friday night fever
I - myself - do not actually know how to dance. Couple-dancing kind of stuff, I mean. The problem is, I know surprisingly well how to do a pretty good approximation of whatever the guy who's leading wants me to do, but I couldn't tell anybody ahead of time what that's going to be. I've taken a ballroom dance class (college gym credit) and done a bunch of contra and scottish dancing, which doesn't help much - but the main progress was some social swing dancing and a 6-week lindy-hop class I did in grad school, maybe 1999 or so. But still, I was so totally not in charge. It makes it difficult to go out dancing - the classic scenario, the guys who know what they're doing will only dance with known quantities, and the only guys who'd ask me to dance are moderately clueless... yet the occasional "really dancing" moment will hold enough promise that it took me a long time to throw my hands in the air and walk away from it all.
Tonight's party included a short kitchen-salsa-dance interlude, and I got the genuine Mexican guy who know what he was doing. Then, almost better, he wanted to teach another guy, so he stepped us through a turn, and I did what his hands said to do, and then we swapped partners. It was surprising how complex the signal process actually is. Several drinks probably helped, otherwise I may or may not have been able to point out to the American guy that if he wanted to move me from right to left, he needed to shove with his hip, and if he shoved with his shoulder I'd expect a spin-out turn... which is kind of complex considering that it's not a hand signal, and his feet are moving the same way. Highly educational.
Tonight's party included a short kitchen-salsa-dance interlude, and I got the genuine Mexican guy who know what he was doing. Then, almost better, he wanted to teach another guy, so he stepped us through a turn, and I did what his hands said to do, and then we swapped partners. It was surprising how complex the signal process actually is. Several drinks probably helped, otherwise I may or may not have been able to point out to the American guy that if he wanted to move me from right to left, he needed to shove with his hip, and if he shoved with his shoulder I'd expect a spin-out turn... which is kind of complex considering that it's not a hand signal, and his feet are moving the same way. Highly educational.