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MICHIGAN DANCE CHALLENGE: MY OBSERVATIONS

Great dancer are performers. This is an ugly truth.  I wish it were not so.  Dancing is a performance art. This is what I observed this year at the Michigan Dance Challenge.  But I learned much more than this.  Great dancers are people.  Great dancers are people that love to dance.  The dance come first.  The performance is a necessary by-product of something much greater… much more soulful.

One couple really captured my attention.  Oh, there were others… many others… that were great dancers.  There were couples that were entertaining.  There were many couples worthy of sharing the dance floor with other equally matched dancers.  Others were inspiring in a dancual sort of way.  One couple brought pure elegance to the dance floor.  I know of no other way to describe it.  Another couple brought beauty.  I mean this is the most sincere way.  Some of the ladies’ gowns were simply gorgeous.  There were lots of beautiful people, but one couple stood out to me as embodying the beauty of the dance. 

There was one couple that again and again, all night long captured me.  Their smiles, their clothing… Their posture.  Their lines.  Perfect.  But there was something more.  They were “The Dance”.  Simply… beautiful.  Their dancing captured me.  I will never accept the notion that what I watched was contrived or scripted.  No.  What I saw was pure… the smiles… the dancing… what I witnessed could never be choreographed.   What I saw was the soul of Ballroom Dancing.

Make no mistake.  I am under the spell of no illusion.  I recognize the hours… hundreds… even years of sacrificial days and nights spent in a dance studio in some non-descript neighborhood in some city… somewhere where those passing by would have no clue what was happening so close by… oblivious to the heart and soul of dancing that was happening in that studio that they didn’t even know existed.  I don’t want to even think about the dollars that it cost to bring a person to this moment of the dance.  But I know that Thursday night I was near such people.  I was near the soul not of performance, but of the dance.

One couple, dance after dance, opened their heart… and I could see the heart of the dance.  It would anger me if they would ever say to me, “We fooled you.  It was nothing but scripted choreography.”  Better said, it would break my heart.  I would have to ask, “Why would you pretend?  Do you not understand the power of what you are doing?”  I want to believe that there are some dancers that really comprehend the value… the value of the gift of dance which we have been given.  I want to believe that Thursday night I watched someone who understood this truth.

Thank you dancers; all of you.  What a wonderful evening you gave my wife and me.  And to that one couple… you have inspired me.  Thank you.

MICHIGAN DANCE CHALLENGE 2014

I told Joni, "Don't plan anything for next Thursday.  We have plans."  That was last week.  She asked want the plan was.  I told her it was it surprise.

We started our evening with a couple of fantastic cheeseburgers @ Famous Hamburger in Dearborn, Michigan.  http://www.famoushamburger.com   I cannot more highly recommend this place.  AWESOME FOOD!

I kept my eye on my watch... at about 5 minutes 'till 7 we left the restaurant and headed the 1 1/2 miles to The Henry.  We grabbed a great parking spot just a few short steps to the door that would put us right outside the Ballroom where we would spend the next 3 1/2 hours watching the Michigan Dance Challenge.

What an AWESOME night.  After about an hour, we spotted Glenn, our Dance Instructor.  Minutes later he joined us and we moved up to seats at the very edge of the dance floor.  Thanks, Glenn.

I will post in a subsequent post my thoughts and observations, but for right now I want to get some pics uploaded.  I took over 1800 pictures.  After editing, I am down to about 250.  I will post ALL of them on my FLICKR website.  Just follow the link:
MICHIGAN DANCE CHALLENGE 2014 THURSDAY NIGHT PICTURES https://www.flickr.com/photos/120716462@N02/sets/ 

There you will find all the pics in several Sets.  Please enjoy and PLEASE leave comments.  Thanks.  Obviously, if anyone would like a pic removed, please contact me at kcpanjack@yahoo.com and I will be glad to remove it.

It was my pleasure to be able to watch all of you dance... it really was.  You all are simply amazing.  Joni and I have only been dancing for about 2 years.  I don't suppose we will ever be able to dance as well as all of you, but it is our joy to watch.

Here are just a few of the many pics that we took.  Enjoy, but please go to FLICKR to view them all.

Thanks for a giving Joni and I a wonderful Date Night.

KC

PRACTICE

Someone once said that practice makes perfect.  That is not true.  Practice does not make something perfect, it makes it permanent.   Whatever activity we practice, must be practiced correctly if it is ever to be done perfectly (or close to perfectly).  If we practice something incorrectly, those mistakes done over and over again will tend to become permanent errors.  We must strive to practice correctly.  One of the greatest coaches of all time, Vince Lombardi, said, "Practice doesn't make perfect. Only perfect practice makes perfect."

However, what if we fail to practice at all?  What if we spend absolutely no time practicing?  What is the result?  Some coaches might say, “I’d rather you don’t practice at all, if you are not going to practice correctly.”  And while that might tend to minimize mistakes, it does nothing to maximize correctness.  Although I would agree that to practice something in an incorrect manner is definitely not something that I want to do, neither do I think avoiding practice altogether is a good idea.

