Krump, Slide, Tap, Turn

The day of the street dance dawned dreamily. By 8:00am, they were calling it a doll baby of a morning with baby boy blue skies, a sprinkling of puffy, powdery white clouds, and a blush of baby girl pink in the eastern skies. BENEATH THE KAPOK TREE Underneath a massive Kapok tree, transplanted from Senegal, another dynamic had taken place. In the many chairs placed in a circle around the tree, near the crates of donated canned goods, people who were too pooped to dance would go sit down. A few spectators chose that spot as well. They all wistfully watched the dancers. Earlier in the day, one man swore that upon touching the three-foot trunk, he had became instantly energized, and was able to get back up and dance for the rest of the day. A lone woman, known for her reclusive ways, got her life rhythm back and did endless rounds of the Macarena without being taught. A widowed man noticed her and joined her in celebratory expression. They began dating soon after. Another woman rubbed her face with the palm-like leaves, and jumped up to learn the Electric Slide and the Cha Cha Slide. She was the oldest person to enroll for the next dance troupe. She told Binata that she was 44 and hadn’t danced in 24 years. Robust pink bell-shaped flowers canopied the tree. One of them fell and landed on the lap of a lazy, sleeping husband, whose wife had dragged him to the event. He raised up in his seat, laced the flower in his wife’s hair and yanked her from her chair yelling “bailamos”, which translates “Would you like to dance?” He took her to the Cumbia station, and there they remained until closing time. The last story circulating told of a girl who had been standing beneath the tree when one of the pods had burst open and exposed its cotton-like fibers. She began to blow on them and they detatched and swirled around the feet of others beneath the tree. Soon her hair looked as though it were covered in baby’s breath. She was a vision of loveliness and began to dance with abandon, awake and alive in her body like never before. Some fibers got carried in the wind, and were said to energize everyone they touched. Truth or fiction, it was said that everyone had the Boogie Fever largely due to the sacred tree that Binata had planted when she first opened her studio. It was also rumored that everyone that was touched by the fibers had sweet sleep and delicious dreams for a week. Binata, for one, believed this to be true. She had all the pillows in her house stuffed with the very same type of fibers and swore that they brought good sleep and pleasant dreams every night.