Dancing Through Life with Israel

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to Frankly Speaking, your weekly destination for insight and inspiration,
with your host, Frank Morangos. Frankly Speaking is sponsored by
Heppa four two one Chapter of North Miami in partnership
with the Annunciation Greek Orthox Church of North Miami.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Good afternoon, and welcome to another broadcast of Frankly Speaking
concerning the influence of the ancient Hellenic ideals, values and
faith and our contemporary culture. I am your host, Frank Morangus,
and for the next thirty minutes, I promise to provide
you with frank Talk, a lively interview to do my
part to make America Greek again. Monday was a historic day.

(00:50):
Numerous online, video and cable news reports showed Jewish families
and communities celebrating the return of hostages held in underground
tunnels and by the terrorist group called Hamas. The release
coincided with the annual Jewish holiday of Simhat Torah. However,
while previous celebrations of the feast day had been somber

(01:12):
due to the initial attack that occurred two years ago
on October seventh, twenty twenty three, Monday's celebrations were joyous,
with news of the release of the living hostages, Synagogues
and Jewish communities around the world were finally able to
celebrate the holiday with traditional singing and dancing. The feast
of Simhat involves joyful dancing while holding scrolls of the Torah,

(01:35):
the compilation of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible,
also known as the Pentateuch. In Bethesda, Maryland, a synagogue
that had been leaving an empty chair on the dais
for the hostages brought it down during the dancing to
represent the captive's return. In Israel, released hostages were filmed
tearfully embracing and dancing with their families and loved ones

(01:57):
in Hostage Square, located in Tel Aviv. The families of
the captives gathered in a similar fashion. Crowds swelled and
cheered as the final hostages were released. However, while celebrations
were widespread, many noted that the joy was mixed with sorrow,
as some families still awaited the remains of twenty eight
deceased hostages who have yet to be fully returned. The

(02:19):
celebrations were therefore a reflection of both immense relief for
those who came home and a reminder of the profound
losses of the preceding years. Irrespective, no one can deny
that this year's ritual took on a special significance, with
one rabbi noting, and I'm quoting him, two years ago,
on the same Hebrew calendar day, we tried to dance

(02:42):
without our beloved held captive. Last year, we did our
best to dance for them, but this year we're dancing
with them. Dance is a fundamental part of human history.
Apart from its religious expressions, dance is also an important
part of social life, serving as a way to communicate,
bond and to express emotions across time in diverse cultures.

(03:05):
In ancient times, the function of dance ranged from aiding
survival and appeasing the gods to mate selection. In modern era,
dancing is to foster social cohesion, promote physical wellbeing, facilitate communication,
express emotion, and demonstrate expertise. In fact, it is such
a vital part of human experience that a famous ballroom

(03:28):
dance competition has been televised for over twenty years. The
award winning Dancing with the Stars debuted in two thousand
and five as the American version of the British series
Strictly Come dancing that started a year early in two
thousand and four. Contestants consist of recognizable celebrities such as
Olympic athletes, supermodels, actors, singers, and astronauts. They are paired

(03:52):
with a professional dancer. Each couple performs predetermined dances and
competes against the others for judges, points in audience votes.
Given it self mocking perspective, Dancing with the Stars is
clear more about self improvement than about career resuscitation. Viewers
are therefore exposed to failure as well as success. Unlike

(04:14):
a film producer's cutting room, the dance floor cannot disguise
the consequences of frayed nerves, insecurities, poor skills, or clumsy
rhythmic performances. Remarkably, as the weekly competition intensifies and more
celebrities are dismissed, the poise, movement, and expertise of the
remaining contestants begin to gradually mature in advance. I believe

(04:38):
that Dancing with the Stars has been so successful because
most viewers recognize that lifelike dance requires the rhythm of poise, empowerment, accountability,
healthy interpersonal relationships, and love. While poor dancing is the
result of pushing, shoving, and haphazard commands. Gracefulness is achieved
through a ballet of negotiation movements that are well communicated, signaled,

(05:02):
and agreed upon. The footwork of life, however, is not
based on tempos of ever changing throbs and pulses, but
rather on a graceful inner self assurance whose framework expresses modesty, authenticity,
and not clumsy force for the self serving manipulation of others.
Fred Astaire, one of the greatest dancers that has ever lived,

