What a refreshing way to take a break… work on something else.
We made a decision many months ago to concentrate our dance
efforts upon only two dances; the Tango and the Rumba. I had many reasons for that decision, and I
believe it has proven to have been a good one.
We have made, IMHO, a lot of progress.
We are still not where I would like to be - full bronze - but we are certainly not where we were.
Recently, as we were nearing the end of our scheduled lesson
time, our heads and our bodies were pretty much exhausted. The lesson had been very productive. Much had been achieved. However…
Why is there always a “however”?
If I may, I would like to try to explain what happens as I
am advancing my dance skills / knowledge.
It seems as if there is a wall that stands firm between my head and my
body. That wall keeps warring factions
separated. The two enemies are my brain
and my body, and trust me, they are at war with each other. Cuban Motion is a common battlefield for
these two enemies.
Glen gives a piece of instruction or advice, I listen. My mind comprehends. And then… my body tries to respond. Tries.
I didn’t say my body executes the movement as instructed. Oh, no.
I “try”. Only “try”.
Why won’t my feet do what is expected? Oh, crap… now my posture is bad. So I fix my posture and then my feet are
wrong. Don’t forget, heel lead! That “wall” is keeping me from truly dancing. Slow, slow, quick, quick, slow. Unless I am leading a Rock to Corte / Double
Corte, and then it is quick, quick, slow….
It seems like I can dance in my
brain, or I can dance in my feet. But… I
can’t do both. This is exactly where I
was and I suspect Glenn knew it.
“We’ve got a few minutes, what else would you like to work
on?”
Seriously? It was
going to be “work” just to get my shoes changed and walk out the studio
door.
“How about some Hustle?”
A completely different dance… really?
That suggestion, though at time I didn’t know it, was
perfect. As we began to dance the Hustle,
the connection between head and feet was almost instantly made. Wait… that’s not correct. It was not as if some long distance
connection was made. No… it was as if
the wall had been torn down and my head and feet were now one. It was now in my heart. Oh… I don’t mean that “Jesus lives in my
heart” place. It wasn’t spiritual. It was dance-ual. I know; that’s not a word. But it should be.
Dance-ual is the condition a person experiences when the
body and the mind are joined together and become the unified heart. The music is no longer external. It isn’t moving from someplace outside the
body into the mind, which then instructs the feet. Instead, the rhythm becomes internal, it
becomes natural… intuitive… as if we are doing something that we were born to
do.
Some would suggest that it is just “muscle memory”. But I would suggest that it is much, much
more… much more primal than just muscle memory.
It is as if you were able to return to a place stripped of doubt and
worry… a place where confidence and joy lives… It is returning to Mom’s
kitchen… to her meat loaf. It is
swimming in that farm pond, the summer you learned to swim, where you first felt the joy and the freedom of
lazily backstroking yourself from one side to the other beneath the summer
sun. It is returning to that first
dance with a lover.
Last night it happened for a second time. With just minutes remaining and both of us
mentally and physically exhausted… “How
about some East Coast Swing?”
“Is Glenn nuts?” I
didn’t say it out loud, but I was thinkin’ it. At
least last week I could say that Joni and I both like the Hustle. But, East Coast Swing… Triple Time Swing!!!! No way!!!
Neither of us really like this dance.
Oh, it’s fun to watch, but not to dance.
Is he crazy??? We had tried many
times before. Let’s face it, there is a
bunch of music to which East Coast Swing is a natural fit. To not be able to Swing is almost the same as
not being able to dance. So, we really
need to be able to East Coast Swing.
But… for the two of us, we had not yet gotten the “swing” of the
Swing. It always felt to me like I was
Fred Flintstone at the bowling alley when I tried to Triple Step. My triples seemed more like octiples (again a
new word, but you get the idea – there’s waaay too much going on down there!).
Again… even though it felt in some ways like our very first
dance lesson, all of that concentrated work on two other dances was now
magically paying off. Anyone observing
would not have been able to see it, but the “wall” was being torn down. Heart, head, and body were coming together. Somehow, and I don’t know how, it seemed
easier than I had remembered. Somehow,
all that Tango and Rumba concentration was being converted into something
else. Music was happening. Something dance-ual was happening.
Stay tuned…
