A dancer dances. But should they?

Question: Have you ever gone to a live music show and found your eye pulled to the side by someone (sadly, always a woman) who’s dancing like her acid just kicked in? 
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Answer: Yes. You 100% have. 

Now, were you equal parts annoyed and fascinated? Equal parts is not exactly where I land in these situations. I’m typically leaning heavily to the annoyed side. I am utterly baffled by the need of an audience member to make a musician’s performance about themselves. At least, that’s how I often see this behavior. And if a hula hoop is involved, that only makes it worse.

Every year at Jazz Fest in New Orleans, there’s a woman we see who feels the need to hula hoop to the side of the biggest stages, employing the most dramatic back bends and head whips you’ve ever seen. In my mind, she’s assuming people will flock to her after the performance (her performance, that is) and shower her with praise for her extraordinary skill with bent plastic. This woman’s behavior has thrown me so heavily to the annoyed side for so many years that it inspired a scene in the soon-to-be-released V-Life: The Outing. 

Spoiler Alert/Warning: Don’t dance in front of the band if the lead singer is a vampire.

Fast forward to last night. I joined three friends at a multi-stage music night that was part of a local charity event. (Mr. Parker chose to stay home and use his new Fiskars pole saw on our trees. [INSERT YOUR FINNISH POLE-SAW JOKE HERE.]) Don’t let the phrase “local charity” fool you. The night was awash with world-class talent, headlined by JJ Grey & Mofro. And there, at the foot of the stage was our dancer for the evening.

There would be no dancing to the side of the stage for this gal. Front and center was our dancer’s location of choice. When she started up, it was still light out and no one else was in the area up front that would later be filled with standing fans. It was just her—her and her moves.

But here was the surprise. On the teeter-totter of annoyance and fascination, I was finding myself leaning towards fascination. While it was clear (to me at least) that this person had imbibed something stronger than Gatorade (which is the fluid I had acquiesced to when the bar’s bottled water turned out to be as hot as the evening), her moves were impossible to look away from. I know this because I began watching everyone in the audience who was also watching her. 

I will do my best to explain the physicality of her performance. While I just said she’d been drinking, or smoking, or snorting, or huffing, or doing whatever new thing that I’m too out of touch to know about, there was a childlike quality to her dance. This wasn’t the hippie-out-of-time, or the Charlie Brown Christmas dancing that many of these en-gauzed women adopt. She was doing leaps that no one over age five would ever perform outside their bedroom. There was coy playacting with the band where she looked at them then turned to the side, slowly strutting left, dragging her arm behind her along the crowd barrier. There were arm gestures that looked like a gas-station air dancer had been frozen in time. And for the pièce de resistance of her bedroom choreography, balancing precariously on one foot and leaning forward with her arms outstretched like a Boeing 737 that not even Captain Scully could land safely.

She was self-consciously in her own world. I say that because she had the air of someone pretending to be a free spirit. But, folding-chair analysis aside, the problem—the thing that wouldn’t allow me to stay on the fascinated side of the teetertotter—was that her own world was front and center of the band’s world. I couldn’t stop thinking about how annoying she was for them.

Imagine spending years honing both your musical chops and your performance skills, then planning for a night where you’ll be sharing what you’ve worked on so hard with the world. You tweak things the night before to make sure it’s just right. Maybe you’re inspired to make a last-minute change and add something you’re excited to reveal for the first time. And the second you start, the moment that all your hard work has built for, a giant banana peel is waved between you and your audience. The peel has got brown marks on it in a strange pattern. There are those banana stringy things hanging from it. It smells. The people in the audience start pointing to it. You see someone mouth the words, “Giant Banana Peel.” 

And there’s nothing you can do. The rules of acceptable social behavior (rules that tiny dancer clearly does not have to adhere to) won’t allow you to say, “Lady, either sit down or take your crazy-ass box of animal crackers somewhere else.” You can’t throw your sweat rag at her head. No. You have a professional reputation to maintain. What does she have to maintain? This. This is it. Her personal brand is crazy-dancing lady. 

These were just some of the things I was thinking when I realized I’d stopped paying attention to the music and my world was 100% focused on this chick. (I was about to use a different descriptive noun, socially accepted behavior and all, but screw it. We’re all friends here.) This Quacker Barrel. So I was safely back on my assigned side of the totter. The annoyed side. But what could I do?

And with my pen as my sword…

Postscript: I was going to use pictures I'd taken at the event, but even with a filter, I didn't want to take the chance of this person being identifiable.Yay, small town living.