dance addiction
I never considered myself a dancer. Or at least, not a good one (or halfway decent, depending on how modest I'm feeling). As a child I cycled through ballet, tap, and jazz lessons, spending one or two years with each before abandoning it. I was never horrible, but never great, either. My mother once told me, "You know all the steps, but you dance with the grace of an elephant."
I resigned myself to two left feet.
Then, in the spring semester of my junior year at William and Mary, I gave dancing another shot, thanks to the encouragement of certain parties. An uppity freshman named Lindsay had taken it upon herself to start a swing dance club, which at that time met in Monroe Attic. I attended the very first lesson. Being in my old haunt tempered my roiling stomach, enough that I came back every week for the rest of the spring semester. I felt like an utter fool most of the time, admonishing myself as I messed up the steps for the millionth time and trying fervently to follow. But the crystalline moments when something clicked -- a sharp, whip-fast turn perfectly in time, the first time I did side-by-side Charleston correctly --- in those moments I felt right inside. I quit being embarrassed at my floppy arms, or at my feet of dubious reliability, at being two years older than all the other beginners, at being taller or fatter or uglier or somehow less desirable than every other girl in the room. They were split seconds of harmony, and I wanted them to last forever.
Learning to dance is a bit like learning a foreign language. Assuming one is learning as an adult, the task is twofold: the dance itself (the steps, the rhythm, the styling) and the process of learning how to dance. Most people conflate the two, but they're very different. To dance any sort of partnered social dance (i.e., not the electric slide) requires you to develop an entirely new skill set. It's not the steps that are hard (and in the end, the steps won't even matter). It's the things that you can't see about the dance that are hard. The connection, the musicality, and the passion.
Trust me, I know they're hard. I can barely explain these concepts in words. They're physical ones. You'd have to climb inside my body to feel them, and even then and after all these four years I know everything isn't quite right. What I wouldn't give to climb inside one of those fabulous dancers, to feel what it is that they're doing. Half the time the problem is that the muscles in question don't get used in normal activities. But then once you do find those muscles, the true art is to learn how to not use them. To follow (to dance the girl's part) is to do nothing until you are told to do it but to be ready for everything simultaneously. Once told (once a move is lead), your job is to do that and nothing more. Your job is to listen, but not to think. Listen, and to feel.
There are places for embellishment, alcoves of the dance, breathing spaces. Those you find later, though.
This weekend was DCLX: the D.C. Lindy Hop Exchange. In a dance exchange, people from all over the country, and often the world, come to a host city for a whirlwind weekend of dancing. Local dancers house guests; there's a dance to attend nearly every hour of every day from Thursday or Friday night until Sunday night. Lindy Hop falls under the bigger umbrella of swing dance.
DCLX is the first exchange I've ever gone to (and I went largely because it was in my town, at the venues that I've been to a zillion times before, full of people I've spent the last seven months dancing with every week). It won't be the last... I only attended the Saturday night events, due to a combination of budgetary, physical, and time constraints. But whoa.
On Saturday night, I volunteered before the main dance of the evening, because a) I hadn't bought a ticket ahead of time and it was going to sell out fast (it did) and b) if I volunteered, I got in free, saving $15! Luckily I had been assigned the 8-9 o'clock shift, meaning I wouldn't have to miss any of the dancing. Unluckily, I had been assigned to direct cars in the parking lots. Unluckily, it was raining and cold. Luckily, they aborted the parking plan due to the weather, and instead I got to be a bouncer! (by which I mean I checked wristbands).
The dance was out at Glen Echo park in Maryland. Glen Echo is an old amusement park that gets used for cultural events. I'm told that it was renovated about five years ago, but it still gives off a vibe of forgotten time. I love the ambiance of the place... in many ways, it reminds me of Matoaka. It's old and new at the same time, it's a place made for crowds that's always mostly empty, it's somewhere made for the daytime but I've only ever visited it at night. When I walk across the bridge and through the woods from the parking lot, I feel as though I am entering another world, somewhere filmic, out of time but not entirely out of place.
