Yinka Graves. Flamenco dancer extraordinaire.

Today is the one day of the year that Jesus Christ is dead. It’s appropriate to speak therefore about the promise of resurrection.

Once again, been watching Bring It! Black women from Atlanta showing their fire, sexuality, and determination to succeed. We watch with admiration and a sense of fun. It’s like seeing Ali in his youth. We’re gonna win and this is how we’re gonna do it.

But there’s also a sense of sadness. Bring It! has an air of the NBA about it, sacrificing art for competition. Lots of trash talk and ferocity bordering on violence. There’s a show on that can’t be compared because it’s so different and yet so much the same. Dance Mums, which is from the U.K., shows girls equally determined, with equally crazy mothers, doing dance in a wholly different way. Technically proficient, sometimes inspired, and intending something different from getting a scholarship for the on-field dance team at a big football university. Makes you sad about the state of race relations in the U.S.A. Some of the Bring It! girls could be ballet dancers. Or whatever the hell else they want to be. But we’re not set up that way, are we?

Two examples. Both of them Graves.

Yinka.

Ignore the screechy music. Beauty. She’s a dancer.

And Denyce.

Happy Easter, everyone. Resurrection is a promise for everyone.