I'll Be Your Private Dancer
My friend T (male) takes dance lessons. It's like ballroom stuff, foxtrot, waltz, Latin and other stuff. He loves it. Great fun and good way to meet new people, learn a few steps. It's kinda expensive, but each enrolled student is allowed to bring a guest each week. This way, the school gets a new body (or, for them, preferably several) each week to tempt them to sign up for a slew of lessons.
This week I was that body.
T's been inviting me for a while, and as I love to dance and am always up for meeting new people I promised him I'd go and this week I arranged my work schedule so I'd have the evening off (last week I couldn't go because of the FilmfestDC & Brothers Quay film). I was looking forward to it. T was telling me how there's often beaucoup attractive ladies & how I'd love it. Again, I won't say no, but I assured him that if I wasn't going to just have fun (as opposed to going in hopes of picking up someone on the wafer-thin mint pretext that I can dance a few steps) then I wouldn't go. So I was going because it sounded like fun. The hotties are a potential bonus.
Your boy was the ONLY guest in this week's class and they made me wear a name tag.
-10 pts to my suave factor. If word gets out on the street, I'll have the gangstas gunnin' for me fo shizzle.
I was initally put off by the lead male instructor and his terrible analogies, but I got over that quickly. This was a new kind of dancing for me and remember I'm about having some fun.
Now, if you take me to a club or a party and there's music on, I can seriously dance for a long time with only a couple of breaks. I tend to feed off the energy from others and the music and when I definitely feel the advantage in taking a break, I can usually put it off if all the other factors are in line. No thinking, no worrying, just working up a sweat and trying to avoid knocking the next person over.
Formal dancing, such as what we were doing in this class is a whole other beast. I found myself counting and concentrating, remembering and consequently losing my rhythm when I tried to ply my partner with conversation. Not all the time, but often enough that I definitely noticed and felt embarassed. For me, it doesn't matter that it was my first time in this setting. I want to be good. On many levels I want to be notable, even though all that's really going to do is increase the chances of being sales-pitched to sign up for the full suite of lessons. Anyway.
We started with the foxtrot, which is pretty easy on the basic level. One of my first partners was a woman in her 60s, fit as a fiddle and a great partner because she helped me with my posture and all that. When I dance I want to move my shoulders, hips, everything. Foxtrot don't play dat. "Keep your shoulders rigid, " she tells me. At least for now. She actually had some great insight on generational differences between men & women, my generation and hers, financial situations (as in back in the day women made WAY less than men) and all how it factored into dance lessons & the social aspects. Helen. I'm pretty sure she was English. Pretty damn cool insight I thought.
We did a couple other dances, one which was easy and also the waltz, which for me was not. And then we did all the dances again, this time learning how to turn in each one (sometimes harder than you might expect, sometimes not). There were more guys than girls in tonight's attendance (for which T kept apologizing as if it was his fault), so a couple times I just sort hung back and practiced w/o a partner. I think we outnumbered the ladies by 2 and there were 3 couples who mostly danced with each other because of comfort level and also one couple were pretty damn good. My partners were all nice and ranged in age from slightly younger than me to way older. Funnily there was a drop-dead gorgeous girl who was actually wonderfully nice but a terrible dancer. I kept thinking it was me, y'know, losing my rhythm and my Ant-Cool Form because I'm like concentrating more on keeping my jaw attached to my face while I'm dancing with her. But later, T said w/o hesitation that she's not a good dancer (he actually used the word 'terrible'). At one point she actually stepped on MY foot. Not a strong sense of rhythm at all, but hey, guess what? Probably one of the reasons she's taking classes. More power to her.
It's very possible that she's a good dancer with freeform club style dancing but you'd be surprised how difficult formal dancing can be. I found it equally fun as frustrating. It seems so unnatural to be so rigid when you're supposed to be dancing & feeling the spirit of music.
