Strictly Ballroom

Watching the local TV news last night and there was an ad for a local Ballroom Dancing studio in town. It was terrifically bad, but the message was to 'get in the game and join the fun' kinda thing with some waaaay over the top women in makeup dancing with guys who are totally arrested in Bowie's thin white duke era clothing. It was so bad it was good, ya know.

I've never been a dancer. I went to catholic school for 9 years (K - 8th grade - yeah, that explains a lot) and back then (60-early 70's) the nuns were totally in control. We didn't have a gym, but we had gym class in the basement which mostly consisted of dodge ball and eraser hockey. (Eraser hockey was kicking a blackboard eraser into a goal made of a couple of chairs). I know a lot of the public school kids had dance class that was part of PE. So by the time I got to public high school I hadn't any dancing skills. I've been a guitarist since I was 10 years old and have a good sense of rhythm and timing, but no dancing experience. I remember going to a few high school dances and I was one of the nerds on the sidelines. It is here that I experienced 'dancing pressure'

I was way too uptight to just go out there and go for it. Asking a girl to dance seemed like a sure way to never be able to look her in the eye again. So, mostly I avoided the dances all together. Prom time came around and I could do the clutch and rock in a circle thing, but I wouldn't call it dancing. The dancing pressure continued and outside of a drunken party in college I never really 'went for it'. (I can almost experience a full on shudder remembering that night) My girlfriend in college was one of those disco bunny girls - loved to dance. I was a liability there. Big time.

My dad, however, is an amazing dancer. I remember going to a family wedding, with the aforementioned college girlfriend, first time I saw my dad cut the rug. He was unreal. He did it all polka, jitterbugs, the whole nine. I think my girlfriend danced with him half the night. I resigned myself to the fact that I just didn't get the dancing gene.

When disco swept the known universe I went totally punk/new wave. I played in a bunch of local bands, and went out 'dancing' every weekend. It wasn't really dancing though. It wasn't moshing exactly, but it wasn't dancing either.

When my wife Patti and I were first married, we decided to try ballroom dancing. We had a couple of family weddings coming up and I think we both thought it would be so very cool to go out there and really dance. So we signed up in our town's continuing education class. 12 weeks of Ballroom dance. Little background here - Patti was a rock and roll girl (huge Stones fan and had gotten into the Talking Heads and NY Dolls by the end of the 70's) Not much of a dancing background there either.

The class was taught by a 60ish Polish lady with orthopedic shoes and those stretch pants with the seam sewed in the front of them. We learned the Cha-Cha, Waltzes, Polkas, Jitterbugs, Tango, all the basic Ballroom stuff.

And we were just horrible.

But when the Polish lady grabbed either one of us, it was magic. She would take one of us to show us the steps and literally whip us around the floor. It was a miracle. I actually thought Holy Shit I can do this!!! Then when we were put back together, we were like mannequins. We practiced at home, did the prescribed steps, and we were absolutley abysmal. So after 12 weeks of the Dancing Polish lady hitting my hips saying 'loosen up, loosen up!' we gave it up. Even the Polish lady gave up on us. We were, to say the least, at the very bottom of our class.

The up side is there is no more social pressure to dance! Patti and I know we're hopeless, and I don't spend any time thinking that she's not having a good time at an event that has the dreaded dancing component. So that's a good thing. We still enjoy a good clutch and rock in a circle from time to time, but we both know that's as good as it'll get!

So I'll skip the dancing, thank you very much, and get straight to the passing out and hitting the ground like a sack of potatoes.
m.