A friend of mine has just started ballet lessons. She’s pirouetting and pas-de-deuxing like crazy and developing the firm, lithe legs of her youth – which isn’t that far back.
She’s signed up for a second course of lessons. What makes it really worthwhile now, she says, is that the other women in the class have loosened up and are friendlier and up for a quiet giggle.
“In the beginning, they were so serious. I was embarrassed to be the only one to find it funny when I went wrong,”she said.
A healthy attitude. Going wrong is what we all do when we fling ourselves headlong into the uncharted territory of Expression Through Dance and laughing is so much more becoming than puffy-faced snivelly-nosed misery.
I somehow missed out on ballet. Must have been too busy playing kick-the-can with the boys – although I did flirt briefly with the cha-cha-cha in our local church hall. Mother was a whizzo ballroom dancer in her youth and thought it would be nice for me to learn to trip the light fantastic.
I took an instinct dislike to the instructor. He was a short rectangular man in a grey suit with grey hair and black-framed specs. Intense and self-important. I’m not entirely sure how, but he gave me the strong impression of being on castors. The first time I met him, he smelled of fried egg.
My school country-dancing partner, ‘Rock’ Hudson (no resemblance whatsoever – white blonde instead of dark, hetero rather than homo, trainspotter not actor) was prevailed upon to accompany me, which was a very bad move. He often reduced me to pathetic attacks of helpless laughter. Mr Rectangle was not impressed.
We had to stand separately and practice the steps of the cha-cha-cha, which was just as well. We were at that last-year-of-primary school, pre-hormonal stage where Rock’s attitude was very much “Eww. Do I absolutely HAVE to hold hands with her? Oh God. Oh well, I will hold them very forcibly to demonstrate that I am hating every minute and if I have to suffer, then she will suffer pain too. For I am not the type for this nancy-boy dancing lark.”
Obviously that isn’t a verbatim account but you get my meaning. He’d always tread on my toes to make me yell. I would, in turn, when the opportunity arose, inflict on him a Chinese burn. And so our pre-adolescent affections were expressed in outbursts of violence interposed by hilarity.
Forward, back, cha-cha-cha. Dum, da-dum, da-dum-dum-dumdum-dumdum etc. Forward, back – same old thing. After two weeks, Rock refused to go back. So did I. We continued, however, to be partners in country dancing at school and still enjoyed charging about enthusiastically doing a kind of Reservoir Dogs version of the Gay Gordons.
Years later, line dancing was the latest thing. By then, I had sampled the hedonistic pleasure of cavorting at discos and squiffy, end-of-evening smooches. To be frank, I doubted how dancing in a line could possibly be rewarding. Shades of the cha-cha-cha, which I had never seen performed by two people in direct contact, remember.
But it’s good to try new things, meet new people, spoil their evening, make enemies effortlessly…..that kind of thing. And so it happened that three of us girls (we all had young children and were a bit stir-crazy and going through a wild period of trying anything. The week before, we’d been singing Jersusalem to a photo of Hubert Parry at WI meeting) attended a line-dancing class in a bog-standard village hall with a bouncy wooden floor.
Not sure what it is about line-dancing that attracts the well-nourished but there were at least forty of them in that night. Rows of them, on the sprung wooden floor. The effect of them all stamping in unison was enough to throw you off balance when you walked into the hall.
The front row consisted of deadly-serious women, most of them in proper cowboy boots and two wearing rhinestone-studded white stetsons with fringes. They looked like cowgirls whose horses had all died. With the exception of two who had modelled themselves on Dolly Parton, they were all bulging furiously out of various shades of blue jeans. Any sudden moves and any one of them could have exploded blasting sequin shrapnel over the entire hall.
They were the regulars. They weren’t very friendly. They were grimly intent on getting it right. There was no joy about their performance. They might as well have been wearing jack boots.
So us new girls snuck in at the back, almost up against the wall. To our right was a corridor to the loos, to our left was a doorway. We joined a line and tried to listen hard as the instructor at the front barked out impossible instructions involving strutting, stomping, vineing and weaving.
The stomping came naturally enough. Strutting – at least strutting in the right direction to the beat – was a little more tricky.
Vineing was a move too far, entailing lurching suddenly in one direction or another.
“Left vine!” the instructor yelled and we left-vined over-enthusiastically right through the door and into a heap in the junk room.
We couldn’t move for suppressed hysterics and it took some time to care enough to re-join the group. When we did slink back in, the damage was done. The front row gave us evil looks. We didn’t much mind. I wasn’t interested in dressing up like Ellie-Mae Clampett anyway. Dungarees didn’t suit me even when I was three.