Anyway, everyone I met & danced with was nice and most of them were really good to dance with. They forgave my mixups and thanked me when we finished (which I suppose is also custom, but getting thanked never hurts). The music was also a hinderance. We had to do one of the types of dances to Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself". It SORTA worked, but for me it was a damn stretch.
For the last portion of the class other instructors joined us and we did all the dances with only a few seconds of pausing inbetween. This is where I got in a little more trouble. Our class instructors were 2 guys. The other instructors were a mix of more guys and girls. ALL the girls/women were gorgeous.
TRUBBLE.
I realized later that this is ALSO by design: the instructors dance with various people and get them to sign up for 2 private lessons (only $25! what a deal!) and mesmerize you with their fluid forms and beautiful faces.
I'm sorry, what? where was I? How long was I in a trance?
Dudes and dudettes. I'm such a sucker. I danced with 3 of the female instructors (one of them 3 times) when I should've run for the hills, taken a bathroom break or run out behind the dance studio and buried my wallet so they couldn't get at my money.
Did I do any of these things? No.
Your boy found himself in the glow of these ladies and ended up succumbing to the 2 private lessons deal.
There's one born every minute and I was pushing ten.
The one girl who got me did so because I felt instantly comfortable with her and she made me laugh, and as I was a newbie and the guys outnumbered the girls I got to dance with her 3 times, so that didn't hurt. AND I got to use my shoulders and hips with the foxtrot with her, so that worked for me too.
Another instructor, from Lithuania or Belarus I'm told was also great, she actually taught me a few more things about posture and how close I should / could be when doing one of the rock-step dances. She had ice-blue eyes which I found so mesmerizing in order for self-preservation I had to re-direct my attention toward myself and away from her, "How am I doing?" "How's my posture?" "What's my name, again?"
We had a bit of a break and dammit if the main (I guess the school manager, not our male instructor) guy didn't point out to everyone there that "This week's class has only one guest and his name is..." me. At this point I took OFF my name label (HI! MY NAME IS NEWBIE!) and put it above my left knee.
We had one final round of dancing and I met a 3rd instructor who I'm told was from Czech Republic. She had an open-backed dress. Life is good. She too actually helped me a bit with (left) hand placement (keep it at eye-level or just below) and other posture advice. When I got around to asking her name she looked at my shirt for my name tag but I'd put it on my pants leg. "I'm Anthony." She eventually sees my nametag and I add, "See, I put it just above my knee so it'd be easier to remember: Antho-KNEE" and she briefly lost her rhythm laughing at my really bad joke. I've got a million of 'em. Didn't lose anything in that translation, baby.
Consequently, I'm moving to Czech Republic.
Evidently my level of humor might go over well there and I'm frequently reading how women find men with a sense of humor very sexy. Perhaps I've just been in the wrong country.
So yeah, I succumbed to the sales pitch. I go back for 2 private dance lessons and after that I'll call it a day until I get rich enough to afford the larger package and then I'll consider it.
It was fun. I'm terrible at the waltz. A pair of instructors demonstrated it for us and the dude was like melted butter on feet. I thought, "Yep, I going to be that smooth." So I was taking these major long strides and trying to glide like an ice-skater but I was doing a bit too much too soon with a partner that was significantly shorter than I, but we worked it out and I brought it all back down to earth, realizing that Mr. Butterworth is a professional and I'm not gonna be as good as him (ever) for a long time. What was great though was how several of the ladies who were taking the class had done the dances enough to help me and I dug that. I'm fairly decent at taking direction. Ladies, I'm talking to YOU. Ha-ha.
I found it truly surprising how tired I was afterward. I even broke a sweat in the last 10 minutes. We never moved very fast and there were many breaks but this kind of dancing, at least in the beginning saps your mental energy just as much as the physical and perhaps more. I'll still take freestyle dancing over this formal stuff. There's a great dynamic with freestyle for me that the more energy I put out, the more I seem to collect. At least for short burts of time.
