Mary’s asked me to blog out my experience of her zero-to-hero, dance-ballroom-in-one-month-flat intensive course. The goal is for me to be able to dance -- in three or four different styles -- a month from now.
Well, actually a month from this morning. I’m one day into it now. Although I was not a complete novice when I walked into the studio this morning, I was basically a complete beginner. I’d taken a handful of classes over the previous couple of years, including group classes where I was over my head and clearly the worst student of the bunch. I’ve never, ever, voluntarily danced in a social setting, so she’s pretty much starting with the worst-case scenario, in terms of dance talent. If this works on me, it’ll work on anyone.
The first lesson was devoted to a basic waltz, and jitterbug. I came into the waltz knowing, intellectually, that it was based on the “box step.” I say “intellectually” because I only really knew what the box step was, not how to do it. This is the sort of knowledge you might get from sitting and watching a reality show. IE, of no real use.
At the beginning, I need to learn some kind of basic step pattern, I guess. This is a sequence of left and right turns, and various ways to move across the dance floor. The movements of dancers on dance floors always looked as chaotic as the movement of molecules to me, but now I realize that there’s a “line of dance” which moves counterclockwise around the floor. That can be my excuse for feeling more comfortable turning left, which seems to make sense in that context, compared to turning right.
The basic building blocks of the jitterbug are easier to grasp, but when Mary shows me the “1-2-rock step” sequence, I can’t seem to duplicate it. I feel like there’s no mobility at all in my hips and spine. I dance the jitterbug as if I’m in a full-body cast.
Right now, I’m held back by two things; one is just remembering what to do, and the other is basic physical programming… I have to do more than just “step,” I have to pay attention to which foot is carrying my weight, which part of the foot touches down first, and which muscles shift my weight around. All of this is geared towards, later on, making my lead easy to follow. For now, Mary’s just pushing me around the floor, like a shopping cart with a wonky wheel.
Day 2
One good thing about having lessons every day is that I don’t have time to forget much, between lessons. And, although I should be practicing in idle moments -- like the line at Starbucks -- even if I don’t, the lessons come so close together that I may be able to fool Mary into believing I’ve practiced.
Today was a reprise of yesterday, with a goal of having me firm up my waltz, stringing together more elements between “oops” moments when I have to stop and regroup. Of course, for now, it’s relatively easy since there aren’t other people moving around on the floor with us. But as it is, the corners of the room come up surprisingly quickly.
I’m still struggling with a lack of physical awareness about where my weight is -- over which foot. I need to transfer weight from one foot to the other swiftly and more important, be aware of where it is. Evidently, dancers know (at least implicitly) which foot they’re standing on. I have to pause and think about it, and each of those pauses is, literally, a chance to get off on the wrong foot.
Still there were a few steps in the right direction. Trying to get that jitterbug stiffness out suddenly got easier when Mary said, “Step as if you’re heavier than you really are,” which somehow seemed to work, even though the advice makes no logical sense.
She also showed me how to turn from the hips, moving my body before my feet. And, I’m starting to understand that I need to be thinking about my spine moving around the room. The central axis of the body is moving in certain directions, and it really doesn’t matter how I happen to pivot around it.
Day 3
The day began with a review of the footwork in my waltz. Actually not the footwork, just the actual way my foot has to come down–so that the free foot lands heel-then-toe, then the next step is on my toes only, and the one after that lands toe-then-heel. You’d think this’d be easy to remember and execute, but it’s not. I should practice walking like this all the time (but I’d be limping along like Quasimodo.)
Third day, third dance… Mary introduces me to the cha cha, which has a new (to me) requirement to ‘pedal’ my feet. The rhythm is quite quick; a sudden little mix of sidesteps and rocksteps that has me instantly lost. Luckily, the dance studio has a device in its sound system that allows her to slow the beat. She turns the knob until the beat is coming at a speed that I can keep up with. At this point it’s comically slow. The beat’s literally retarded. You’d think it would be easier to learn to dance with music, but right now it doesn’t help me keep time, it’s just a distraction.
The key thing to remember is that there’s more to each movement than just assuming a certain position. I need to pay attention to which muscles I’m using to move, and bear in mind that the body moves the feet. Right now, I’m still trying to get my feet in position, and hope that the rest of me will follow.
