Time passes, some great ship that rolls beyond our reach, the liquid swell catches us and up we roll along the sides of the wave, then down again into the trough, another surge and another and then calm water again. Time leaves emptiness in its wake. History remains entirely intangible. We can touch and smell and see only the material remains, visual images, poems and stories, relics which inspire our own lives and creations.

"Valuable" and "meaningful" fulfills a subjective construct about the past. We can't know the names, daily pastimes, feelings, hopes, and dreams of the people who left no trace. Ancient songs, primeval dances. If we could see them as they were -- humans living lives hauntingly the same and also completely different as our own lives-- then perhaps we could uncover and demystify the origins of culture and art.

I find it curious that every culture in every corner of the world not only created musical instruments but also developed dance to accompany the music. Sound is the only sense which activates the response of physical motion. We all feel it. We all feel it differently. Sometimes the motion is head-bobbing toe-tapping, sometimes ferocious, wild, vigorous, flailing. Sometimes the elicited response is of curling into a ball on the floor and sobbing, or throwing the head back and laughing.

One thing I love about dance is its immediacy. The artist and the medium are one and the same, inseparable. But the immediacy of dance, the ephemeral quality of the act, especially impromptu emotional dance inspired by the sound of music, this poses a problem of re-creation, of preservation. Choreography attempts to record the motions, professionalism seeks to attain perfection with each performance, but neither can account for all factors of a dance.

It is the same as stepping in a river.