Saturday, February 13, 2010

Another disappointing dance

I attended a Valentine's Day "dance" that turned out to be extremely disappointing. Now please understand, I don't want to insult anyone, and I recognize that not everyone is an accomplished dancer. Nor do I begrudge people who don't dance much and can't do much more than shake it around a little bit. However, it is nice to be able to do more than just wiggling or swaying around, especially if one truly enjoys dancing.

There were more than a hundred people there, but not one of the ladies could dance, even in a basic way. I tried to lead a couple of the young ladies through some basic moves, but to no avail. One of them refused outright, and the second reluctantly agreed but was a complete disaster.

One older lady saw me trying to lead this young gal, and she asked me if I could show her what I was trying to do. So I was able to (somewhat roughly) lead her through a triple-step swing basic move. Later that night, I kinda managed to lead her (again, somewhat roughly) through a few waltz moves. She was stumbling around a lot, but considering that she had never done waltz before, that was still pretty good.

Anyway, it was frustrating that despite the large attendance, not one of the women knew how to dance, even at a beginner's level. Not a whole lot of dancers among the men, either. One guy told me that he knew country dancing, but as far as I could tell, he was the only one in the entire group.

It was SO frustrating. I'm not saying that everybody need to know how to dance well; however, when the entire room consists of people just shaking it around, I find it disappointing. The reality is -- and again, I know that this might offend some people -- there's no real art to this kind of "dance," and most people look pretty foolish when they're doing it. Some people call it "club dancing," but I think of it as "spazzing out."