There are a lot of formal dances that have much more practical use and appeal (particularly the Latin ones) than foxtrot & waltz, but I don't think I'll be around for those.
Geez this a long post. Are you actually still reading?
This week I was that body.
T's been inviting me for a while, and as I love to dance and am always up for meeting new people I promised him I'd go and this week I arranged my work schedule so I'd have the evening off (last week I couldn't go because of the FilmfestDC & Brothers Quay film). I was looking forward to it. T was telling me how there's often beaucoup attractive ladies & how I'd love it. Again, I won't say no, but I assured him that if I wasn't going to just have fun (as opposed to going in hopes of picking up someone on the wafer-thin mint pretext that I can dance a few steps) then I wouldn't go. So I was going because it sounded like fun. The hotties are a potential bonus.
Your boy was the ONLY guest in this week's class and they made me wear a name tag.
-10 pts to my suave factor. If word gets out on the street, I'll have the gangstas gunnin' for me fo shizzle.
I was initally put off by the lead male instructor and his terrible analogies, but I got over that quickly. This was a new kind of dancing for me and remember I'm about having some fun.
Now, if you take me to a club or a party and there's music on, I can seriously dance for a long time with only a couple of breaks. I tend to feed off the energy from others and the music and when I definitely feel the advantage in taking a break, I can usually put it off if all the other factors are in line. No thinking, no worrying, just working up a sweat and trying to avoid knocking the next person over.
Formal dancing, such as what we were doing in this class is a whole other beast. I found myself counting and concentrating, remembering and consequently losing my rhythm when I tried to ply my partner with conversation. Not all the time, but often enough that I definitely noticed and felt embarassed. For me, it doesn't matter that it was my first time in this setting. I want to be good. On many levels I want to be notable, even though all that's really going to do is increase the chances of being sales-pitched to sign up for the full suite of lessons. Anyway.
We started with the foxtrot, which is pretty easy on the basic level. One of my first partners was a woman in her 60s, fit as a fiddle and a great partner because she helped me with my posture and all that. When I dance I want to move my shoulders, hips, everything. Foxtrot don't play dat. "Keep your shoulders rigid, " she tells me. At least for now. She actually had some great insight on generational differences between men & women, my generation and hers, financial situations (as in back in the day women made WAY less than men) and all how it factored into dance lessons & the social aspects. Helen. I'm pretty sure she was English. Pretty damn cool insight I thought.
We did a couple other dances, one which was easy and also the waltz, which for me was not. And then we did all the dances again, this time learning how to turn in each one (sometimes harder than you might expect, sometimes not). There were more guys than girls in tonight's attendance (for which T kept apologizing as if it was his fault), so a couple times I just sort hung back and practiced w/o a partner. I think we outnumbered the ladies by 2 and there were 3 couples who mostly danced with each other because of comfort level and also one couple were pretty damn good. My partners were all nice and ranged in age from slightly younger than me to way older. Funnily there was a drop-dead gorgeous girl who was actually wonderfully nice but a terrible dancer. I kept thinking it was me, y'know, losing my rhythm and my Ant-Cool Form because I'm like concentrating more on keeping my jaw attached to my face while I'm dancing with her. But later, T said w/o hesitation that she's not a good dancer (he actually used the word 'terrible'). At one point she actually stepped on MY foot. Not a strong sense of rhythm at all, but hey, guess what? Probably one of the reasons she's taking classes. More power to her.
It's very possible that she's a good dancer with freeform club style dancing but you'd be surprised how difficult formal dancing can be. I found it equally fun as frustrating. It seems so unnatural to be so rigid when you're supposed to be dancing & feeling the spirit of music.
Anyway, everyone I met & danced with was nice and most of them were really good to dance with. They forgave my mixups and thanked me when we finished (which I suppose is also custom, but getting thanked never hurts). The music was also a hinderance. We had to do one of the types of dances to Billy Idol's "Dancing With Myself". It SORTA worked, but for me it was a damn stretch.
