In­ter­na­tion­al Dance Day was cel­e­brat­ed just a few days ago and is a glob­al cel­e­bra­tion of dance, cre­at­ed by the Dance Com­mit­tee of the In­ter­na­tion­al The­atre In­sti­tute, the main part­ner for the per­form­ing arts of UN­ESCO.

The event takes place every year on April 29, which is the an­niver­sary of the birth of Jean-Georges Noverre, the cre­ator of mod­ern bal­let.

T&T's So­han Badall, an East In­di­an Dancer, in com­mem­o­rat­ing the spe­cial day pas­sion­ate­ly ex­plained that "Truth be told, dance, like many oth­er art forms, is a lan­guage of its own and if you pay at­ten­tion close­ly to some­one dance, you can un­der­stand their feel­ings, emo­tions and mes­sage with­out any ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Dance is the way we ex­press our­selves when words are in­suf­fi­cient."

Badall added, "The joy I feel over new found love, the de­ter­mi­na­tion I have in the face of great sor­row or ad­ver­si­ty, the pas­sion­ate fire of my youth and the peace­ful­ness of my soft­er and more grace­ful years – maybe they are nev­er ex­pressed more ful­ly than through my dance per­for­mances."

"We all want to be un­der­stood, and if we could tru­ly speak the words that de­scribe our feel­ings, how deep and pow­er­ful they would sure­ly be. But alas, those words nev­er seem to come to us just right. That is what dance is, dance is the abil­i­ty to con­vey some of my most mean­i­ful thoughts, feel­ings and mes­sages ac­cross with­out hav­ing to wor­ry about find­ing the right words, " he added.

Badall said he is of­ten asked, Why do you like to dance so much?

Dance, he said, is the medi­um through which he shows the world who he tru­ly is and who he can be.

"One of the great­est things dance do for me as a gay guy in a third world coun­try, Trinidad, is it al­lows me to live my truth on stage, it brings out my cre­ativ­i­ty on a dif­fer­ent lev­el and al­lows me the free­dom to bring forth my al­ter/in­ner per­son­al­i­ty through 'drag' when I am on a stage, " he added.

The best part about dance, ac­cord­ing to Badall, is "lit­er­al­ly any­one can do it. With the right teach­ers, it’s fun and easy to do. Lit­er­al­ly, the hard­est part is tak­ing that first step…to pick up the phone, to sched­ule a les­son, to walk in­side a dance stu­dio. Once you take those first steps, the steps on the ball­room or stages are as easy as a breath of fresh air."