When I was about five I can remember dancing and swaying to music. That was the last time for many, many years that anyone thought my dancing was cute or attractive in any way. It was very simple, boys don’t dance. In grade school and high school I pretty much avoided dancing since I would look like a jerk, college too. Oh, it was nice to have a slow dance every now and then, loved the contact and no one, expect my poor partner, could tell my feet weren’t synchronized to anything.
I was 30 in 1980 when I arrived for a NASA position in Pasadena after a 3 year US Navy job in London and shortly decided I could do things I never had done. I learned to swim, did some rock climbing, jumped out of a perfectly good airplane. And, gulp, I figured out I wanted to dance. I took one swing step class at the community college but I wanted something beyond social dancing. So I went to a local dance school where Jamie took my money and put me in a level 1 jazz/modern dance class (they didn’t have anything lower or remedial). It was a real class and I felt like a lumbering giraffe among the fluid gazelles. I learned that after lots of practice my capacity to remember a routine increased and that lessened my embarrassment. In the all level classes there were people who danced for a living or dance was part of their fitness for the entertainment industry. They were on commercials, music videos and in performances. No one ever had an unkind word to say to me maybe because they sensed that I was ‘serious’ in my efforts and bliss would break out across my being occasionally.
I remember the first time, it was a routine to On Broadway by George Benson. Suddenly it wasn’t work, a memorized routine or watching others trying to synchronize. It flowed from outside and within My feet went where they were supposed to go, all by themselves. And I couldn’t stop.
I was still never much of a dancer, never performed. The only role once offered to me was to play a stationary tree. They were trying to include me but, no, thank you. After a year or so I stopped going to the class, still a desire to dance but didn’t feel that class was where I needed to be. And I had proved, to myself at least, that I could dance. And that was my dance experience for the next 25 years. I no longer felt socially or personally blocked from dancing just not many opportunities crossing my path.
But come relive that first time with me; kick ball change, cross step, cross step….http://tinyurl.com/p26umtn
As a kid growing up in the disco era, I always found it odd that boys didn't dance. "Disco Sucks" was their motto! But in the 90s there were plenty of young men trying to learn swing and salsa. I wish they had known when they were younger that dancing is a great way to express oneself - and an even better way to break the ice with the opposite sex!
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