For the last portion of the class other instructors joined us and we did all the dances with only a few seconds of pausing inbetween. This is where I got in a little more trouble. Our class instructors were 2 guys. The other instructors were a mix of more guys and girls. ALL the girls/women were gorgeous.
TRUBBLE.
I realized later that this is ALSO by design: the instructors dance with various people and get them to sign up for 2 private lessons (only $25! what a deal!) and mesmerize you with their fluid forms and beautiful faces.
I'm sorry, what? where was I? How long was I in a trance?
Dudes and dudettes. I'm such a sucker. I danced with 3 of the female instructors (one of them 3 times) when I should've run for the hills, taken a bathroom break or run out behind the dance studio and buried my wallet so they couldn't get at my money.
Did I do any of these things? No.
Your boy found himself in the glow of these ladies and ended up succumbing to the 2 private lessons deal.
There's one born every minute and I was pushing ten.
The one girl who got me did so because I felt instantly comfortable with her and she made me laugh, and as I was a newbie and the guys outnumbered the girls I got to dance with her 3 times, so that didn't hurt. AND I got to use my shoulders and hips with the foxtrot with her, so that worked for me too.
Another instructor, from Lithuania or Belarus I'm told was also great, she actually taught me a few more things about posture and how close I should / could be when doing one of the rock-step dances. She had ice-blue eyes which I found so mesmerizing in order for self-preservation I had to re-direct my attention toward myself and away from her, "How am I doing?" "How's my posture?" "What's my name, again?"
We had a bit of a break and dammit if the main (I guess the school manager, not our male instructor) guy didn't point out to everyone there that "This week's class has only one guest and his name is..." me. At this point I took OFF my name label (HI! MY NAME IS NEWBIE!) and put it above my left knee.
We had one final round of dancing and I met a 3rd instructor who I'm told was from Czech Republic. She had an open-backed dress. Life is good. She too actually helped me a bit with (left) hand placement (keep it at eye-level or just below) and other posture advice. When I got around to asking her name she looked at my shirt for my name tag but I'd put it on my pants leg. "I'm Anthony." She eventually sees my nametag and I add, "See, I put it just above my knee so it'd be easier to remember: Antho-KNEE" and she briefly lost her rhythm laughing at my really bad joke. I've got a million of 'em. Didn't lose anything in that translation, baby.
Consequently, I'm moving to Czech Republic.
Evidently my level of humor might go over well there and I'm frequently reading how women find men with a sense of humor very sexy. Perhaps I've just been in the wrong country.
So yeah, I succumbed to the sales pitch. I go back for 2 private dance lessons and after that I'll call it a day until I get rich enough to afford the larger package and then I'll consider it.
It was fun. I'm terrible at the waltz. A pair of instructors demonstrated it for us and the dude was like melted butter on feet. I thought, "Yep, I going to be that smooth." So I was taking these major long strides and trying to glide like an ice-skater but I was doing a bit too much too soon with a partner that was significantly shorter than I, but we worked it out and I brought it all back down to earth, realizing that Mr. Butterworth is a professional and I'm not gonna be as good as him (ever) for a long time. What was great though was how several of the ladies who were taking the class had done the dances enough to help me and I dug that. I'm fairly decent at taking direction. Ladies, I'm talking to YOU. Ha-ha.
I found it truly surprising how tired I was afterward. I even broke a sweat in the last 10 minutes. We never moved very fast and there were many breaks but this kind of dancing, at least in the beginning saps your mental energy just as much as the physical and perhaps more. I'll still take freestyle dancing over this formal stuff. There's a great dynamic with freestyle for me that the more energy I put out, the more I seem to collect. At least for short burts of time.
There are a lot of formal dances that have much more practical use and appeal (particularly the Latin ones) than foxtrot & waltz, but I don't think I'll be around for those.
Geez this a long post. Are you actually still reading?
posted by Afterlife at 9:44 AM
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