05/13/2025
Our dear friend, Marc died one year ago and put Dance To Be Free in his will. We just received his incredibly generous donation and are so grateful although we miss his smiling face in class💛
Here’s a poem he read to our graduates in Mississippi and the picture below is of us as a tornado approached Jackson😂
“I am not in Prison.
But I have “bars” that stop me every day.
Pain, age, self-doubt, fear, obligations, eye-sight, beliefs, hearing, low self-esteem, anger, inhibitions...
Yet twice a week I escape the confines of these “bars” by dancing to the movements and music Lucy puts into her Dance To Be Free classes.
Music I would never have heard, movements I would never have experienced, and joy I would never have had had I not joined Lucy’s classes all those years ago.
I knew that dance was a natural way of expressing emotions, but I never imagined it would be a way to express MY emotions.
Finding out that this form of “escape” was being taken into Women’s prisons turned me into a huge supporter of DTBF, at least as huge as my fixed income would allow.
I would say- “DTBF should be a fixture in every Women’s prison.”
Have I been in Prison?
Yes, jail actually or 2 nights. Once for a DWAI and once when my wife invited the
police to our house when she was angry that I wanted a divorce and I was the one
who had been drinking.
And hundreds of times when I took an AA meeting in the Boulde County Jail.
Would DTBF work in a Men’s prison?
Once again Lucy was asking me to go someplace I would not otherwise go- to a Men’s prison in MISSISSIPPI!
But, If men in the MS prison could get the joy from her movements and music that
I do- of course I’ll go.
Seeing how easily you accepted expressing your feelings through movement and the smile on your faces as you were skipping- I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
When in an AA meeting , I would tell inmates- “If you find yourself in a hole, stop
digging.”
Now I would add- “When you find yourself despondent, start dancing.”