The Boilermaker Jazz Band played the Glen Echo dance. They're an awesome band, and I danced with a lot of excellent leads.
After the Glen Echo dance, which went from 9-12, there was a late-night dance at the Chevy Chase Ballroom in downtown DC. I carpooled over with two girls I had met while volunteering, and the three of us got on awesomely. Yay for friends! Initially I hadn't intended to stay long at CCB, given that I had to be downtown at 9 o'clock Sunday morning to finish up this volunteer training I'm doing to work for an online crisis hotline. The dance ran from 1-5 a.m., with options for Lindy Hop and for Blues.
I stayed. Until 4:45 a.m. And then after 2.5 hours of sleep, I got up and went to a crisis training for 7 hours.
And oh lord, it was worth it. As I'd mentioned, some of the best dancers in the country were there, and I think I ran into some of them. Namely, this guy Patrick, who asked me to dance over in the blues room. Sometimes two dancers just click. The stars align, the music is right, who knows, but it works perfectly. You make each other better dancers. I don't even remember what songs we danced to, but they were the best dances of my night. After the second time we'd danced, I told him, "You know, this is probably the most fun I've had all night." He smiled and got this embarrassingly flattered look on his face, and thanked me, complimented me: "You're awesome." "No, you're awesome," I said. "---And let's follow up that awesomeness...right now." And so we did another song. It was so much fun.
Then today, as I'm surfing the net looking at upcoming lindy exchanges, I discover that he is a really well-respected instructor. Like, the big guns. Now I feel simultaneously embarrassed and happy and some other discombobulating emotions. I feel so small in comparison... of course he makes me feel great, he's an awesome dancer. Don't awesome dancers always feel great? Don't they need other awesome dancers to make them feel great? Am I thinking too much of myself that I meant something meaningful as a follow for those few songs? But then I think of the look on his face when I complimented him, and the laughter and smiles we shared. That was real. I'll try and forget about the rest of the neurotic worries, for the sake of my self-worth. Because nothing makes you a better dancer than feeling good about yourself. Your joy rubs off on other people. Mistakes don't matter. Just the music, and the movement, and the (e)motion remain.
I resigned myself to two left feet.
Then, in the spring semester of my junior year at William and Mary, I gave dancing another shot, thanks to the encouragement of certain parties. An uppity freshman named Lindsay had taken it upon herself to start a swing dance club, which at that time met in Monroe Attic. I attended the very first lesson. Being in my old haunt tempered my roiling stomach, enough that I came back every week for the rest of the spring semester. I felt like an utter fool most of the time, admonishing myself as I messed up the steps for the millionth time and trying fervently to follow. But the crystalline moments when something clicked -- a sharp, whip-fast turn perfectly in time, the first time I did side-by-side Charleston correctly --- in those moments I felt right inside. I quit being embarrassed at my floppy arms, or at my feet of dubious reliability, at being two years older than all the other beginners, at being taller or fatter or uglier or somehow less desirable than every other girl in the room. They were split seconds of harmony, and I wanted them to last forever.
Learning to dance is a bit like learning a foreign language. Assuming one is learning as an adult, the task is twofold: the dance itself (the steps, the rhythm, the styling) and the process of learning how to dance. Most people conflate the two, but they're very different. To dance any sort of partnered social dance (i.e., not the electric slide) requires you to develop an entirely new skill set. It's not the steps that are hard (and in the end, the steps won't even matter). It's the things that you can't see about the dance that are hard. The connection, the musicality, and the passion.
Trust me, I know they're hard. I can barely explain these concepts in words. They're physical ones. You'd have to climb inside my body to feel them, and even then and after all these four years I know everything isn't quite right. What I wouldn't give to climb inside one of those fabulous dancers, to feel what it is that they're doing. Half the time the problem is that the muscles in question don't get used in normal activities. But then once you do find those muscles, the true art is to learn how to not use them. To follow (to dance the girl's part) is to do nothing until you are told to do it but to be ready for everything simultaneously. Once told (once a move is lead), your job is to do that and nothing more. Your job is to listen, but not to think. Listen, and to feel.
