I confess. Fox’s summer show So You Think You Can Dance is one of Steve and my great summer escapes. During the recent Rehoboth blackout we had to send out an SOS to someone still living in the land of electricity to record it for us so we could keep track of our favorite dancers. I still think Danny should have won, but that’s another story. This one is about Sundance.

In the last issue of Letters I wrote about the first Sundance 20 years ago. Now we are in the present and ready to dance the Sundance all over again.

Dance is a wonderful thing. It can tell a story or express great emotion. When we do it together it can be joyous, unifying, celebratory, and even ceremonial. After dancing the Sundance for 20 years it certainly feels like a ritual to me. We don’t have many opportunities or spaces these days to accommodate big crowds from all parts of our community. I think we need it.

The world is a very unsettling place—war, terrorists, polarizing politics, global warming, collapsing bridges, financial concerns, droughts, floods, and fires—and even with all our instant communication devices, we still feel disconnected from one another. Sometimes, I think, even afraid of one another.

A long time ago, native cultures all over the world understood the power of dance, the language of movement, and the importance of ritual celebration as both a release from the mundane and as a creative way of re-connecting to the tribe—to the bigger family—around them. We still experience that collective sharing in theater, concerts, sporting events, and religious ceremonies and services. But only in the dance do we really let go of the restrictions of modern life. Only in dance do we begin to shake off the invisible chains that we have constructed to keep us behaving "properly" within the society around us.

For the last 20 years, Sundance has been a part of the seasonal ritual that plays out every Labor Day weekend in Rehoboth Beach. It is a time when we can put our differences aside, a time when we can let go of the stresses in our daily lives, a time when, for a brief moment, we can raise our arms over our heads and be joyful and thankful that we are still here and still able to dance surrounded by people who know us and accept us for who we are.

The actions required to produce an event like Sundance are massive and involve many people working together to make it happen. But that act of making is part of the whole experience as is, in the end, the act of unmaking—the tearing down, the putting away. I think it is impossible to do something for 20 years without it becoming a ritual, without it becoming ceremonial—without the tiniest part taking on special meaning to those who have done it over and over again.

Changes in life can be swift and unexpected. One year while we danced the Sundance, Katrina visited New Orleans and a city was changed forever. One year not long after a Sundance, on a clear and beautiful September morning the World Trade Towers fell down and the world was changed forever. One year during Sundance our faithful dog Sam got sick and died and Steve and I were changed forever. Little changes, big changes, none of us know how long something will last.

Last week I was pondering the absence of things. We take so much for granted. What if there were no Sundance this year? What if the Film Festival vanished into a puff of special FX magic and smoke? What if all our favorite places in town closed their doors for the season and never opened again? Remember the Strand, the Renegade? Yes, life changes all the time—which is all the more reason for us to appreciate what we have while we have it.

Remember Mary Poppins? When the wind changed direction she opened her umbrella and flew away. Sometimes, of late, I feel "the wind" changing. Is it me? Is it the world around us? I don’t know. I do know that I need to dance the Sundance while I can and with as many friends as possible.

This year’s theme The Fantastic Voyage of the Starship Rainbow is about the journey of Sundance—both past and future. I’m even planning to use a mixture of some of the cut-out shapes that have been created for specific Sundances in the past, both as a way of celebrating the 20th anniversary and reminding us of the fantastic journey yet to come.

Sundance has always been about making a better world. It does that by the extraordinary money it raises for our community. It also does that by the amazing spirit that arises from the act of dancing together at the end of the summer season.

So you think you can dance? Come on, I dare you. Meet me on the Sundance floor at midnight. Young or old—it’s magic...