Madagascar Memoir

I'll never forget the day that I learned to dance, Madagascar-style. I hear what you're thinking: "Madagascar? Like the movie?"

"Yes," I reply. "If you've seen the movie you pretty much know what it is like to study abroad here for four months."

Just like the dashing Alex the Lion, I escaped from the confines of my New York internship and crossed the seas, emerging in the brilliant light of this strange new world. The sands stretched before me in their blinding whiteness, dappled by the swaying shades of palm trees, and the waves of the impossibly blue ocean tickled my toes, inviting me to dive in.

And dive in I did.

This is where the similarities of the movie and my life in Madagascar end. Although there are indeed lemurs everywhere, they do not sing and dance with perfect choreography. They do “like to move it move it,” leaping between trees and slipping their slender black fingers miraculously between the bristling spines on the trunks. To me, this choreography is even more impressive than the one Pixar came up with.

And the people dance even more than the lemurs. Every day the air is filled with music. They dance on the beaches to the rhythm of found instruments, drumming on empty plastic gas containers washed up with the tide, blasting out monotone melodies on cheap orange whistles. They howl with laughter as I try to rotate my hips to the beat, but frown and grow serious if I show any sign of giving up. They seize my waist and pull me into a motley conga line that includes a ten-year-old boy before me, and a toothlessly beaming grandmother behind. And I can't help but smile too.

I’ve never been a good dancer by my own country’s standards: to say that I have two left feet would be an undeserved complement to my left foot. In reality, neither one ever seems to know what it’s doing, and although I’ve tried nearly every kind of dance there is, I’ve never exactly found my rhythm.

Until now. On this beach in Madagascar, I am the Ginger Rogers of the tropics. Suddenly, I realize that dancing isn’t about following the music or mimicking the “right” steps. It is about togetherness; it is about laughter; it is a form of physical communication that can convey joy across the most disparate cultures on the planet, and all without a word spoken.

Ever since that day, I've been dancing with freedom in my feet and a smile on my face. Now that I know how to speak this universal language, I will keep dancing across the globe for the rest of my life.