(05:24):
once said that none of the women he danced with
had his level of mastery, but he also made them
look better than they were and put them at the
center of the dance when they were performing the moves
they do best. Martha Graham, on the other hand, the
American modern dancer, teacher and choreographer whose style, like that
of Asteers, reshaped the technique of dance, one said that

(05:48):
dance is the hidden language of the soul. I agree.
According to the sixth chapter of the Second Old Testament
Book of Samuel, King David danced before the Lord with
all his might. He did so as an expression of
overwhelming joy, gratitude, and pure worship. When the ark of
the Covenant was returning to Jerusalem. His dance was an uninhibited,

(06:10):
passionate display of his love for God, a physical manifestation
of spiritual joy, a celebration for the presence of the
Ark among the Jewish people. This was his way of
acknowledging God's blessings, showing humility and devotion without concern for
his royal dignity or what others might think of him. So,
since that time, the ancestors of David, especially the faithful

(06:31):
who belonged to the Hasidam, a movement with an ultra
orthodoxy that emphasizes mysticism, emotional expression, and personal concern for God,
considered dance, along with music, an avenue of worship. Originating
in the eighteenth century Eastern Europe, the teachings of Hasidic
Judaism stresspiety, joy in worship, and finding the divine in

(06:53):
everyday life. In Hasidic thought and literature, dancing is both
an expression and a stimulator of joy, and as such
as a therapeutic effect. Ascetic teachers insist that music purifies
the soul and uplifts the spirit. However, long before Hasidic
Judaism and the likes of Frediesteraire and Martha Graham. The

(07:15):
Greek philosophers has much to say about the emotional expression,
powerful influence, and mysticism of dance. Apart from the training
and practice of militaristic war dances that served the practical
purpose of training soldiers, the ancient Greeks referred to dance
as a fundamental aspect of life. Aristotle, for example, the

(07:36):
famed Greek philosopher about whom every weekly monologue of frankly
speaking is dedicated, considered horos, the Greek word for dance,
as a form of mimess or imitation, through which dancers
use rhythmic movements to represent a story, emotions, and the
problems of life. In this treatise called Poetics, Aristotle describes

(07:57):
dance as a rhythmic movement whose purpose to represent men's
character as well as what they do and how they suffer.
This idea is especially relevant to the role of the
horos and ancient Greek theater, where movement re enacted the
themes of drama. While rhythm, melody, and words are also
different means of imitation, Aristotle noted that rhythm alone is

(08:19):
enough for dance to achieve this goal. Aristotle's understanding of
dance as a serious art form with the power to
imitate human life contrasts with the modern interpretations of dance
as mere entertainment. By imitating human characters and emotions, he
considered it an important part of civic and esthetic education
that also included music and poetry. As such, a view

(08:42):
dance as an important component of a holistic curriculum that
would help students cultivate their mind, refine their bodies, and
contribute to their overall well being and moral flourishing. Drawing
heavily on Aristotle's ideas, it should therefore not come as
a surprise to learn that the ancient Greeks divided dance
into three different modes of meaning. Bodily movement was considered

(09:03):
the first and most essential part of any dance For
the ancient Greeks. Movement referred to the raw physical aspect
of effort, such as the basic steps or patterns of
dance or performs. It is the most fundamental abstract dimension
of motion. Configuration, on the other hand, or what Aristotle
calls schemata in the Greek is the mimetic or imitative

(09:26):
quality of dance. As such, schemata are the second and
most specific postures, gestures and shapes of dance or forms
to represent a particular character, emotion, or action. It is
as represent anational dimension of dance that makes the movement
recognizable and meaningful to the audience. And finally, according to Aristotle,

(09:46):
they exceedse, a word that may be translated as indication,
is the third and last mode of dance. They exceedse
refers to movements that express meaning through symbols cultural gestures,
rather than by direct imitation. A specific gesture, for example,
that an audience recognizes, may convey a certain idea or message,

(10:09):
similar to how a word signifies a particular concept. In
his book With a Palm and a Willow, Rex Johnson
relates the following story about the life sustaining power of dance,
and I'm quoting right from the book. One icy day
in December, the Nazis sent hundreds of Jews to the showers.

