November 9, 2004

Take a turn on the Happy Dance floor

Filed under: Art and About Dance — admin @ 2:47 pm

My husband was taking a continuing education class in Internet security when the topic of The Happy Dance came up. His instructor, a professor at Georgetown University who also does consulting, said that once, out of the corner of his eye, he had seen a computer engineer Happy Dancing after a major breakthrough with a programming problem. The wordless Happy Dance communicated everything anyone needed to know about how the solution was coming along.

For this instructor, Happy Dancing has become one marker of identifying someone who is personally invested in his work, as opposed to someone who is just doing a job. Something like a Happy Dance can tell him about an employee’s personal investment in finding a good result. Happy Dancing is enthusiasm personified. This instructor went on to say that when interviewing job applicants, he will ask them to get up and do their Happy Dance.

As my husband related this story to me, I became intrigued. I had always considered Happy Dancing something done in front of trusted family, friends or co-workers. It didn’t occur to me that one could even Happy Dance on demand in front of a prospective employer, or that one could Happy Dance without the proper emotional trigger.

My husband firmly believes that Happy Dancing is not something to be done on demand, but I admit, a couple of times since this discussion I have  tried to Happy Dance for no particular reason. It’s a little tough to get started, but sort of like method acting, when I conjure a past achievement that led to a Happy Dance, I can get the moves back into my body fairly quickly. And sort of like smile therapy, doing a Happy Dance for no particular reason made me feel happy. Who knows? Maybe perfecting the ability to do a calculated Happy Dance could affect a person’s over health and well-being?

I know you want to get up and try spontaneous Happy Dancing right now, so I’ll wrap this up as quickly as I can.

I am still intrigued by this classroom discussion on a topic that has never come up in any conversation in which I have been a part. I asked my husband if he has seen Happy Dancing in his workplace. He said he has. He has even Happy Danced himself. He works for a bank that staunchly adheres to the traditional corporate environment model you would expect from a bank. Here I have been imagining a lot of starched collars and instead, they are Happy Dancing.

I have worked in several corporate environments, many of which were staffed by very creative individuals. I can’t ever remember seeing a Happy Dance, unless people were dancing behind closed doors or in meetings to which I wasn’t invited. I don’t know if this means anything, but I find it interesting.

What I like best about the Happy Dance discussion is that it has taught me that spontaneous explosions of primal artistic expression are happening everyday in normal, everyday interactions, whether I know about them or not. It seems to be evidence that an artful soul does indeed live within all of us, and sometimes it can even overwhelm us to move to our own groove in celebration of a personal victory, no matter who’s with us or where we’re located at the time. This knowledge alone makes me want to do a Happy Dance.

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