Mad Hot Ballroom

Frontdesk by David Waggoner

This month’s cover story interview, Carrie Ann Inaba, asks us to stay on point when it comes to fighting AIDS. A dancer, choreographer, and actress, Inaba shares a story of loss and hope. But more importantly she shares a story of fears. We don’t hear a lot about fears these days. If we are HIV-positive, we have learned how to put on brave faces. If negative or unsure about our serostatus, we have learned how to suppress our questions about safer sex. We have to stop judging ourselves for having needs, having limitations. I think Carrie Ann Inaba is onto something—until we bring these fears out into the light of day, we’ll never move past them. We’ll never dance truly free.

If you’ve never seen Dancing with the Stars, the show which features Ms. Inaba as a judge, the hit ABC dance competition pairs professional ballroom dancers with celebrities. The celebrities are expected to learn the demanding and intricate choreography of the fox trot, paso doble, and the rumba, among other specialties. The first week’s performances are often laughable—a few of the celebrity dancers manage to get through the routines admirably, but most end up trying to keep their two left feet in time with the music. By the fourth week, you find yourself surprised—with practice, some of the stars are actually doing the moves with grace and pizazz. By the end, you realize that, while the professional dancers may know the difference between a figure-eight hip roll and Cuban motion, the celebrity dancers know something about dedication, showmanship, and facing their fears when it comes to trying something new. Baby steps have become quicksteps.

The dance teams we see on Dancing with the Stars prove that good partnerships do not necessarily depend on both members having equal or similar capacities. For this reason, I think the dance teams suggest a good model for AIDS partnerships. Both members bring to the floor different strengths. One partner may have a greater knowledge of fundraising; the newbie may bring a fresh perspective on the pandemic and the high spirits of a green recruit. One partner may have deeper pockets; the other may know how to get prevention messages out to a difficult to reach community. One may have their sights set on a brighter future; the other may still be mourning the past.

One real-life AIDS partnership that comes to mind is next month’s AIDS Walk New York, a fundraising walkathon that starts in the heart of Manhattan—Central Park. It comprises every gender, every sexuality, every race, every color, every age, and every religion. Benefitting GMHC and other tri-state area AIDS organizations, AWNY is, and always has been, a multicultural, multilingual, and multitasking fundraising event. From the financial sponsorships of such large American companies as Bristol-Myers Squibb and Delta Airlines to the actual walkers and their individual sponsors, AWNY is a large-scale example of working together to reach success: changing the course of the epidemic.

This excellent example of how deeper pockets and a deeper consciousness can empower all of us in the fight against AIDS doesn’t stop here. In cities and towns across America, AIDS walkers continue the tradition of Americans turning off their reality TV progams and tuning into the real needs of those living every day with the AIDS crisis.

In this age when life seems to be getting more disorganized, when the AIDS community is more than ever a community of diversity, we need our differences to come together—in collaborations as well as collisions—in order to keep the fight against AIDS and the fight for our lives as strong as they can be.

April 2006