Dancing Queen!

I went out dancing with some friends on a spur-of-the-moment thing last night. Lord, I love dancing. When I was in my late-teen/early twenty years, I loved the bump-and-grind kind of dancing. Not that I don't like it now, but last night when I was out at the club, bumping and grinding, I longed for dance classes. I need to get back into salsa classes, into tango or swing or foxtrot or SOMETHING.

My participation in the dance team in college is a point of pride for me. I had seen fliers for it my freshman and sophomore year, but I guess I was tainted with the memory of musical auditions in high school, where only those who had dance training were cast as the "dancers" (no matter how uncoordinated they may be, as long as they had received the formal training). Seeing as I had none, I didn't try out. My junior year of college, I saw another flier. Nothing was different, nothing changed...until I saw another flier a week later that stated, very plainly, "IT'S NOT TOO LATE TO TRY OUT FOR DANCE TEAM!!" I felt it was an omen for me.

So, I contacted a friend of mine that I knew was on the dance team and told her I was interested. I showed up to the try-out practice four days before the audition. Everyone else had been practicing the audition routines for ten days at this point (two weeks of practice total, including the four days that I joined them). I did what I had to do, illustrating the moves, writing the descriptions and notating them with the counts much like I did with color guard when I created a routine. I practiced so very hard for those four days, and when auditions came, I wasn't perfect, but I think I impressed the judges. Regardless, I made the team.

I was never very close to anyone on the team, which I had a hard time with. I didn't have many friends to begin with in college and while I joined the dance team because I liked to dance, I had hoped to come out of it with a friendship or two. But, I tried out for the dance team my senior year of college and again made it. You have no idea how good I felt about the fact that two years in a row, I made the dance team with no formal dance training and very little dance experience. My dance experience was summed up in the chorus dances from the musicals in high school and the limited dancing we did in color guard. But, I had a knack for it, knew I had rhythm (even for a white girl) and picked up on things quickly.

Senior year wasn't much different from junior year in terms of making friends, but one girl was more friendly to me than the others. She's the only one that I have as a Facebook friend from the dance team and one of only two friends on Facebook from college. But, nothing of substance by any stretch of the imagination. On the flip side, when bad stuff happened with student teaching and I talked to the captain/coach, they were unwavering in their efforts to make certain things happen. (I'm sorry I can't be more specific. This is a public blog and I don't know what could happen if I talk openly about it. If you want to know, email me at princessj900@yahoo.com and I will fill you in.)

Fast forward a year and a half to when I was going through my separation/divorce. I started taking salsa dancing classes through the parks and rec department and LOVED it. Sadly, the instructor could not go at the pace I would have preferred, because others did not catch on to things as quickly as I did (geez, I sound arrogant...), but I still liked it. I haven't taken classes since then and want to so badly. Ben has said that 1. he will take dance classes with me because he wants to and 2. he will take dance classes with me so that he can, and I quote, "spin me around the dance floor like a princess" when we get married. I would love nothing more, to be perfectly honest. That would make me so incredibly happy, on top of being so incredibly happy to be marrying him. :)

Anyway, that's my dancing story. The whole point was to say that I danced for a good two and a half hours off and on, so it probably ended up being an hour fifteen with the sitting/resting/drinking that occurred.