(10:30):
Before they could dry the water off their bodies or
clothe themselves, the German officers called them all outside for
roll call. Hundreds of Jews stood naked and wet in
the sub zero temperatures as their captors leisurely and methodically
called out their names. One by one, their bodies turned
to stone as winter winds and falling snow turned the

(10:53):
water on their bodies into ice. Among the scores of victims,
a young boy stood their battle the cold. As the
hours passed, he felt his feet literally freeze to the ground.
He watched those around him freeze into human statues and
fall over dead. Surrounded by such horror, he resigned himself
to the death that would soon take him as well. However,

(11:16):
of all the thoughts that he might have had, the
thought of his old rabbi back home meant the most
to him. Just as he was slipping into pre death
dreams of yesterday, a thought pierced the dim twilight of
yester year in the pre dawned darkness of eternity, and
he heard his rabbi's voice saying, we are people who

(11:36):
dance before the Lord. His feet still frozen to the ice,
he heard the words again. A warmth shot through his body.
He willed himself to speak, forcing the words audibly past
the now blue lips. We are those who dance before
the Lord, he said. Blood began to stir in his veins.
A Hasid must sing, he continued, A Hasid must stand.

(12:00):
It is the secret of our survival. The rabbi's words
shook him. The rabbi's words stirred him. The rabbi's words
strengthened him and restored within him a will to live
with all his might. The young man tore his feet
from the frozen ground, and in the process severely damaged
the soles of his feet. But then, right there, in

(12:23):
the death camp of the Nazis, he danced before the
Lord in a pool of his own blood. But by
doing so, the young boy survived the Holocaust. While Aristotle
did not discuss dance as a source of physical survival,
he believed that dance, understood within the context of imitation
of life embedded in ancient Greek dram and ritual, can

(12:46):
help audiences build character, achieve emotional purification, and celebrate life.
I would suggest that this is exactly why dance was
used a few days ago throughout the world on the
Jewish day of some hot Tora to celebrate the release
of hostages held in captivity. Perhaps this is exactly what
the rabbi meant when he noted that two years ago,

(13:09):
in the same Hebrew calendar day, we tried to dance
without our beloved captives. But last year we did our
best to dance for them. This year we're dancing with them.
When we return, I will be joined by Robert Bailey,
a philanthropist and a successful entrepreneur. I look forward to
hearing his story his dance as to how the love

(13:30):
of Greek philosophy and theology has influenced his professional as
well as personal life.

Speaker 3 (13:38):
Are you ready for a great Greek time? We are too,
so come on out and join us for the North
Miami Greek Festival taking place November seventh, eighth, and ninth.
It is three days of great Greek entertainment and fun
for you and the entire family at the Annunciation Greek
Orthodox Church in North Myya. There's food, games, dancing, tours,

(14:04):
live music, and it's absolutely free to you and your
entire family. So come on out and join us for
the great, great time you've been waiting for. You can
get more information at Nunciationmiami dot org. That's Annunciation Miami
dot org. Look forward to seeing you there.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Welcome back to Frankly speaking today, I'm thrilled to welcome
Robert Bailey to the show. Rob is a strategist, a creator,
storyteller whose professional life includes the sectors of energy, technology
and expert services. He has helped build platforms, programs and
partnerships then move people in industries forward for for profit
as well as nonprofit businesses. He is the first non

(14:48):
ethnic Greek that I've invited to be my guest. I've
done so, however, because as you will quickly see, he
is definitely a phil helling whose life, and I would
say his dance of life and his faith has been
influence by the ancient Greeks and especially the biblical Greek language.
Welcome to the show, Rob, Thank you, Frank. It's not
your first time here at the at the studio. No,

(15:09):
it's not back.

Speaker 4 (15:10):
But under under this introduction, I need to modify my
last name, I think to Robert belliacas, yes, so that
it smoothly comes into the context.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
So Valiacos whould actually mean someone who is heavy. It
has had gravitas, so you know that's perfect.

Speaker 4 (15:29):
Well, now you've raised the bar and I have to
see if I can.

Speaker 2 (15:32):
If I can perform, so welcome to the show.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
Thanks. You know, the dance that you're talking about for
me is not a physical dance, but something i've become
very interested in which is the study of clarity. And
I have had a column for about a year now
in a magazine here that's a better expand so we're
going to be coming into this market. Uh. My publishers

(15:57):
has become a great friend, is that Wayneer? And so
Wayne is expanding his empire in the magazine publishing business
and uh, and it's very exciting. It's going to be
a very different kind of an audience, I think than
what he's had in the past. But it's a complimentary audience.

