Tiny dancers

Few things bring me more joy than watching young children dance to live music. While toddlers lack fine motor skills, they come to dancing with a delightfully unselfconscious exuberance. (Yes, the same can be said of some adults, but they are rare, as our culture sadly tends to discourage dancing among the less coordinated.) Most musicians I know are thrilled by children dancing to their music, and their playing seems to become both more playful and more focused, as they engage in a musical conversation with the tiny dancers before them.

While strolling through the Ballard farmers’ market Sunday morning, I was drawn by the scratchy back-beat drawl of a fiddle. The old-time fiddler balanced on a milk crate, tapping both heels as he played and sang. On the sidewalk in front of him, one of the tiniest dancers I’ve seen was strutting her stuff. Her little feet, clad in fuschia socks and purple-flowered shoes, became still only when the fiddler stopped at the end of a tune. When her colorfully tattooed mother held out a hand and said, “Let’s go,” our little dancer was having none of it. The fiddle started up again. The little girl took her mother’s hands, and they danced together, laughing.

When we had family in town a couple of weeks ago, the whole crowd went to Ballard on Sunday morning. At the end of our stroll through the market stalls, during which we acquired a cool new hat for Max, sampled cheese, and purchased large amounts of produce, our nephews became enchanted by a dark-haired girl in a flirty red dress, clogging to the music of a banjo. As he watched her dance, Max shuffled his feet a couple of times, clearly trying to understand and recreate her dance steps. Boo sat in his stroller, bouncing and clapping. And Aunt Kimberly took it all in, and smiled.