Break into a Happy Dance

What do festivals and weddings include? Dancing. Whether dancers are doing a Mexican Hat Dance or Horah to the tune of Hava Nagila at a Jewish wedding, there's a smile on everyone's face. Through the years, the same happy attitude has accompanied the slow graceful French minuet, spirited Italian tarantella, Virginia Reel from Scotland, Irish step dancing, Poland's mazurka and polka, the Sailor's hornpipe, clogging, square dancing, and break dancing by b-boys on the street. Colorful costumes often add to the joy.

  When Michaela DePrince was a hungry little girl living in an orphanage in Sierra Leone, Africa, she saw a magazine picture of a happy ballerina standing on her toes and wearing a pink dress. To be happy, she thought, I want to be like that girl. Defying all expectations, she was adopted and, carrying the picture of the happy ballerina with her, she came to the United States. As soon as her new momma saw the picture, she said, "You will dance." Ballet classes followed, and Ms. DePrince, now one of the few black ballerinas in the world, dances with the Dutch National Ballet. She tells her story in Ballerina Dreams.

     Misty Copeland, who just became the first female African-American principal dancer in the American Ballet Theater's 75-year history, is another happy ballerina. Her memoir, Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina, tells how she pursued her career despite beginning ballet lessons at, for a ballerina, the advanced age of 13.

     Dancing is for the very young and very old. Multicultural Kids (multiculturalkids.com) offers children All Time Favorite Dances on DVD and CD formats and international tunes for dancing on Ella Jenkins Multicultural Children's Songs and I Have a Dream World Music for Children by Daria. Making conversation with two elderly women at a party, I asked how they met. "At folk dancing," one said, and, on the spot, she did a few steps to show me one of their dances. At the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, the Ko-Thi Dance Company (ko-thi.org) gives children and adults lessons in traditional dances from Africa and the Caribbean on Saturday mornings. For world travelers, trips can include learning a few steps after watching hula dancers in Hawaii or girls performing the classic Khmer apsara in Cambodia. Trip planners at AAA.com/TravelAgent promise travelers to Argentina will never forget their private dance lessons at an authentic tango house in Buenos Aires.