Day 4
We continue the cha cha, extending my limited repertoire with a Crossover, which is pretty simple. It basically just involves turning 90 degrees and taking a step, then backing up and turning again to face my partner. Still, I manage to screw it up, and always want to stop and start over. This stopping’s not good; I need to condition myself to keep going.
We review and extend my jitterbug, too. Mary shows me how to pull my partner into a “closed position” and throw her back out, too. In the closed position, we sort of rock back and forth, and rotate. This is a situation where just taking the step doesn’t cut it. I need to develop an integrated form of movement, in which my body-weight rocks down onto the foot. This goes against my instincts, which are to first find my footing, then trust it to hold my weight.
Another thing I have to keep learning is that in dance you frequently need to turn your body around, without actually turning any corners. IE, you just rotate around your vertical axis. In most other activities, if you turn, you then go in that new direction. Not so, here.
Day 5
Normally, Day 5 would be a Friday, but since I had to start on a Tuesday, this was the first day back after my weekend break from Mary’s ‘Blitz’ training. She was wondering whether I’d do better, having had a chance to integrate my learning in the first week.
I might have integrated some of it, but there were definitely a few things that I just forgot! I warned her I was retarded… Somehow, in my mind, I blurred the left and right turns in my waltz, and merged my cha cha with my jitterbug.
So, there was a bit of catching up to do. As noted in the last entry, I need to work at working through my mistakes. As Mary says, I need to fake it until I make it. I’m getting better at that, but I’m still aware of all my mistakes (in fact, that’s almost all I’m aware of on the dance floor!) and I often comment on them. That’s the next thing to correct–my negative attitude.
On the positive side, I can at least start to feel what it’s like to provide a good lead, even if, at this stage, I can only provide it for a few seconds at a time.
Day 6
The brutal reality is, even though I’ve got very little time to forget between daily lessons, I need to practice basic patterns, so that time spent actually in the dance studio can be spent learning, not relearning.
Once again, I merged the right box turn and left box turn, from my waltz. As you might imagine, turning right and left at the same time is Not Good. I’ve also somehow blended the cha cha and jitterbug.
After getting those sorted back out, Mary showed me the cross-body lead in the cha cha, which is tricky at first because I have to step back and turn, twice at different points in the ‘count.’
Since the goal is not just for me to dance, but to be able to function in a few different dances, I am trying to learn a few different ways of moving, that are all new to me, at the same time. Mary explains two different ways of ‘swaying’ by saying I need to move like a pendulum–as if suspended from my head–in the waltz but more like a metronome, swinging from the bottom, in the jitterbug. She’s still showing me things, like ways to move my hips and spine, that I simply can’t make my body do. It’s as though she’s showing me that she can wiggle her ears and saying, “just do it this way.”
On the upside, I’m able to fake my way through errors a little better, and despite me inbred self-criticism, I have to admit that there are stretches of a few seconds at a time when it does look like I can dance.
Day 7
We’ve added a foxtrot to my ‘repertoire.’ Dear God, is it possible that it’s actually easy?? Or is it a trick from Mary? For now the basic patterns are simple. She’s not fooling me though, I know she’ll inject a few rub-your-stomach-while-you-pat-your-head moves soon. But so far, it’s a relief.
On the cha cha front, that cross-body lead, with the tricky step-back-and-turn on an oddball count is finally starting to work. Not that I’m likely to get too cocky, since it’s emerging that the waltz is my most ‘challenged’ dance so far. Mary tries to fix my pointing-out left foot–the result of an orthopedic surgeon who must have been drunk or at the very least cross-eyed when he reset my leg, years ago. We spend a few minutes trying to reprogram my footwork, so that I’m on my toes when I should be on my toes, on my heels when I should be on my heels… there’s no simple stepping any more. It’s all about where the weight’s being carried and how movement’s initiated. Oh, and I have to open my collarbones, too. My collarbones. Open. Right.
In the jitterbug, when we’re in the closed position–ie, when I’m holding her, instead of just facing her–I still tend to topple forward, lurching like Frankenstein. That’s fine tonight, since Halloween’s tomorrow! But somehow I need to get the weight over that foot, lead with my shoulder, without just falling onto it.
All in all, I had a big step up today… not only were there a few seconds at a time that it looked as if I could dance, there were a few seconds at a time when I enjoyed it.
