Friday, July 04, 2003
Learning to Dance
Recently, my husband and I tried to take up ballroom dancing – partially inspired by a friend’s upcoming wedding reception where dancing was to be the main entertainment, but mostly because, like many folks, we’ve always wanted to. Too disorganized and self-conscious to sign up for a class, we simply borrowed some well-worn Arthur Murray videos from the public library, hoping that the old Betty Hutton song would come true, and Mr. Murray could teach us dancing in a hurry.
We began optimistically by watching the Arthur Murray “Swing” tape, but found ourselves shocked and awed by the so-called “simple 18th step pattern” counted out on a pink screen with black cartoon feet moving like the credits of an old Pink Panther movie. We had to admit that we simply could not get into the swing.
So – we retreated to the basic foxtrot tape, which promised, through the Arthur Murray Dance Studio’s “magic step” system, to swirl us around the dance floor in the “world’s most popular ballroom dance” ever since that crazy Mr. Fox dreamed it up to a ragtime tune in 1913. Peering intently at the screen, we chanted along with our suave guide the “Slow, Slow, Quick-Quick” pattern that steers a fox-trotting duo counter-clockwise around the floor to a 4/4 or 2/4 beat – with the woman having to do, as the old saying goes, everything the man does, but in heels and backwards. Plus, she doesn’t get to steer.
While the video’s model dancers, the irritatingly smug “Patrick” and “Wendy,” twirled around the studio floor in patent leather dance pumps and twinkly sandals, we bumped around the furniture in our own house, chanting “Slow, Slow, Quick-Quick,"our attempt at magic steps revealing us as stumbling Muggles at every turn. My husband’s tennis-shoed gunboats turned into feet-seeking missiles, crushing my toes every time I forgot to back up fast enough. Still, we were happy – it was fun to be taking new steps together, remembering that deep into the second decade of our partnership there are plenty of new moves we might learn together to make a kind of magic of our own.
Our practice made us tolerable, if far from perfect, and, on the shimmering summer evening of the outdoor reception, we hovered on the edges of the canopied dance floor, nervously eager to show off our foxtrotting prowess, ready to put on modest smiles for those less skilled who would be admiring us: “Oh, this? We’re just foxtrotting – yes, yes, it IS the world’s most popular ballroom dance!” But, as the DJ cranked up the first tune, we knew we were in trouble. Yup – our anticipated glory faded quickly as a dozen skilled swingers with Gap-commercial confidence swooped out onto the floor. We stood enviously on the sidelines, clutching our drinks, while others dipped and spun their 18 step pattern and put our “Slow, Slow, Quick-Quick” magic steps to shame.
The tunes soon changed, however, and, after some fortifying beverages, we ventured out, determined to take a foxtrotting turn about the floor. Once out there in the sea of summer-frocked dancers, though, we realized that was the problem – we never actually learned to turn. Given our struggles with the most basic steps, we had fast-forwarded through the advanced parts of the tape that showed the “magic left turn” for getting out of tight corners, and the complexly weaving “grapevine” step for shifting directions. We realized we’d only trained to dance in a straight line – or, more specifically, in one endlessly backward-moving diagonal, since the foxtrot shifts you slightly to one side with the “quick-quick” part of the step. Yes, our training had prepared us only for foxtrotting through long stretches of the western Nebraska prairie, say, or the Oklahoma Panhandle. Certainly not on a crowded floor with other unexpectedly shifting bodies.
That night, we did manage to shake our groove thing to some disco classics, and when the music was slow, we chucked our magic step training and fell back on what worked in seventh-grade – the humble, hugging, back and forth sway that, for many of us once accompanied conversations that went something like: “I’ll always be your girlfriend – even after we go off to high school!”
After we’d giggled ourselves into exhaustion (hey – even bad dancing is hard work!), we left the reception to the strains of music that inspired the following philosophical – and biological – question: Can one foxtrot to “The Chicken Dance?” We didn’t stay to find out. Instead, with music floating through the night air, we sauntered into the parking lot, arm in arm – and for the first time that evening, perfectly in rhythm with one another.