Speaker 2 (16:16):
So is this over and above the Pump Beach neighbor.

Speaker 4 (16:19):
Well, it's part of it's an additional magazine for West
Palm Beach for really a little bit more of a
business audience. It's been more of a gated community audience
in the past, still executives, but now the fine tuning
is to bring those people together who are coming into
town who may not live in gated communities, who are

(16:40):
still part of you know, Pump Beach County.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah. I need to have him on the show as well,
because I think it's a good idea. Another Phil Helly,
no or else you will make him, will make him
a feel very proud of that caneterropolis. Maybe that would
be a good name for him.

Speaker 4 (16:52):
Yeah, so so is so my column has been about, Uh.
We decided early on that I would focus and clarity
and clarity. Somebody asked me the other day, and I
think about it all the time now, But what it
started as is I realized I, at any given time,

(17:13):
am not clear about what's going on. And people laugh
and they say.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
Well, we knew that.

Speaker 4 (17:18):
We knew that.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
I don't know what's going on, but I'm sure Teddy,
your wife says the same thing to you.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
In the in the precision of every day living, you know,
we listen to people and they're not clear about what
their expectations are. Boss we say things to other people
and they don't really understand, and we tend to just
blast through these moments. And I started thinking, you know
this clarity, what is that? And how do we get that?
And wouldn't it be better if we had that before

(17:44):
we started buying things. I work a lot with technology,
and I realized that just about everybody I'm talking to
has got software that they don't use. They got it
thinking that it was going to solve a problem that
they weren't sure that they had but it really appealed
to them, so they subscribed, and they realize they've got
all these things they're paying for that they don't use. Well,

(18:05):
where else do we do that? Well, it turns out everywhere, yes,
And and so the clarity aspect has sort of taken root.
And where you and I kind of touched into this
conversation originally and and really granularly was on a film.

(18:26):
And so I what what I.

Speaker 2 (18:29):
You introduced me to that film, Man of God?

Speaker 4 (18:30):
Yeah, Man of God is a is a film, And
I mean this, my whole commentary here could be about
that film and and what's around it for me and
and and.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
For the audience, so they know that it was produced
by a Greek right, Yeah, is subtitles English.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
The director is you Alina pop Poppic And but it's
it's an interesting story. It's about a real it's a
true story about a real Greek Orthodox bishop named Nectarios.
And Nectarios it was popular with this congregation. This is

(19:09):
at the turnable last millennium, so roughly eighteen eighties, eighteen nineties.
He's popular congregation. They toward him, and yet the hierarchy
of the church kept pushing him down and out they
gave him another assignment on an island. Everybody loved him,
and again the church came after him. He was an
extraordinarily humble man. And this is all shown in the

(19:31):
film beautifully.

Speaker 2 (19:33):
You know, just to let you know to quickly, just
as a parenthesy when we spoke about this once before
it did, I didn't put two and two together. I've
actually seen his body, which is in state on the
island of Aina in Greece, which is very.

Speaker 4 (19:46):
Which is where he lived and succeeded, and he despite
all the odds and the people there, you know, they
affirmed that he continues to perform miracles for them.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
Yeah, well that's he's a nation of sailors there. Wow
that I didn't know that. I'm sorry to cut you off.

Speaker 4 (20:05):
Add that, no, I mean and and and and this
is a great example of clarity. If we if we
keep our channels open, we can actually learn from each other.
And that's not going on a lot these days, which
makes this search on my part really much more interesting.
So in the in the scheme of this film and
recommending it to a number of people, I said, you know,

(20:27):
the the what you'll see in there is an excellent
example of Christ's on absolute quiet. There there are scenes
in the film where he's being insulted and uh and
disgraced for just who he is, and he apologizes, this

(20:49):
is the bishop, now, this is the bishop in the film,
and you start to see it and and what's what's
wonderful about it is that you can experience the film
is so beautiful, shot, so crisp, black and white. It's
shot beautifully. Uh. It's it's all in English. It's not subtitled,
so it makes it it makes it easier to just

(21:11):
get into for a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
I'm sure it loses a lot because it's in English.

