If you are ugly, know how to dance

The Nyanja people of Zambia have a proverb Byrne would have loved: If you are ugly, know how to dance. How telling, when dance is so much a part of a culture that to be able to dance is celebrated almost as much as beauty.

I like to think that dance is on an upsurge again in our own culture, if only as evidenced by popular TV contests like "So You Think You Can Dance." I'm not sure that dance was ever as central to the North American culture as it is in other places. Maybe the very number of d...