At the end of the session, I asked Mary to review ‘throwing her out’ and ‘pulling her in,’ in the jitterbug. She told me, “You’ve been doing it right. Let’s not deconstruct it. Just let your body remember what you’re doing. If you try to understand it consciously, you might just get confused.”
OK, time to sleep on it.
Day 8
Today was a technical day. It may not have started out that way, but when we found ourselves sharing one of the smaller rooms with two professional couples getting advanced coaching, it seemed like a good idea to stay in the corner, and Mary kept me looking into the corner, to avoid distraction. Or, perhaps, to minimize the risk of another teacher saying something like, “Oh, Mary, it’s so inspiring the way you coach those special needs students!”
Anyway, we spent the time working on more technical aspects of my jitterbug and cha cha. The jitterbug’s basic move still confounds me. I have a tendency to want to drop my right shoulder if I raise my right hip. That turns my body into a “C” shape when it needs to be a diagonal line. Conceptually, I know what to do, which is basically to tilt my hips while keeping my spine straight. There’s that “metronome” movement again.
I also need to develop a more staccato rhythm in this dance, with a more distinct pause. The basic pattern is easy to learn, but nothing’s actually easy; an “easy” base just makes my lack of finesse more obvious.
In the cha cha, we review the crossover and cross-body lead. The crossover, especially, requires a strong sense of the axis of the body, which should run from the head down the spine to the standing leg. I need to pivot around that, turning my hips and shoulders before stepping in that direction. It’s all about turning with power, the energy comes from as far from that axis as possible–which only makes sense, because that’s where the leverage is.
Day 9
Since the previous day we’d focused on jitterbug and cha cha, today we focused on foxtrot and waltz. When I said, earlier, that the advantage of daily lessons was that I wouldn’t have time to forget them, and thus wouldn’t have to rehearse, I was wrong.
“The waltz is your problem dance,” Mary said, as I again basically blended everything I’d learned into something that probably resembled the average middle-school grad party ‘last dance.’ Still, with a little coaching (and some outright back-leading by Mary) there are longer and longer periods in which an outside observer might confuse me for someone who can dance.
More important, although I’m rarely doing the right things, in terms of posture, dance frame, and providing a good lead (Mary frequently actually grabs my head and lifts it) I am starting to at least feel my posture and know it’s wrong. If I could string together enough elements, in either the foxtrot or waltz to occupy a full song, I could probably fake my way through one.
This leads me to what I’ll call Gardiner’s First Law of Dance: In order to dance, you first have to pretend that you can dance.
Day 10
So, if I had a mid-term exam, it would come today. The funny thing is, for the last few nights, I’ve been having nightmares about being back in university, and I can’t find my classes.
I thought that the advantage of daily sessions would be that there was no time to forget, and hence, no need for review or practice. But that’s not so; at least today I spent some time mentally reviewing my waltz. That visualization session seemed to help in terms of stringing together the various elements I’ve learned for the waltz.
There’s still too much of this that has to be conscious, and not enough that’s instinctive, so that when I concentrate on the heel-toe/toe/toe-heel sequence I forget where I’m going, and end up slowly walking into the corner of the room without being able to plan even a simple left turn to avoid hitting the wall. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion.
When we switch to foxtrot, I find that it’s almost impossible to switch gears and make two consecutive steps straight ahead. But there’s no rest for the wicked, I suppose; we move on to my jitterbug, where Mary now wants me to string together more than one turn; she turns, then I turn, then she turns back in the other direction. There’s a small victory in this, when it seems like I can dance for several consecutive seconds.
Day 11
New material in cha cha today; an open break leading to a turn by Mary. This is another “programming problem” for me, since I’ve been rocking forward until now, and I have to rock back–presumably to create space for her to turn. So far, it seems to me that the woman does more of the hard stuff, but the man has to plan everything.
In the jitterbug, I’m still breaking my rhythm when we move into the closed position. To have any hope of getting it right, I need to constantly remind myself, “one, two, rock-step.” This would be socially limiting, since I have to do it out loud. Not too suave!
Day 12
Today–sad to admit, for the first time–I actually arrived early and practiced. This is especially sad because it worked, suggesting that I should do that all the time. I worked on waltz, mainly, resulting in fewer of those slow-motion train wrecks.
Mary was so impressed that she immediately added another element to my repertoire, the 3/8ths turn. This seems complicated, but it’s getting better. Before, it was like I was a passenger in a plane where the pilot had just died, and ground control was providing a constant string of instructions so that I could land the plane… “Now, you see that thing that looks like a steering wheel? Push it slightly forward… NOT THAT MUCH! Pull it BACK!! Now, there’s a little less need for her to provide a constant set of instructions to keep me moving.
