José Cueli: The Dance of Opposites

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In Don Quixote , music and dance are mentioned. Dance appears as the union of opposites. Several passages mention the food, dances, and dances of the time that united the aristocracy with the people. The rattle dances and the bead dances, mixed dances that were performed outdoors, dance before our eyes.

Joyful and melancholic, the gallant and the pavane were danced in the palace, aristocratic dances. In contrast, the seguidillas, livelier and more sensual, even with certain lascivious undertones, initially belonged almost exclusively to the popular sphere. Over the years, the two became intertwined.

Cervantes sang in The Widowed Ruffian : Oh, what fainting arms! Oh, what fleeing and joining! Oh, what good labyrinths! Where one must exit and enter . Or these other verses in tune with the idea that dance unites opposites, expressed in playful songs to the rhythm of seguidillas: My need led me to war / If I had money, I would not go in truth .

Seguidillas continued to be danced in the palaces by aristocrats, harmonious and intense movements charged with sensuality as well as fatalism, dances that also startled the soul, incited laughter, produced both pleasure and restlessness in the body, and a total rapture of the senses. Pantomimic dances were performed at Las bodas de Camacho en las que viva quien vence (Long Live Who Wins) , and funerals were more joyful than weddings.

Another dance was being performed, led by a venerable old man and an old matron in which a group of beautiful maidens participated, none under 14 or over 18 years old, dressed in green palmilla dresses, hair partly braided and partly loose, all so blond that it could compete with the very brilliance of the sun; outfits belted with crowns of garlands of jasmine, roses, amaranth and honeysuckle . These maidens danced to the sound of a zamorana bagpipe and wore honesty on their faces and in their eyes and lightness on their feet .

The tapping and foot-stepping of the dances of the time are illustrated by Sancho's remarks when he reproaches Don Quixote for having taken up dancing: "There is a man who would dare to kill a giant before doing a caper; if I had to tap my feet, I would make up for your lack, for I tap my feet like a girifalde, but when I dance I don't make a stitch ." Or when the duenna Rodríguez tells Don Quixote about her daughter's abilities: "She sings like a lark, she dances like a thought, she dances like a lost soul, and she spins with special grace ."

This appearance of dance in Cervantes's novel is not accidental. Like the entire text, it has "crust and flair" and refers to a profound issue: the union of opposites. At first reading, we perceive how in some cultural aspects (music, dance, song) that are deeply rooted in the people, the very essence of being emerges in these manifestations and ultimately manages to blur the boundaries created by social classes. However, there is surely another multiplicity of factors that influence this phenomenon. Among them, I would highlight that popular dances, happily freed from social forms, allow the most primal, most genuine element of the subject to emerge, that pair of inseparable opposites that constitute being: eroticism and death. Life/death, pointed out by Freud, which constitutes us, inhabits us and which dances, particularly those of Andalusian origin, seem to invoke and at the same time attempt to conjure death itself in a vertiginous labyrinth of sensuality, voluptuousness and pain.

And the dance of opposites of our time continues: the United States attacked three nuclear facilities in Iran (Frodo, Natanz, and Isfahan) with bunker-busting bombs capable of penetrating 18 meters of concrete or 61 meters of earth before exploding... and we continue the dance of opposites.