‘Just’ Dance: Hope and Happenstance in ‘Reading’ Curriculum, Aesthetics & Ethics with Donald Blumenfeld-Jones

MEMORY: I am five years old. It is delightful and delicious to secretly slip o n my shiny black tap shoes to wear to school. I will amaze my teacher and friends at La Premiere Ecole with my spectacular dancing. Mrs. DeLaune disapproves of the songs and sounds my magic shoes make. Tearing them from my feet and pushing my toes into her big fluffy blue slippers, my tap shoes suddenly lose their charm and never see my feet again.Memory: I am twenty-five years old. It is delightful and delicious to study curriculum theory, if not difficult, too. Learning about and seeking curricular understanding, I find magic in the notion of expanding horizons, dialogic encounters, and the play of truth via Gadamer (1975) and Ricoeur's (1970) hermeneutics of suspicion., though that of restoration, a deeply felt need. In my autobiographical analysis, this memory from kindergarten returns with echoes of Dorothy's red shoes, having heart and brain, journeying, and longing for home- the Wizard of Oz ever a special, resonant, story for me.Memory: I am twenty-five plus years by now. I am teaching one of my first university classes, lost in the sharing of some compelling movement of thought, I can only imagine is for students also most generative and stimulating. One young woman raises her hand, interrupting. Anticipating some incisive query for deepening our study, I hear her ask: "Are you a dancer? You have the body of a dancer." Taken aback, I try not to miss a beat, though, and respond with a "No," as I attempt some graceful movement series-plie, releve, arabesque, jete, chasse; bend, kick, leap, frolic, twirl-and swiftly write some signifier with chalk on the board, of 'intellectual substance,' meant to evoke a return to the exploration of ideas at hand.Memory: I am thirty-something-five or more years old. I have received a beautiful care package from my mom. In it is a CD of the pop hit song I Hope You Dance. As I read my mom's letter, and listen to this song, over and over, again and again, for some reason, I cry and cry, and cry even more. It is the kind of weeping that comes from the depths of one's being, requiring full participation, my whole frame and form quivering and shaking. My body aches for his, for him, even though he has broken me. At work, too, as it is, I can't breathe, I feel nauseous a lot, and throw up too. I ache to escape, overcome my body, disheartened as I am forced to remember a perpetual history of chronic illness. Try as I might, my body, eventually, always makes me listen, or tries. Or maybe I ache for my body, having learned too well to dismiss it and set it aside, until...Memory: Fast-forward ten or more years. I have left off recounting my age. I spend a lot of time back home, with my mom, who has now lost nearly all movement and speech. One day, though, she tells me that she dances every night in her dreams. I can see it deliciously and delightfully in my mind, and remember vividly the time in fifth grade when she threw me a dance party, and to the sweet sounds of Fats Domino-or was it Chubby Checker?-taught me and all my friends how to do "The Twist."On the cover of Donald Blumenfeld-Jones' (2012) stirring text Curriculum and The Aesthetic Life, there is a striking photograph of a grand old tree marked with a "twist." Trunk, branches, leaves, earth, and sky are all captured in a swirl, as if in motion. Immediately, I think of my great Live Oaks, christened in Spanish moss, so dear to me, and from childhood-life in Louisiana and Gulf Coast region thick with their presence, such that I have claimed them too as my kin. Yet, their allure, and beauty and comfort for me is most aptly described in the recognition of the silent, solid vigil they seem to perpetually keep, testifying ever to eternal fortitude and perseverance I know not of. Often, I found myself retreating beneath the Oaks for protection, shelter, and reassurance amid such immutability. I think in awe: Neither hurricane nor history, nothing is moving this strong, ancient, immoveable one. …