There are places for embellishment, alcoves of the dance, breathing spaces. Those you find later, though.
This weekend was DCLX: the D.C. Lindy Hop Exchange. In a dance exchange, people from all over the country, and often the world, come to a host city for a whirlwind weekend of dancing. Local dancers house guests; there's a dance to attend nearly every hour of every day from Thursday or Friday night until Sunday night. Lindy Hop falls under the bigger umbrella of swing dance.
DCLX is the first exchange I've ever gone to (and I went largely because it was in my town, at the venues that I've been to a zillion times before, full of people I've spent the last seven months dancing with every week). It won't be the last... I only attended the Saturday night events, due to a combination of budgetary, physical, and time constraints. But whoa.
On Saturday night, I volunteered before the main dance of the evening, because a) I hadn't bought a ticket ahead of time and it was going to sell out fast (it did) and b) if I volunteered, I got in free, saving $15! Luckily I had been assigned the 8-9 o'clock shift, meaning I wouldn't have to miss any of the dancing. Unluckily, I had been assigned to direct cars in the parking lots. Unluckily, it was raining and cold. Luckily, they aborted the parking plan due to the weather, and instead I got to be a bouncer! (by which I mean I checked wristbands).
The dance was out at Glen Echo park in Maryland. Glen Echo is an old amusement park that gets used for cultural events. I'm told that it was renovated about five years ago, but it still gives off a vibe of forgotten time. I love the ambiance of the place... in many ways, it reminds me of Matoaka. It's old and new at the same time, it's a place made for crowds that's always mostly empty, it's somewhere made for the daytime but I've only ever visited it at night. When I walk across the bridge and through the woods from the parking lot, I feel as though I am entering another world, somewhere filmic, out of time but not entirely out of place.
The Boilermaker Jazz Band played the Glen Echo dance. They're an awesome band, and I danced with a lot of excellent leads.
After the Glen Echo dance, which went from 9-12, there was a late-night dance at the Chevy Chase Ballroom in downtown DC. I carpooled over with two girls I had met while volunteering, and the three of us got on awesomely. Yay for friends! Initially I hadn't intended to stay long at CCB, given that I had to be downtown at 9 o'clock Sunday morning to finish up this volunteer training I'm doing to work for an online crisis hotline. The dance ran from 1-5 a.m., with options for Lindy Hop and for Blues.
I stayed. Until 4:45 a.m. And then after 2.5 hours of sleep, I got up and went to a crisis training for 7 hours.
And oh lord, it was worth it. As I'd mentioned, some of the best dancers in the country were there, and I think I ran into some of them. Namely, this guy Patrick, who asked me to dance over in the blues room. Sometimes two dancers just click. The stars align, the music is right, who knows, but it works perfectly. You make each other better dancers. I don't even remember what songs we danced to, but they were the best dances of my night. After the second time we'd danced, I told him, "You know, this is probably the most fun I've had all night." He smiled and got this embarrassingly flattered look on his face, and thanked me, complimented me: "You're awesome." "No, you're awesome," I said. "---And let's follow up that awesomeness...right now." And so we did another song. It was so much fun.
Then today, as I'm surfing the net looking at upcoming lindy exchanges, I discover that he is a really well-respected instructor. Like, the big guns. Now I feel simultaneously embarrassed and happy and some other discombobulating emotions. I feel so small in comparison... of course he makes me feel great, he's an awesome dancer. Don't awesome dancers always feel great? Don't they need other awesome dancers to make them feel great? Am I thinking too much of myself that I meant something meaningful as a follow for those few songs? But then I think of the look on his face when I complimented him, and the laughter and smiles we shared. That was real. I'll try and forget about the rest of the neurotic worries, for the sake of my self-worth. Because nothing makes you a better dancer than feeling good about yourself. Your joy rubs off on other people. Mistakes don't matter. Just the music, and the movement, and the (e)motion remain.