The Dance

The cliffs are such a daunting area of existence. Just a few steps away from the end of everything. But in Southern Portugal, lit by the stunning Summer Moonlight, there is great beauty to be found. One such beauty is a dance, a dance performed by so many over many different periods of time.

This is the land where I come from. The dance is a great tradition in Portugal. I remember as a little girl on a warm summer night, when I went with my family to see the moonlight over the cliff. My father and grandfather were having a smoke together. Whilst they were smoking together, My mother; grandmother and I danced. It was a dance that saw us holding hands and going clockwise, then anti-clockwise again and again.

It was a dance my grandmother did with her grandmother and mother. It was the last time she ever did the dance. You only do it three times in your life. First as a daughter, than a mother than as a grandmother. I remember how much fun it was, how it bonded myself with my grandmother and mother. To hear that she was once young like me, that she also had a caring grandmother to teach her the dance.

I remember this cliff for other reasons too. When I took Vik here. I had been away from Portugal for so long. I was living in London to be an artist and escape the Estado Novo dictatorship. To return home with the love of my life in my arms, it was a feeling that can only be compared to grief. For opposite reasons yet of equal strength.

Vik had modelled for me many times. I wouldn't always paint men, in fact my main goal was to paint women, but when I did I would often ask him to be my muse. I will never forget the look he would give me. That cheeky, as they say in London, smile he would give to me. The way he gazed into my eyes as I tried to capture his essence. An essence I wasn't always meant to paint.

I returned to the cliff as Vik was dying. I could only push through by working, it was the only way I knew how to carry on. It was only for a night, yet the view brought so much back to me. The dance of time and the romantic dance by the cliff. We never actually danced when we returned, we mealy gazed together at the moonlit ocean view. But in my memories, it was like a dance.

I decided to sketch the moonlit view. Almost as soon as I finished I returned to London. I was painting the background when Vik passed on. I didn't know what to do with myself. I knew I wanted a dance of time and a dance of myself and Vik. My son had been modelling in lieu of Vik as he had began to look so much like he did when he was younger. It was challenging.

I was starting to dream of dancing with Vik, night after night, as if I had been transported into the painting. I remembered the way he would look at me. The way he supported my pursuits. But one day, all of a sudden, he seemed to have been erased from my dreams. I was dancing alone. The painting was empty, it was just me by myself. The scene of the grandmother, mother and daughter was mealy just a delusion. The dance of myself and Vik, nothing more than a memory.

I felt myself driven to insanity, as if I was somehow losing touch with both Vik and my culture. I had been sleeping less and less but I was yet somehow less awake. I decided to return to the cliff.

I saw him, dancing with an angel, yet his gaze still pointed toward me. It was almost certainly a delusion; a mixture of intense grief and sleep deprivation. But in my mind I did see him again. Looking towards me, the artist.