AT THE BRIDGE

Have you ever had the experience of someone saying something which you hear, but you don’t hear?  Sure you have.  Someone says something to you, and you listen, and you understand.   And then… days later… it hits you again.  Only this time in a different or more significant way.  You hear it again, differently, in the recesses of your mind, and a greater good…a  greater truth begins to develop…  Yes? 

Well that is what happened to me recently.  I was listening to Glenn explain the timing for a certain sequence of steps.  I don’t remember what the dance was… it might have been the West Coast Swing… it doesn’t matter.  It was something about a particular dance having a 6-count basic, and then something about if a particular song had “x” number of counts, then he said something about choreographing…   I was listening, and though at this moment I don’t remember all the details, I understood then the lesson point he was making.  However the significance wouldn’t hit me until days later.

 

I should point out that Joni and I have only been dancing (taking lessons) for about 1 1/2 years.   We are very much novices.  The best way I can describe our present level of dancing is that we can fool those who know very little about dancing.  I am in absolutely no position to be offering “choreography” advise.  But it was this “idea”… the “choreography” idea… that awakened the “dance” part of my brain several days later.

 

It is very easy when taking lessons to think of dance as steps.  We have all seen those charts that show numbered sole-of-a-shoe outlines which depict the sequence and placement of the feet which should produce a particular dance step.  Slow, slow, quick, quick.  Or… slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, quick, quick, slow.   Truth be told, for dancers like me, there is so much that has to take place to make this very simple 3 / 6 counts-turned-into-placements-of-the-feet happen without falling over, or dropping your partner, or any number of other embarassments, that little thought… let me correct that… absolutely no thought is given to the bigger picture of what will become a dance.  Something that happens to music… and not just to random notes, but to a song… with a beginning, a middle, and an end. 

 

All of this came to me as I was listening to Michael Buble sing “A Foggy Day”, which has to be one of the greatest Foxtrot songs ever, as I was trying to drive down I-75 in Detroit.  In a vehicle which was not equipped with cruise-control, I was taking my right foot off the accelerator just enough to try to join my left foot as I danced one of my favorite dances, all the while trying to keep my speed up with the flow of traffic.  It was at the bridge, and I don’t mean on the highway, I mean in the song, that I thought, “this would be a perfect place for a grapevine”.  So…  I was attempting to do that on the floor mat beneath my feet.  Thank God I was alone…

 

My point here is not whether or not I was right about the placement of this particular sequence of steps, I’m sure that other way more qualified individuals would make very different recommendations as to what might be more appropriate at this particular moment in this particular song.  My point is simply that for a very brief moment I envisioned the dance as a whole.  Not even as a collection of several separate parts.  No… I was imagining the greater dance.  The union of a dance and a song.   Unique… 

 

It’s at moments like this that I just don’t understand why everyone doesn’t love to dance….