That was positively the last time I had any dance instructions of any kind. If I signed up for anything, it would be for flamenco or tango classes but I fear I may be doomed to failure.
I was about to join a salsa class a couple of years back (yes, even in spite of the crushing news that the few men in the class were all shorter than me!! AAAARGH!!) but it had to be cancelled when the teacher was sent to prison for molesting one of his proteges.
So I don’t really stand a chance at dance. Ballet? Definitely ne pas de deux!
Boadicea's Chariot 
Oh my god, I really must return and read this properly, Jan.
🙂 Yes. It’s a bit long.
I had a few ballet lessons when I was about five – I have a photo of me as a the leader of a troupe of snowflakes in a sequined tutu that my mother made.
We had ballroom dancing lessons at school – the problem was that it was an all girls’ school and somehow I only ever learnt to lead…
Free style dancing is my forte… just move out of the way of my elbows 🙂
I never had ballet lessons. 😦
I know what a pas-de-deux is though.
Brilliant! My only dancing lessons were those which were in school, usually as a substitute for outdoor games when the weather was bad. And I was always the man. But even they have stood me in good stead, for the occasional ‘Burns Night Supper’ where dancing is part of the package.
But my father wouldn’t pay for ballet lessons. “You’re going to be too tall to be a ballet dancer.” Somehow he missed the point, I feel. I mean how many small girls actually go on to be ballet dancers, anyway? And it may have taught me a little grace of movement. Maybe not. I would have probably stood out like a sore thumb.
Yup! YOu do write some absolutely cracking blogs, Jan…blasting sequined shrapnel – could be a description of any Leeds nightclub circa 2005…that’ll keep me going all day that one.
My other half, being French, can only do a sort of Latino shimmy. so I did try the salsa for a while. And let’s just say I had a brief encounter with some sort of African dance malarky in Paris. Once was enough. I tend to end up all squeamish and squirming, in a sort of ‘eugh…hands off’ way. Too uptight and Anglosaxon, obviously; or maybe just too ‘rave generation’…I dunno.
Ballet is lovely to watch though.
Siouxsie and the Banshees’ line ‘You may be a lover but you ain’t no ****ing dancer’ applies to me, I like to think. Certainly the second part.
My daughter started doing ballet recently; she’s been doing other dancing for years and she’s very good. Gets it from her mother.
Nice blog. 🙂
Ballet? No thanks. Nothing on earth can make me wear those horrible tights. (I presume a female consiparicy on it)
Amusing blog Jan. “They looked like cowgirls whose horses had all died.” cracked me up.
Good blog.
I’ve always danced, not ballet but ballroom, Latin American, English Country dances and all those ancient English stuff like the Military Two Step.
We used to go to country club dances every weekend where people dressed properly, had dinner and asked each other to dance. Bit embarrassing if you couldn’t do it properly! (Watch the reverse turns!)
Never thought of line dancing, nothing more peculiar than a row of people staring at nothing, but then it appears to be Irish which probably explains it! And my total lack of interest.
Every body could dance properly when I was young, it was considered a social grace that one just did. Even at Uni, most could, if pushed! You were considered an anti social nerd if you couldn’t/wouldn’t make the effort. It is a shame really that so few people these days seem to make an effort at anything. Great fat shambling ill dressed lumps slouching along. The lot of them could do with a good scrub, a decent haircut, deportment lessons and lose 50lbs! Along with some lessons in elocution, can hardly understand a word they say! Not surprising they have such low self esteem.
Dancing makes you feel good, lifts the spirits, look at people leaving a dance floor (social not competitive), most of them will be smiling and laughing.
It wasn’t the length, Jan, rather more the latest of the hour. Brilliantly funny post; it really made me chuckle.
I love dancing; learnt the ballroom stuff at school plus English country dance to County competition level.
I also love modern dancing and almost anything where you can get up to some really good music “and do your thing”! Much better for you than all this gym nonsense and so much more fun.
They don’t seem to teach any from of dance in schools today, which is a great shame.
Hi Boadicea- a five year old in a sequined tutu is always sweet! Yes ballroom dancing lessons where you actually dance with another person might have helped but at the time, that kind of dancing was for “old” people!
Janus, you have the advantage. I confess I haven’t got a clue what a pas de deux is. Possibly the one where the ballerina is on point and puts her leg up and her partner turns her round holding only her ankle? When blokes do that in the Forest of Dean, they call it assault causing abh.
