, enough to vibe into her bones, and take her somewhere else. She doesn’t even know what she looks like moving like this, and she doesn’t care: the only thing that matters is to dance, letting herself get carried away by the invisible waves of the basses running under her feet, and to fly away.
She feels something landing on her hips. Probably hands. Hands wrapping around her, following her rhythm. She does not even startle. She guesses the identity of their owner, peacefully smiles at this mute connection, and finally turns around to face him. They wave, embrace each other a bit too closely to be innocent, but yet not enough to be guilty. She smiles at him, thrilled he’s here to share with her the satisfaction given by the tide of dancing bodies, the joy to stomp a sticky floor, covered in beers spilled by the hellish pace. She puts an arm around his neck, and he bends over to leave a kiss on hers. She smiles to see them flirt dangerously with the boundaries of guilt, happy to find back the phony ingénue she used to be before everything collapsed.
Glad to see she still exists somewhere inside, under all these layers of anxiety, broken heart and bitterness.
Outside the world is dying and war explodes, but the dancing bodies don’t give a damn. It has been two years since they’ve been forbidden to dance, to wave, to embrace. Two years muzzled, alienated by totalitarian idiocy and opportunist governments. So if they must die tomorrow, at least tonight they’ll dance, because it is how one celebrates life. In dancing, spirits are free to be whoever they want, doing whatever they want, guided by the movements of the body, surprising, unexpected, spontaneous. Dance frees the soul, it is the last shelter of blissful hearts who, in the middle of this mess, desire only one simple thing: to live.
