Every year when So You Think You Can Dance starts up I get very excited at the prospect of taking dance lessons. This year was no exception. With Jim and I dieting lately, and trying to get off the couch on weeknights, he proposed we find a dance class we might take together. I was so excited! I immediately started thinking Swing or Salsa classes. Jim had something else in mind: Hip Hop.
I love hip hop music and have often fantasized about taking lessons. But not with Jim. I have always thought of hip hop dancing as a kind of 1 man operation. But, it still sounded like something fun to try together. And so we got a two week trial to the Anteater Recreation Center just as a new set of dance classes were about to start. The real benefit of the ARC is that once you have paid to become a member, dance classes are very, very cheap. Something like $45 for a whole semester. We were pretty excited.
Oh. My. God. About 5 minutes into our first lesson, our level of enthusiasm dropped drastically. It was SO HARD…and fast! We mostly just kept flailing our arms around and laughing. Not the kind of laugh that occurs from sheer amusement. More like that kind of uncomfortable laugh that occurs when you are forcing yourself to laugh rather than cry. My fight or flight instincts kicked into over-drive and I wanted nothing more than to run for the door when after several failed attempts to get the first move down (a kind of walking swagger), the teacher started the music, tried the step, then said, “Oh, wait. That’s not it. You actually have to take a step in between too.” Huh?! Wait…I wasn’t getting it in the first place, and now you are changing it?
This is not our dance class, but if you play it on fast forward, it will give you some idea of how quickly our dance class was going:
We stayed through the whole class, despite my better instincts to jump ship. After the class, as we were leaving, our teacher Michelle ran after us, “Hey Guys! You did great.” <Blank stares from us, followed by the same, uncomfortable laughter> “Seriously, the first class is always so hard, but you made it! And don’t worry. If you felt like you weren’t getting it this week, we’ll be doing a totally different routine next week.”
What!?! I just spent a freakin’ hour trying to learn what Jim and I later counted to be something like 38 moves in 50 minutes and I am never going to get to practice that dance again because I won’t possibly remember all the steps?! I smiled and said, “yeah…maybe,” but what I really wanted to do was to punch her square in her smiley little face. But, that was just projecting my frustration because she was actually really, really sweet and her sheer hopefulness for us made me want to come back.
So, later that week we tried another teacher. He had only been dancing for about 5 years, unlike our last teacher who had likely been dancing since birth. He went much slower, but no matter how slow he went, once that music started I pretty much forgot every single step. We laughed a lot during that class too. We decided we’d be willing to go back to his class, but then missed the deadline to register because of car troubles that we were taking care of on the last possible day to sign up. I would have gone through with it, but it was somewhat of a relief. I know few things in this life can be accomplished without some willingness on my part to practice and just accept that I’m going to be bad at it for a while. But, for now at least, I feel like I’ve dodged a bullet, and that this old, White lady might better be served by sticking to her yoga classes and relaxing on a couch afterward and watching a younger, abler generation perfect their swaggers.