{"id":1850,"date":"2013-01-15T03:05:28","date_gmt":"2013-01-15T03:05:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/?p=1850"},"modified":"2014-01-03T18:56:54","modified_gmt":"2014-01-03T18:56:54","slug":"the-biggest-dance-by-david-kerr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/the-biggest-dance-by-david-kerr\/","title":{"rendered":"The Biggest Dance by David Kerr"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"zoo\"<\/a><\/h1>\n

The Biggest Dance<\/h1>\n

by David Kerr<\/p>\n

We burn the elephant and cow and lion every year, then we build them again the following dry season, after all the dances. \u00a0We perform the Big Dance to remember the way humans caused a stampede of all the wild animals when we invented fire. \u00a0And every year we burn the wood and grass animals to remember that first terrible forest fire. \u00a0For a few weeks the masked humans dance with masked animals in harmony as it first was. \u00a0But it doesn\u2019t last for long, and we have to recall with shame that god Chauta climbed a spider\u2019s web so he could live in the sky and get away from the fires we made to cook animals or melt metal for fabricating tools. \u00a0And now the forests are almost gone, some burned, some chopped down so we humans can cultivate, or to sell to the rich people to make furniture. \u00a0The wild animals too are disappearing. Chauta must be mad in his heaven, because we hear on the radio about planes crashing, and space ships going to the moon or Mars. \u00a0There must be an army of spiders building webs to the furthest corners of the sky, so Chauta can escape again. \u00a0Chauta has abandoned us, and who can blame him? \u00a0We\u2019ve driven him away to where he can\u2019t protect us. \u00a0In some places there are floods which drown the people, in others no water at all and we die of thirst. Perhaps Chauta has gone to find another world where the animals and people and god all dance in true harmony \u2013 not just these spirit-filled sisal masks, but the bodies and souls united. Now my legs are growing old and my knees creak, I wish I was in that world of the biggest dance.<\/p>\n

###<\/p>\n

David Kerr, born in UK, has lived most of his life in Africa (working at Universities in Malawi, Zambia, and, at present, Botswana).? He is a practitioner of theatre and media for transformation and human rights, about which he has written widely.? His collection of verse, Tangled Tongues, was published by Flambard in 2003 and a pseudonymous novel Passages by Brown Turtle Fiction in 2008.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We burn the elephant and cow and lion every year, then we build them again the following dry season, after all the dances. We perform the Big Dance to remember the way humans <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2360,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions\/2360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.everywritersresource.com\/shortstories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}