Take the Lead

After we got home from delivering the youngest daughter to University, we decided to take it easy and watch a movie. Yvonne came home with Take the Lead, starring Antonio Banderas. It is based on the experience of Pierre Dulaine, an award winning ballroom dancer who has developed ballroom dancing classes in many schools around New York.

The DVD had a special feature about Dulaine and his work. It was particularly interesting to hear Dulaine speak about the many things his students learn about life from ballroom dancing — things like dignity, respect, communication and teamwork. I ended up feeling rather sad that I'd never really had the opportunity to engage in that pastime.

Of course, growing up in the church environment I did made that impossible. There is an old joke that begins with the question: Why are Baptists opposed to pre-marital sex? Answer: It might lead to dancing. Any sort of interaction between opposite genders that may have made some contribution to someone's downfall sometime seemed to become a proscribed activity for all — all in the name of guarding own's purity and chastity.

How ironic then was the comment made by Dr. Tim Keller the other morning when discussing the early christians, and the way they stood out from the rest of society in their approaches to money, sex and power. Chastity, he said, was really only a truly viable lifestyle if one was part of a broader community in which true intimacy and love could be experienced — and I would add in both same gender and opposite gender situations.

I suspect that the practice of proscribing anything that might be considered intimate in opposite gender interactions has not really promoted chastity, but rather made true non-erotic intimacy that much harder, and by extension made the lifestyle of chastity even more difficult.

A far cry from the lessons of respect and dignity for the other promoted by ballroom dancing — at least according to Pierre Dulaine.