You can see that my idea of ballet follows the Dawn French model if anyone saw her with the fabulous Darcey Bussell….
Yes Pseu, precisely. We should have been given the chance to be graceful and feminine ballerinas. I have a vague recollection of mum pronouncing that I had all the grace of a baby elephant. 🙂
Claire, Latino shimmying sounds good as long as it doesn’t generate too much static electricity. Shocking! Were you a Leeds lass? I like Leeds. Got to know it when no 2 son was in Uni there.
Brendano, you saying you have a wife who’s a dancer and you can’t even jive? Shame on you. You only have to stand there and twirl her….that’s my theory anyway.. 😉
Hi Levent. I can understand your being put off by the tights thing but male ballet dancers usually look amazing. Like they have been sculpted. Rather beautiful.
Janh1 – a “pas de deux” is “the father of twins”. 😦
Hi Christina. Brilliant! You have reminded me that I used to do the Military Two-step with mumsie in her hallway. She used to sing the Joyce Grenfell song “Stately as two galleons, we sail across the floor, doing the Military Two-step as in the days of yore…”
Good times when everyone could dance because it was one of those things everyone learned to do. My mother went dancing as a teenager, dyeing her legs with cold tea and drawing a pretend seam up the back of her legs with a sharpened brown crayon. Stockings were an expensive luxury.
Greetings Araminta. So you are another very accomplished dancer. Excellent! I can waltz in a very basic manner but had some fun on N Years Eve with a guy who really *could* dance. Far too advanced for me. It all happened so fast, I didn’t know what was going on half the time. 🙂
😀 Bearsy. Pah! (de-deux) Hope you had a good birthday.
Janh1; yup, I lived in Leeds until three years ago…miss it like mad, actually, for nightclubs, shopping, mad lesbian choir that I used to go to (don’t ask!) In comparision, Blackburn is the back of beyond. Sigh!
By the way, no way do you look old enough to have son no2 at uni! I thought you were my age from your avatar!
Dancing?
Sob!
OZ
Morning Claire. You shouldn’t have said that. I *really* want to know about the mad lesbians!!!! Blog it, girl! 🙂
Oh I’m way older than you, probably. My kids are both all growed and working in Hong Kong and Japan at the moment. The helmet hides my comb-over 😀
OZ, As you have a lupine soul I imagine you dancing solemnly in the moonlight on a craggy outcrop not far from the cave.
Janh – @ #21 The helmet hides your comb-over?????
From the lupine rule book, “Never dance when sober”. Never have and don’t intend to start now. 🙂
OZ
Janh1, haw and good evening.
Driven by the spirit of enquiry which has made us Jocks justly famous, yet still modest, humble and self-deprecating throughout the ages, I have been looking at the ‘Top Authors’ part of the ‘Site Stats’ to which Bearsy drew our attention last week.
You’re at No. 9 today which is a travesty, in my opinion. More strangely, you are at No. 9 with this particular post, apparently.
Missed it at the time but really enjoyed reading it tonight. Thank you.
And, since I’m here anyway and it’s what I can’t help doing. Sixth paragraph, fourth word? ‘instinctive’ or ‘instant’ instead of ‘instinct’. perchance?
Evening John. You know, I spotted your reply and thought “Who’s been blogging about the Archers’ theme tune?” and hey presto, it’s not at all, it’s a cha-cha-cha and one of mine! No-one recognised it though, sadly. Love the comments on this, though.
I haven’t even seen Top Authors. Well no 9 is in the top ten though, and my efforts are variable and spasmodic, so I reckon that’s probably better than I deserve!
Typo, John and as ever, my undying gratitude for pointing it out. It should say “instant” as you correctly divined. 🙂
Janh1, good evening.
With the utmost respect, I do hope that you are not a bit of an Anne Widdicombe when it comes to dum de dumming?
As any fule kno, ‘Dum, da-dum, da dum dum dumdum, dumdum’ is obviously ‘Wheels Cha-cha’and a reference to your excellent blog. I suffered six years of said tune and it is forever seared into my scarred memory:-
http://embraforever.wordpress.com/2010/02/13/my-dancing-career/
I gave up on ‘The Archers’ when they suddenly sprang on us the absurd storyline that the fragrant Caroline Bone had been conducting a clandestine and torrid love affair with the appalling Brian Aldridge for years.
But I still know that their theme tune is ‘Dum dedum de dumdydum, dumdy dum de dum dum’.
Vote early and vote often in the coming weeks of ‘SCM’! Anyone but Widders!