Swing

I and twelve of my friends are taking swing lessons. We had some idea of learning how to dance. We thought it might be fun. Some of us had tried a bit of West Coast Swing and had convinced the others.

The lesson started out with a brief therapy session in which we had to admit to everyone present why we wanted to learn to dance. And thus started the blame session, "I'm here because so-and-so made me come." However, one girl was very brave and admitted that she was there because she could not dance, full stop. Her husband however loves to dance. "At our wedding last year, we had a sit-down dinner and no dance, because I can't dance." Her husband swung round to look at her, "That's why?!!"

After everyone had blamed their everyone else, we started on the lesson. We all quickly learned that our declarations of having two left feet were not idle boasts. Every time a new step got added, there would be a mild panic attack followed by a rebellion. At least on the girls's side of the room. The guys seemed to be handle the new information better, they just didn't take it on board. The girls overreacted.

We handled the rock step, we handled the triple step. It was around this time that we discovered that we are learning Lindy Hop, not West Coast Swing. Lindy Hop is very different from West Coast Swing. All the guys got excited. They wanted to know at what point they got to throw their partner's around. The girls all went white. None were going to volunteer to be dropped on their head.

By the end of the class, we were all ecstatic about what we had learned. We had learned the basic step and one move. Well, not that we could do the move. We were still doing it in stop-motion. However, we all felt that our marginal improvement had been great.

One day, we might be as good as Doug and Dax.