Day 13
We begin with a review of that 3/8ths turn. I’m challenged by the fact that stringing these things together involves changing directions–turning first left, then right, then left again… and by the fact that under stress, I actually forget which foot is the next one to move! (Imagine, you’re walking along… left, right, left, right, hmm… what’s next in this sequence? I’ve lost my place. Now you have some sense of the challenge Mary faces in teaching me to dance!) The key is to really feel the ‘weighting’ of each foot, and make the release of the other foot’s weight something I’m consciously aware of.
We move on to the foxtrot, which again seems to have blurred into my waltz. I’m doing the ‘waltztrot’–or maybe the ‘faltz.’
Finally, we move to the jitterbug–which should be easy but seems to be my nemesis. I need to work on just hearing the rhythm more clearly; knowing when to start and communicating it to my partner. Also, improving the quality of my lead, for example when pulling Mary into the closed position. This is a subtle thing–sometimes communicated through the hands (though not by squeezing!) and other times through the body.
Day 14
Today, we review pretty much everything I know in class, because tonight I go to the dance party at Dance North County. At the party, I realize that in this new, crowded, distracting environment, I’ve forgotten everything. Also, dancing with other people reaffirms something I’ve been suspecting all along… I’ve been learning to drive in a Ferrari. The dance party is no race track… it’s more like a demolition derby–especially because I have no spare concentration to use to steer us between other dancers.
I can see that, for beginners like me, dances that don’t travel around the dance floor as much–my cha cha and jitterbug–are going to be a lot easier to fake.
Day 15
You’d think that, by now–and I don’t mean after a few weeks of dance lessons, I mean after a lifetime of walking–I would know how to take a step forward, back, or to the side.
But no. Today we had a ‘technical day,’ that involved mostly standing in front of the mirror while Mary tried to reprogram a lifetime of movement habits. First, I learned to move to the side, as I need to do in the cha cha, for example. This begins with the lats pulling the body to the side. I learn this without actually even stepping to the side, just shifting my weight from foot to foot.
In the foxtrot, I need to ‘walk’ totally differently too. My forward step should begin at the back of my back (standing) leg. My rearward step is kind of like skating back.
Yes, you have to know the steps. But you also have to know how to step.
Day 16
We spend the lesson integrating the technical stuff we covered yesterday into some actual dancing, and I try to string together some whole songs. This is easier to do, for me, in the cha cha and jitterbug where I have less memorization in terms of basic patterns.
I can actually do these dances, though getting through a whole song without getting lost can still be a challenge. Faking through the stumbles and mis-steps is getting a little easier too, though. The glass-half-full point of view would be that, the me of three weeks ago would look at the me now and think, “I guess that guy can dance.” The glass-half-empty point of view is, I now know enough to have a sense of what I don’t know. Anyway, I am definitely at a level where I could take a group class, which was one of the goals we had set out a few weeks ago.
Soon, Mary will have her final challenge, which is that after proving she can teach me to dance, she’ll teach a monkey. Just kidding. But my next challenge is another dance party, tomorrow, at Dance for Two.
Day 17
We practice on the big Dance for Two floor, which is huge–bigger than a basketball court–so we do my ‘smooth’ dances. No, these are not dances that in any way make me seem like a smooth operator; they’re my waltz and foxtrot, the dances that travel around the floor.
Mary records some of these, proving that I’ve definitely learned something. But after a hundred corrections to my posture (a hundred? More like 500) I see that I still need much improvement. Sure I’m dancing, but I look as if I’m getting ready to spring a double-leg takedown wrestling move on her at any time. Oh well, I see it. Part of the problem is that I’m still, literally, looking to Mary for approval; I need to be looking off to my left, over her right shoulder.
A few hours after my smooth practice, we’re back at the Saturday night Dance for Two party. Even Mary admits that I’m under a little extra pressure, arriving at these things with her. But on the other hand, it takes some pressure off me. I figure it’s like showing up at the local hot rod hangout with a Ferrari, and saying, “Sure you can take her ’round the block.” Obviously, you wouldn’t have to drive much if you didn’t want to.
