Last weekend, at an event, as I found myself mid-boogie, with one arm in the air and the opposing leg stretched out for no good reason, I tried to pinpoint exactly when I had completely lost the ability to dance.
I’ve always considered myself a pretty good dancer, but there I was, snapping fingers at random, and – at one immediately regretted moment – clapping my hands together. It was on the beat, but still …
I grew up in a family of dancers. I don’t mean professional, dabbled-with-the-Bolshoi performers – I’m just talking about a group of people that had a good sense of rhythm and liked music.
When I was very young, I attended Miss Jackie Balls’ school of ballet. She put on many productions over the years, held in Constitution Hall (formerly the George Town Town Hall), such as ‘The Nutcracker’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’. We were always so excited when the shipment of professional costumes arrived. Proper tutus and leotards in beautiful colours with wispy skirts and matching sequined headbands would be pulled from the boxes. It was like Christmas come early.
I loved being on stage, and we couldn’t wait to perform for an audience. Understand that there was no TV to speak of on the island in the late ‘70s/early ‘80s, so shows like this were a big deal. Miss Jackie did an amazing job of corralling all the children, ably assisted by her husband Peter, who played the part of Mother Ginger in ‘The Nutcracker’. If you’ve never seen that ballet, the part involves wearing a massive ‘skirt’ – large enough to hide a bunch of dancers inside until it is their time to emerge.
Despite all my enthusiasm for ballet, it was clearly not going to be a future career. I’d swear that I was told I was going to be too tall to become a professional, but now that I Google and see that some prima ballerinas are my height or taller, I suspect it was my love of cookies that stood in the way of en pointe glory.
Growing up, we always had a record player in Chez Wheaton. Beyond listening to some of my parents’ favourite artists (The Beatles, Jim Croce, Gordon Lightfoot, songs from all the big musicals), we would regularly move to the beat of 33-inch LPs featuring the likes of the Bee Gees, The Trammps, Donna Summer and, of course, ABBA. The living room was our dance floor. I’m amazed the ‘Saturday Night Fever’ soundtrack album didn’t end up disintegrating into dust, we played it so often.
On the other side of the spectrum, someone decided to hold ballroom dancing classes in the St. Ignatius school hall, and Mum took us along to give it a go. She ended up gliding across the floor with another teacher to demonstrate the steps – we hadn’t realised until then how good she was. For us, it was like watching Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner flying around in ‘The King and I’.
Again, none of us ended up judges on ‘Dancing With the Stars’, but we learned enough to know the difference between a waltz and a foxtrot.
Once I was in high school, getting into the nightclubs was the thing. I didn’t drink, but the security on the door didn’t know that, and as I was under 18, I had to find creative ways to weasel my way in (see: fake ID). If you liked dancing, this was the place to be. Moving lights, big sound system, proper dance floor. My friend Betsy and I used to get there as the doors were opening – I’m talking around 8pm. As you can imagine, there wasn’t another soul around, so we could give requests to the DJ and that big floor was ours to command. We didn’t give a tinker’s cuss about what we looked like – this was the way to experiment with different moves, so by the time the crowd arrived in earnest, we’d have some new and exciting stuff under our belts to debut.
Influenced by the likes of Morrissey, Dead or Alive, and just a sprinkling of Shabba Doo and Turbo’s fly sequences from the 1984 hit film ‘Breakin’’, we were something to behold, lemme tell ya. This was back when a lad might come up and ask you to dance, so our fancy footwork was our currency.
It wasn’t really until my 40s when I started to leave the clubs behind, so by then I’d had decades of cutting a rug almost every weekend with one friend or the other. Betsy got married and had kids, but we still found time to get out once in a while. Plus, my now bestie Lynne came on the scene in Cayman in 1991, so I had another reliable dance partner. For some reason, there was always a fairly significant height difference involved. I’m pretty tall at 5-foot 7-inches, but Betsy was something like 5-foot 11-inches – and willowy – so unless I was in heels and she was in flats, it was an interesting coupling. Then Lynne – all 5-foot-nothing of her – came on the scene. Hermione dancing with Hagrid.
But, again, we didn’t care. We just loved moving to the music.
I’m sure I’ve reported this tale before, but after many years of not going to the clubs, we got a second wind as a bar closed one Friday, and decided to make our way to Obar. At 1am, we figured a lineup would already be present at the door.
Nope; just us and the staff.
The DJ was playing YPM (Young People’s Music), which didn’t jive with us. Lynne took matters into her own hands, climbing up to the DJ booth and putting in a request for “something with actual lyrics”. I’m sure he was devastated when we decided to call it a night after a few songs.
Since then, I’ve danced a bit from time to time, but no moves of note – more changing weight from foot to foot, like something’s itchy. However, when the DJ at Wine Fest last Saturday night started playing ‘Lucy’ by Destra, I couldn’t control myself. Lynne and I immediately made our way to the dance floor, with me transitioning from sitting to full-blown twirls on the short journey there. You know the walk – where you’re moving your shoulders, arms and hips, pursing your lips and narrowing your eyes – indicating that you’re about to mean business.
The track took hold, and, and … what was I doing? Destra, a Trinidadian soca powerhouse was pumping through the speakers, and I was snapping my fingers, followed by recognising that weird choice, instantly hiding my hands, then shaking my bum like there was something stuck to it. No, no … back off from that decision … Hey! How about a random clap? Ugh! Why did I do that?? I just couldn’t seem to settle on any kind of choreography, so I was trying out everything all at once. At one point, I was gesturing to other women to come and join us. Gee, it’s hard to understand why they held back.
Had I lost the ability to dance? Was it a skill one – namely me –could possibly misplace?
We only stayed for the one number (my knees, my hip … ) and then did the leaving-the-dance-floor-walk, which very much resembles the joining-the-dance-floor shuffle, but in a manner that indicates exit rather than entrance.
Clearly, I was going to have to work on my moves before attempting this again in public. This weekend I’ll start with Vanilla Ice, work my way through MC Hammer, then begin studying Pink.
Hopefully, by Christmas, I’ll be up to Beyoncé level. Put a ring on it, indeed.
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