The Horror
Well I've just returned from an evening of salsa dancing, and I promised to share the gory details...
In December someone at work offered to arrange something, with the plan of having it in January. My boss is uber keen about anything like that, and immediately began recruiting. Seeing which way the wind was blowing I reluctantly added my name to the modest list of male colleagues.
As the weeks got closer the damn women revealed some sort of hive mind single consciousness, as the word got around and more and more seemed to get added to the list - the departmental PA, half of HR and many others. We valiantly managed to bully a few more blokes into it but it looked pretty bad from our side.
Then as the week began the tell tale signs of drop outs began. I was particularly saddened but the absence of my two male team members - I'm doing their appraisal in a couple of weeks and this will certainly be a topic of discussion. Sadly my integrity outweighs my sorry excuse for dignity, and I stuck with it.
So we went along, firstly for an "absolute" beginners class, and then a normal beginners class. As it turned out quite a few people didn't turn up, but there seemed enough of us that hiding would be an option. Or hiding in the loos.
As it turned out it was pretty good fun.
I think 13 years of Aikido helped quite a lot. Aikido is very much about balance, relaxation and technique, and as such I picked up the foot movements quite quickly, and was able to avoid tensing up. After the first hour some people had to go, meaning that for the second session there was a grand total of 3 men, and about 16 women. That made logistics a bit interesting, but some of the ladies put on gruff voices and all was good.
Certainly getting to dance with my boss, an underling and 2 people from HR wasn't something I ever expected. Not sure it trumps borrowing lipstick off my boss as part of my vampire costume at Christmas, but its a close call...
Anyway it was definitely interesting to see that whilst not wholly comparable to movement based martial arts like Aikido, I can certainly see that ballroom dancing does introduce quite a lot of the same core skills, and makes me think its something worth trying a bit more of. What I really need is a lady who fancies trying it too, but I'd accept a male friend in a dress - not that any of my male friends regularly dress as woman, right... :-)
In December someone at work offered to arrange something, with the plan of having it in January. My boss is uber keen about anything like that, and immediately began recruiting. Seeing which way the wind was blowing I reluctantly added my name to the modest list of male colleagues.
As the weeks got closer the damn women revealed some sort of hive mind single consciousness, as the word got around and more and more seemed to get added to the list - the departmental PA, half of HR and many others. We valiantly managed to bully a few more blokes into it but it looked pretty bad from our side.
Then as the week began the tell tale signs of drop outs began. I was particularly saddened but the absence of my two male team members - I'm doing their appraisal in a couple of weeks and this will certainly be a topic of discussion. Sadly my integrity outweighs my sorry excuse for dignity, and I stuck with it.
So we went along, firstly for an "absolute" beginners class, and then a normal beginners class. As it turned out quite a few people didn't turn up, but there seemed enough of us that hiding would be an option. Or hiding in the loos.
As it turned out it was pretty good fun.
I think 13 years of Aikido helped quite a lot. Aikido is very much about balance, relaxation and technique, and as such I picked up the foot movements quite quickly, and was able to avoid tensing up. After the first hour some people had to go, meaning that for the second session there was a grand total of 3 men, and about 16 women. That made logistics a bit interesting, but some of the ladies put on gruff voices and all was good.
Certainly getting to dance with my boss, an underling and 2 people from HR wasn't something I ever expected. Not sure it trumps borrowing lipstick off my boss as part of my vampire costume at Christmas, but its a close call...
Anyway it was definitely interesting to see that whilst not wholly comparable to movement based martial arts like Aikido, I can certainly see that ballroom dancing does introduce quite a lot of the same core skills, and makes me think its something worth trying a bit more of. What I really need is a lady who fancies trying it too, but I'd accept a male friend in a dress - not that any of my male friends regularly dress as woman, right... :-)