Speaker 4 (21:16):
There is some Greek in it, because it helps the story,
I think. But this got me sort of going on
a sort of a tangent, like a side project of
my own. And I the last couple of days, in fact,
I've been working on something and I realized that, Uh,
in preparation and thinking about the Greeks, I did a

(21:37):
little background research on Socrates and Socrates there's a wonderful
book by Paul Johnson called Socrates A Man for Our Time,
beautifully written. And all of these these explorations that are
leading me to other other findings. Socrates is a very
much miss misunderstood persure Paul, that Paul Johnson had an

(22:00):
extraordinary journey of his own. He died just a couple
of years ago. But he started out as a very
liberal guy, very liberal journalist, and became a very conservative,
very articulate conservative before he passed away at.

Speaker 2 (22:13):
I think age ninety eight.

Speaker 4 (22:14):
And so I keep seeing these and very religious as well.
I'm very Catholic and very religious and very conservative and
extremely articulate both of about anything he wrote it. I
think he wrote fifty books. And so you have that situation.
And then the other day, kind of concurrently, I was

(22:34):
introduced through Eric matexas who I've met and you know,
to Melanie Phillips. And Melanie Phillips has a very interesting
book which I've just purchased. I haven't read it yet,
called The Builder Stone. What's interesting about that title is
that she's Jewish and she was also very liberal. She

(22:56):
was a reporter, a journalist for The Guardian and found
twenty years ago that when she questioned a double standard
in the reporting on certain stories that were going on
with the Jews and with the secular world, that there
was a there were two different ways of reporting, and
she called it. Subsequently wrote a book called Londonistan, which

(23:18):
is about the increasing Islamic presence in England, and began
to kind of turn and realize this is the West
is really in trouble. And that's where this book, The
Builder Stone seeks to reconcile the Jews and the Christians
as the salvation for the Western world. The interesting part

(23:42):
beside all of that to me is that title. She's
a Jewish woman and if she, we all know it's
the New Testament that says the stone that was rejected
becomes the cornerstone. So here she is already in the
title fusing those two groups. And so how does this
apply to the film? People have been trying for millennia

(24:10):
to bring people together. They've been trying to embrace the
love of Jesus Christ. They've been trying to be close
to God. Even Socrates. There was a wonderful quote Socrates says,
you know, I love you Athenians, but my allegiances to God.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (24:29):
So this is, you know, four hundred and thirty years
before Jesus Christ is born. And then we've got Mohammed
on the other side, not quite a little more than
four hundred years.

Speaker 2 (24:39):
Essentially the same situation.

Speaker 4 (24:41):
And then and then that clarity for me is Mohammad
led mostly defensive wars. People that when the when the
is the Muslims of people under his tutelage were attacked,
he defended them. He had very few aggressive attacks. After
his death, we have the warfare that people tribute to it. Yeah,

(25:02):
and so we go off. We're having debates about things
that we don't know about in public, and the politicians
are making clients and academics are making clients.

Speaker 2 (25:13):
We have no no clarity. Yeah, So next week tune
in the second part of my interview with Rob Bailey.
I guarantee that you will enjoy it tremendously. Thank you
for joining me this afternoon, and frankly speaking, but before
concluding today's broadcast, I went to briefly discuss the word horos,
the term that Aristotle used to refer to dance. The

(25:33):
Greek word horos has influenced the creation of many English
words like choreography, dance writing, literally, which originally referred to
a group dance in ancient Greek plays. Another influential Greek
word is valisine, also meaning to dance or to jump,
which leads to the English words ballet and ballid. Other

(25:54):
English words derived from these two Greek words include ballroom
a room for dancing derived from the word ballo, which
is from the Greek word balisine, and finally, orchestra, originally
referring to a circular space where chorus would sing and
dance in ancient Greek plays. So, as mister Gaspertocalos insisted
in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, there you go. Give

(26:16):
me a word, any word, and I will show you
that the root of that word is Greek. Thank you
for joining me today on Frankly Speaking, a show that
seeks to provide frank talk in a lively interview about
the influence of ancient Hellenic ideals, values, and faith on
our contemporary culture. I want to do my part to
help make America Greek again. If you would like to
share a question and or suggest a future guest or topic,

(26:38):
I'd love to hear from you at Frank at franktalkradio
dot com.