The Times We Are In Series
by Eileen Maddocks
Dancing in Sunbeams / Jousting with Gravity
The celestial-sounding music starts and my brain and muscles respond. Sunbeams flow through the floor-to-ceiling studio windows. Warming up at the barre with a plié combination, feet turned out in succeeding positions as the knees bend down and up, then relevés rising up, and various other slow movements induce an almost meditative state. The “real world” outside fades away.
I’m in a dance studio that was started five years ago primarily for adults of all ages, sizes, experience, and levels of coordination and conditioning (or none). Classes are offered for ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, modern, and many other dance forms. Skill levels range from beginner to professional. We are focused and adventurous! Maybe brave would be a better adjective. For many of us, myself included, the muscle memory from teenage dance classes kicks in, but the muscles don’t respond as they used to. Our teenage bodies and brains are a long, nagging memory.
I study ballet and tap, on good days at an intermediate level, on not-so-good days below that level. I persevere not only because dance is beneficial for body and brain but, more importantly, dance transcends my everyday concerns and pushes me towards something higher and better.
One day it occurred to me that there are many parallels between the physicality and artistry of ballet and our spiritual path through life. For starters, it takes time and practice to master dance movements just as it takes time and practice to master anger and judgmental attitudes.
Some of the barre exercises are fiendishly complicated, and others require immense strength. After 50 minutes of barre exercises, moving initial brain jumble into coherence, we finish with battements (kicks). The ideal battement as executed by advanced dancers reaches about 160-180 degrees in front and to the side and 90 degrees in back. As fate sometimes has it, I’m standing between two advanced dancers whose kicks reach those lofty heights. Me? Hmmm, less than half that. Important spiritual lesson here––don’t compare myself to anyone else! Progress is individual, even if it seems to be at the infinitesimal rate of one-centimeter-at-a-time.
Time for floor work. No barre to hold onto. Balance, balance, balance. Standing on one leg while doing something with the other leg, like turning 360 degrees in a pirouette, requires good balance. Unfortunately, age challenges my efforts with pirouettes. The nerve cells of the vestibular system in my inner ears have decreased with age and will never be replaced. The best compensation is consistency in class attendance and effort to develop a strong posture, strength, and stamina.
As time goes on and my fellow students and I make progress, the classes get more difficult. It’s like when I overcome one of life’s challenges, I collide with a tougher challenge and more demanding choreography. Full disclosure: I will never reach a finish line of spiritual growth when tests and difficulties cease! I can only keep striving, hopeful that an “A-for-effort” someday at the pearly gates will help my case.
Speaking of challenges, I signed up to do three pieces in the Performance Workshop in June. My adult companions in dance present an incredible annual show featuring many dance disciplines. Now halfway through rehearsals, I feel bewildered by the complexity of the choreography, the demands of intricate timing, and the necessity of every movement being executed in sync with the other dancers. I’ll let you know in June how that turned out!
Back in class, I jump and spin, momentarily free of gravity. Of course, the floor does come up fast to meet me. I can try to jump a little higher, but hovering above the floor of reality is not an option. Class ends, and I walk back into the world of nonstop news about tariffs, mass firings, massive reductions in government services, and scary projections. Unbidden, these lyrics came to mind one day:
Oh, Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee
Puff, the magic dragon lived by the sea
And frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee
The lyrics continue through Puff’s adventures with the little boy Jackie. But oh, Jackie continued to grow up and one day did not come out to play with Puff.
A dragon lives forever, but not so, girls and boys
Painted wings and giants' rings make way for other toys
One grey night it happened, Jackie Paper came no more
And Puff, that mighty dragon, he ceased his fearless roar
The lyrics continue to show the ageless dragon bent with sorrow in his lonely cave as he shed his green scales. Would that have to be the end? My sister, Geri Whitfield, added another verse to give Puff a forever role.
Puff the magic dragon missed his loving friend
But soon discovered other lives that on him would depend
A new life nudging other friends in these worn out days
Uplifting and reviving lives to higher, better ways
P.S.: The lyrics for “Puff, the Magic Dragon” are based on a 1959 poem by Leonard Lipton, then a 19-year-old university student, who typed it on Peter Yarrow’s typewriter. He forgot about it until years later, when a friend informed him that Yarrow was seeking him to properly credit him for the lyrics. Upon reconnecting, Yarrow shared half of the songwriting credit with Lipton, who received royalties for the song until his death in 2022. Yarrow later died in 2025. “Puff, the Magic Dragon” sung by Peter, Paul, and Mary, released in 1963
About The Author
Eileen Maddocks is an independent researcher, writer, and podcaster who lives in Vermont. She alternates her cerebral lifestyle with ballet and tap dancing. She is the author of 1844: Convergence in Prophecy for Judaism, Christian, Islam, and the Bahá’í Faithand the three-volume series The Coming of the Glory: How the Hebrew Scriptures Reveal the Plan of God. These books are available at discount to readers that buy from the publisher:
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