Dance Journal

Because learning to dance is a journey of discovery and because reflection is the most important part of the learning process, I have decided to keep a dance journal.  I am going to be coming up with journal prompts each week.  I invite you to keep your own dance journal.  I will share my entries, and I would love to hear some of yours.  Even if you don’t share, get yourself a journal or composition book and document your journey.

• Think about what you thought about ballroom/partner dancing and ballroom dancers before you took any lessons. Describe your memories, expectations, and fears of ballroom before you ever had your first lesson.

I always wanted to learn to how to dance.  Not ballet.  Not jazz.  Partner dance.  I grew up watching old musicals on the weekend.  I loved the grace and energy and romance of partner dance, but I really was fascinated with the idea of the transformation through dance.

Yes, Ginger Rogers was an inspiration and the first one most people think of when they think of women partner dancers, but the person I most admired took me waaaay outside my comfort zone.  My secret desire was to be like Cyd Charisse..

Not only was Dancing in the Dark with Fred Astaire in The Band Wagon one of may favorite dances, but she could turn up the sizzle like nobody with her legs that seemed to go on forever whether playing the siren to Gene Kelly in Singing in the Rain.  She could be anyone through dance: sweet, romantic, sultry, seductive.  She graceful, lithe, and athletic.  She was sweet, sultry, sassy, and seductive–nothing I felt I could actually be except in my imagination.  She was amazing.

I grew up in Northeastern Ohio with a lot of European traditions.  My family was Polish, Czech, and German, so at weddings we danced.  I remember seeing my grandparents especially dancing at weddings with an energy and enthusiasm that surprised me…foxtrot, waltz, polka–especially the polka.

My first memory of dancing myself was, of course, at a wedding.  I was old enough for my father to ask me to dance, probably about 10 or 11.  I felt so grown up.  We did a foxtrot.  Nothing fancy.  Dad was not a dancer.  A basic box step.  Fred Astaire he was not.  Cyd Charisse I was not, but it was a moment in time when it was just him and just me.  Together.  The same people as always.  But different.  Different individually and different together.

Then, the dance was over, and my grandfather asked me to dance.  I remember thinking the foxtrot with dad was nice, but slow and uneventful.  I felt older.  More pretty.  More me.  I thought Grandpa would be even slower…I may have mentally rolled my eyes or steeled myself for rather boring dance.  He was so old after all.  (Remember, I was 10).  The dance was a polka.  And my grandfather was still enough in touch with his polish roots his family had a group passport photo.

I have to say my grandfather was the first man to really sweep me off my feet.  Literally.  He took my breath away.  From the first step I do not remember my feet hitting the ground again.  We twirled and hopped and skipped, and I held on.  It was like being on a roller coaster but so much better.  I had never had so much fun in my life.  And it was hands down, the best memory I would ever have with my grandfather.  I saw him with completely new eyes after that.  He became heroic and romantic not only because he had command of the dance floor, but because he asked me to dance, and we shared the most intimate few moments of our life together, when he was focusing on me and having fun with me and opening my eyes to how dance not only transforms us, but how it can transform how we see others and enrich our relationships with them.

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