You know where I wrote, just above, that I need to look off to my left? The problem with this, on a crowded dance floor, is that it results in many near-collisions. I need to develop a much better sense of who’s around me and where they’re going, but I still have nowhere near enough spare concentration to do that.
I actually danced with another couple of people, besides Mary, with varying degrees of success. And now I feel that I have to admit something that I really don’t want to admit, but have to, in order to keep this account scrupulously honest.
I had fun.
Day 18
Between regular lessons, I attended a West Coast Swing workshop, which was not really pitched at beginners, so I was off on the wrong foot. The basic pattern is complicated (at least, it seems so to me) and there’s little that I can transfer from my Waltz, Foxtrot, Jitterbug, or Cha-cha.
All in all, it was just enough to shake the limited confidence I had, and I seemed to have memorized the 1-2, triple-step, anchor-step West Coast sequence by writing over my memory of how to waltz.
So, it was back to basics in the Waltz, with me just doing ‘progressives’ around the room. Maybe I need to sleep on it, to have that lilting Waltz rhythm settle in again. Anyway, I need to sleep. My eyes are closing…
Day 19
Mary started by reviewing that West Coast Swing “basic” step. I think I should protest. It’s not fair to add a fifth dance. I was having enough trouble with the first four. Eventually I imagine I’ll be able to keep time and handle the basic footwork, though as of now I have no spare concentration to do anything at all with my upper body. And when Mary does anything except the basic step in front of me (and oh, can she do things) I lose the plot.
We moved on to Foxtrot, mainly because it seems the simplest to me and was a slight mental ‘rest’ after Swing. Part of the reason this seems relatively easy for me is that I’ve got a small repertoire of ‘moves’ in this dance. This is good, since it leaves me with nothing to concentrate on but posture and the way I’m moving. Mary’s philosophy of dance instruction can probably be summarized as “dancing from the inside out.” The focus is not really on learning steps, but rather on building a foundation of posture and awareness that leads to quality movement. Think, you’re going to tune the instrument before you play it.
With that in mind, I really try to propel myself using the correct muscles, and feel the weight on each foot. At least occasionally, I now feel us moving effortlessly, as one unit, around the dance floor.
The Foxtrot turned out to be a good warm-up for the Waltz, which went surprisingly well. Julya, one of the other teachers who was working on the other side of the room actually whooped and hollered something to the effect of ‘Way to go, Mark!’ so I’ve obviously learned something.
Day 20
I suppose technically, the Ballroom Blitz is over today. I started this program completely confident in my abilities–by which I mean, completely confident that I didn’t have any abilities. The world’s full of people who say, “I can’t dance,” but I REALLY couldn’t dance. My own mother described Mary’s challenge as being “like teaching Pinnochio to walk.”
Again, we start with the West Coast Swing! I’m starting to realize that this is one of Mary’s favorites, and I’m going to have to learn it in spite of myself. The upside to this is that I like the music (most blues music has the right beat) and it doesn’t take much space, so it’s suitable for club dancing and useful in social situations. The downside is that it’s hard. Finally, though, I seem to have got the basic step and rhythm, enough to add a “pass” into my repertoire. That’s a breakthrough.
Since it seems I’ve had a breakthrough in West Coast Swing, when Mary asks me what I want to do next, I say ‘Jitterbug,’ because it was probably my next-most-troublesome dance.
I must be in the groove, because here too, I get to add a new ‘move,’ the cuddle. It would have seemed impossibly hard–like patting my head while rubbing my stomach–a few weeks ago, but I… almost… get… it.
Then, my lesson is over.
So, I see that on the first day of this blog, I described the program as going from “zero-to-hero” in four weeks. OK, “hero” was probably a little bit of an exaggeration. But I can dance. I’ll easily be able to function in beginner-level classes; I can probably hold my own in at least a few social dances. I can actually see (and occasionally feel) what dancing well really is.
It’s funny. Hanging around dancers for the last month, I’ve overheard lots of women complain that, “These men can’t lead,” and just as many men bemoan the fact that, “These women can’t follow.” They’re all trying to achieve the same thing, that fleeting feeling of two people moving in perfect harmony. It doesn’t just happen; you have to work at it.
Yin/yang, surrender/control, follow/lead; we all have both of those inside us, but can’t let them both out at once. In a dance partnership, each of us picks a side–and together, as a unit–both sides get to play.
That’s good.
The Grand Finale Foxtrot!
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