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September 6, 2005

Salsa Lessons

Here are the types of dancing I have studied in my life: ballet (including two years en pointe), tap, hula, square dancing (how we loved that in sixth grade), flamenco, ballroom, country swing, swing, lindy hop, tribal dances of the Ivory Coast, belly dancing, and now salsa. I never learned to break dance or mastered any hop hip moves, but I used to hold my own in a mosh pit.

There's a reason why salsa is at the end, rather than the middle, of that list. You know that scene at the beginning of The Jerk, when Steve Martin comes across the easy listening station and intuitively responds appropriately, realizing suddenly that he no longer lacks rhythm, the way he did when he was a poor black child trying to feel the beat on the porch with his family? People often have a type or two of music that moves them more than others, and my type is not particularly Latin. I can take or leave the music, and as for the dance style, I am not thrilled that you keep your upper body as still as possible, and that all the movement happens below the waist. I have no problem with movement below the waist--all that hula and belly dancing means I can do some fairly impressive things with my hips--but I like to move the rest of me as well.

I also find some Latin beats a little too slow. This was one of the many problems I had with disco. I started high school in 1977, the same year Saturday Night Fever was released, and from the miserable moment when I first heard the shrieking soundtrack to that frightful film, I was front and center of the DISCO SUCKS movement and nothing has ever changed my mind. First of all, no men who made it through puberty with their testicles still attached to their bodies should sound as shrill and nasal as the BeeGees; secondly, so many disco songs are recorded just a bit too slow ("I Will Survive," for instance, one of the better disco songs, would be better still if it were faster), so that you can't really dance fast to them. Instead of being designed to meet the needs of hardcore dancers, many disco songs are timed to accommodate drunk wannabes who must spin slowly so they don't fall of their lousy platform shoes.

I'm a hardcore dancer, which is not to say that I am always an excellent dancer. But the endeavor matters. I'm like Zarathustra: "I would believe only in a god who could dance." (Which is one reason Shiva is my favorite deity: he's the lord of the dance, and he will destroy the world by dancing. When he finishes dancing, the jig is well and truly up.) One of the nice things about having grown up Mormon was all the dancing we did: starting in junior high, we had lots and lots and LOTS of church dances. I doubt the Mormon Father in Heaven dances at all--like so many white guys, he's too stiff, uptight, and afraid of looking foolish to be willing to shake it on a dance floor--but there is perhaps no activity the youth of the church are invited to do more often than dance.

I love to dance. I probably wouldn't win any contests but I have a decent sense of rhythm and after not too much practice, I can make my various joints and muscles do what they're supposed to with reasonable proficiency. The music I like best to dance to is exuberant, loud and fast: give me something at about 150 beats per minute--much of Ministry, for instance, or certain Zeppelin--and I just know what to do.

But this is supposed to be about salsa lessons.

Friday night Sweet Baby Jesus, Anesthesia and I went for salsa lessons. It's been four or five years since I've done much partner dancing--the last spell was a series of lindy hop lessons in Iowa City--and all I can say is it's been far too long.

Apparently the previous week over 50 people showed up for lessons, but last Friday there were ten: five men and five women, believe it or not, so no one had to go without a partner--how often does that happen? Two of the men were quite adept; three were beginners. Perhaps it is a betrayal of my feminist sensibilities to say this, but one of the nice things about being a woman is dancing with a guy who really knows how to lead: all of the sudden you can just do the moves, and you don't even have to think about it. It's very cool.

We started with the basic step and rotated partners around the room. Eventually I paired up with SBJ and asked, "How's it going?"

He looked around the room, then whispered to me, "I got yelled at by my last partner."

I didn't yell at him, but I did boss him around. "I think you should be doing this," I said. And later, "No, wait, you're supposed to do this."

The woman who was there to help teach--the woman who had yelled at him--stopped to give us some help. Apparently she and SBJ sometimes hang out in the same group of friends. As she listened to me try to figure out what was wrong with our efforts, she asked, "How do you guys know each other?"

"We work together," I said.

"Are you his boss?" she asked.

"No," I said.

"Then how come she gets to talk to you like that?" she asked SBJ.

"I don't mind," he said. "That's part of how we get along."

"I'm kind of his big sister person," I said.

"I've just never heard anyone talk to you like that," she said, shaking her head. Which apparently goes to show that there are people in the world who feel deferential toward young, smart, good-looking guys with a PhD in philosophy (even after they yell at them). Go figure.

The bartender, for instance, was one such deferential person. After all that strenuous exertions, SBJ, Anesthesia and I decided we needed a drink, so we headed to the bar. I got a ridiculously overpriced mediocre margarita, though it did come in a glass with a stem like a saguaro cactus; Anesthesia got a G&T, and SBJ got some crappy domestic bottled beer. (He thinks his fondness for drinking bad beer increases his street credibility.) The bartender asked what we all do, and when SBJ said he taught philosophy, the guy said, "So you know everything there is to know about Socrates and Descartes and those guys?"

SBJ looked down at his beer, smiled shyly, then said, "I didn't want bring it up myself, but yes. Yes, I do."

Then the guy lectured us on his philosophy of dancing and told us how hot his wife is and what a great dancer she is and how he just put her on a plane for California and will miss her terribly until she comes back at the end of October blah blah f*cking BLAH! Everyone knows it is the job of bartenders to LISTEN, not to TALK. But he would not shut up.

Which meant that before long, we had to go dance again, just to get away from him. And by the end of the evening, SBJ and I were doing fairly well. He got pretty good at leading and could throw me into spins without any trouble at all. I said, "So, you going to do this again?"

He shrugged. "I don't know," he said.

"Why not?" I asked.

"It's not that fun, is it," he said. "You always have to be so aware of what you're doing, with your feet and your everything else."

"Nah," I said. "Before long it gets into muscle memory and then it's just automatic." There was a couple near us who was very good; they were laughing and doing complicated spins. "They're having fun, don't you think?"

"Yeah," he admitted.

So it was a good evening. And even if salsa isn't my favorite kind of dancing, it beats no dancing at all. I'll have to do it again. But if I do any drinking, it won't be at the bar.

Posted by Holly at September 6, 2005 7:08 AM