Saturday, December 3, 2011

If One Day I Disappear, Look For Me In Scottland

The car ride to dance class served as a place for great debate. AV was in town and S wanted to know how to get her into the class. Should we approach Jean outside the dance room? Should we go up to her after we settle in? I opted for just starting to dance and seeing how long it took for Jean--or anyone for that matter--to realize someone else was in the room who is not really part of the class.

All this discussion became a moot point as we arrived at exactly 8 in the parking lot. That means that Jean had been dancing for at least 40 minutes already because as we know by now, "on time" is early and anything after that is late. So we jumped right into the dance. Actually, the music was on pause but we scurried into place and basically ignored what anyone else was doing until Jean put the music back on.

I had originally thought Jean was not going to notice AV at all or it would take at least have the class time to realize it. Good thing I did not bet on it. A lot of regulars were missing from class, so AV was not hiding in a crowd. Also, since she'd missed the instructional portion of the first dance, she was pretty much on her own, one beat behind, though she was holding her own.

After the dance, here came Jean, asking who our new dancer was. S and I introduced her as she introduced herself so it came out as saldkjfdlkj;ltdjhlkgjlkdfhklht, but everyone got the gist that she was visiting from out of town. Then Jean asked, Will you be back next week too?, all excited. No, we all answered simultaneously. Jean looked disheartened. Somehow she found the strength to move on.

We learned one new dance, the Bachata. (Remember when Robbie tells Johnny that their final dance of the summer is going to be the PaCHANga! in Dirty Dancing? That's kinda what this reminded me of). Then everyone got into a very serious discussion about how Jean chooses the dances. She chooses them FIRST. Then she checks to see if they are on YouTube. She laughed as she described her beginner class and their reliance on YouTube, and then claimed they were getting impressively better. No one asked Jean where she chose the dances from, though. If not from YouTube, where is this all-powerful, all-knowing list? She made sure we understood that we needed to search Bachata LINE DANCE, and there was only one link for it on the side in blue.

I just searched for it. I found several links for it. None of them were in blue. Some of them were still a completely different dance. Still, I found one that fits us. I especially enjoy the guy in the front row since he makes it his own, facing in directions that face no one wall at once.



Which is really what our class is like.

We also did Homeward Bound which has fast become my favorite dance because of the restart that half the class does not do, which means people send themselves flying across the room with these long strides to the side while the rest of us do a completely different part of the dance because it skips the flying part. Unfortunately, Jean gave too much warning and only one person missed the restart only once instead of two or three people missing it twice. Sigh. It's sad when people learn.

S asked for Something In The Water, and amazingly, Jean played it next. I really love the song, and the dance is a bonus. It is also pretty easy to pick up on. AV saw that Jean was going so fast, but that was because we had already learned these dances. I reassured AV that sometimes Jean goes just as fast and then stops teaching even with new dances.

We did the Love Letter Waltz. Somehow, we all kept bunching up on top of each other even though we were spread out at first. At one point, we were doing a half turn and I felt Jean coming at me, face to face, head on. Startled, I went to turn but was on the wrong foot and wound up literally running in a circle back towards S, who took one look at me running on my tiptoes and began to laugh and gasp at the same time. I ran right into place, though, and had much more room to finish the dance.

Oh, and I almost fell over at one point because of a random attack of the crazy legs.

Class wound down and as we got our coats, the woman from last week brought over a bunch of papers she'd printed out for us about Scottish Folk Dancing. Again, she praised the dance style and the dancers. She's been going to the classes since only September and she's already got so much passion for it. She really wants us to go because we're young, so much younger than the older folk who kind of can still dance. She even suggested we go a bit early like she does to get in extra dance time with the instructor. From the classroom, down the hall, down the stairs, and through the parking lot, she raved about the class and the style, even after S broke the news that I would totally not be interested since they change dance partners during the dances and I'm not that kind of girl.

She said we should call her if we decide to go. Then she was off to her car. S pointed out that with all the energy and encouragement, she still hadn't given us any way to actually contact her. Maybe she's torn between having to do her duty to convert us and not wanting to brainwash us Scottish-style. I still haven't checked it out on YouTube; I'm scared that maybe I'll like it too much.

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