What is the answer?  In order to improve, one must practice.  There is no way to escape this truth.  However, one must practice correctly… and often.  Practice is the method in which we fail and fix, and fail and fix, and fail and fix, over and over again.  Practice is a process of polishing away imperfections.  Practice is overcoming obstacles.  Real or imagined.  Physical or mental.  Practice is not performance.

Can one improve without practice?  In other words, can one improve with instruction alone?  Yes.  But practice and instruction are two different things and one can never be proficient without practice.  One can know the steps of a dance without practice.  But one cannot know the dance without paying the price of practice.

All of this is to say, “I must find time… I must make time… to practice.”  The reason I struggle to retain what I’ve learned is a result of, not the least of many reasons, my failure to practice.  I am not maximizing the benefit of instructional time, when I fail to practice what I’ve learned.

HOW ABOUT SOME SALSA??

Here is a link to my Jewel of the Seas Blog.  This particular post is of interest to dancers, so I thought I would link it here.  Enjoy... and if anyone can make recommendations, please do so.

KC

http://royalcaribbeanjewel.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-bout-little-salsa-dancin-that-is.html

THE FIRST DANCE

I wonder about the first dance.  Think about it for a moment.  In an “Adam danced when he saw Eve for the first time” sort of way.  Someplace, somewhere, there was a first dance. 

It might have very well been a solo dance. Perhaps a hunter dancing after he kills a buffalo; because he knows his family won’t starve.  But then he gets home with his bounty and his wife steps out to greet her returning hunter and she spontaneously dances a twirl in celebration.  And then… it happens… two lone dancers realize that their celebration would be better with a partner.  And the husband reaches out with his hand with invitation and the first couple’s dance happens.

All dances since then are related to that first dance.  At some point in history, a man naturally, intuitively, in response to some inner song… in response to joy and passion… he raised his hand and a woman without hesitation moved into the opening and did the first underarm turn… the first… ever.  From that moment on there was no turning back.  Dance had begun.

A few days later, a neighbor happened to be walking by and saw the man and his wife dancing.  They briefly noted that their neighbor was watching, but they didn’t care.  They didn’t let it interrupt their dance.

Intrigued the neighbor later inquired, “What was that I saw you and your wife doing the other day?”

“Oh, that… we call it dancing.  Why?”

“Well… it looked like fun.”

“It is.”  And then he suggested to his neighbor that he should learn how.  The neighbor said that he didn’t know how.  The dancer said, “No problem.  I’ll teach you.  You and your partner can come to my place tomorrow afternoon at 5 o’clock.”  

And… here we are today.

THE SURGE

The surge of learning is a phenomenon.  I wish it was a learning curve, but for me, it doesn’t seem to work that way.  It is not a curve that travels in only one direction.  It is a surge… that comes and goes.  It seems to advance and then recedes.  The hope is that it ultimately advances more than it recedes, but it is not one directional.  “Two steps forward, one step backwards”, comes to mind.

However, it is not that simple.  It is unseen tidal surges.  One moment unfelt and undetectable.  The next moment frightening, crashing, breaking waves. It is dangerous rip currents.  It is even the doldrums, when the prevailing winds have disappeared, trapping a student for days, even weeks, seemingly stranded… going nowhere.  It is all of these, and more.  It is a phenomenon.

Tonight learning was a pleasure.  It was work that wasn’t work.  It was fun.  It was frustrating.  It was building, growing larger.  It was a magical mystery.  The ability to learn is linked to a willingness to admit that one needs to learn… more than that; it is that one wants to learn.  Still greater, all of this is eclipsed by the knowing that one is supposed to learn.  We are created to learn.  When I stop learning, I stop living; and living is a phenomenon.

Many adventures in life are momentary.  We must capture the moments.  If we want not to miss living, we must live in the moment.  This is not to say that we do not look where we are going.  But we feel the moment.   It is the moments that we truly experience.   There is a truth that I have learned in many of my life pursuits; it is vitally important that we look where we are going.  However, we must sense the moment.  When I am slalom skiing, my legs feel the water beneath me, but my eyes are always looking beyond the wake.  I am coming to understand that this is true of all learning.  We need to see the distant goal, but we must feel the moment.  And… when we get this right… is it awesome.  It is remarkable living.

Dancing, for me, really brings this into perspective.  I don’t have enough lifetime remaining to learn all the dances I want to learn.  Let me restate that: I don’t have enough lifetime remaining to learn all the dances I want to dance well.  But I can experience the moment of a specific dance.  And then when the wave of learning carries me along, I comprehend the connection.  New steps no longer seem so strange and foreign.  Dances are not a collection of separate pieces.   Steps become sequences, which in turn relate to other sequences, which relate to other dances.  Learning becomes more intuitive… more spontaneous.  The “I get it” moments come more frequently.