Dance

Do you do dancing? I don’t do dancing.

I wish I did do dancing. When I see people dancing I think it looks fun. It looks carefree and joyous.

When I do dancing it looks awkward. It looks like someone has spun me around and made me dizzy, then thrown me in the direction of some music, to see what stumbling havoc I can wreak.

I was in a dance studio the other day. It was about as far as I can get from my comfort zone without putting me in a room with some dangerous animal. Maybe a shark. I don’t like those much. Although if it was in a room with no water I reckon I could cope.

Anyway. Yes. A dance studio. Complete with a whole wall made of mirrors, sprung floor and a barre. The full thing.

Luckily, I wasn’t there to dance. I was there to have a barbecue. But I did spend some time perusing the abundance of statements about dance which adorned the walls. Here are some of them:

“Not dancing rusts your hips and your soul.”

“Dancers are the messengers of the Gods.”

“Dance first. Think later. It’s the natural order.”

The first one, I’m not convinced about. I reckon there are some pretty well smashed up hips as a result of all the twisting, jumping and general japery of dancing. Maybe it’s talking to people who’ve already had a hip replacement? Suggesting that dance is a lubricant for a bionic hip seems unlikely though.

Second one. Messengers for the Gods? Clearly the person who said this has never been in Oceana just before kicking out time. The only message any of those dancers are sending is “I’ll be needing a kebab and a vomit shortly”.

It’s the last one which appeals to me. Dance first. Think later.

It’s something I wish I could do. But instead, I’m all about thinking first, dancing never. My thinking kills my dancing, because it thinks “I will look like a complete numpty”. It thinks “everyone else will be looking at me, and laughing, because it will look like each part of my body is being controlled by a separate, drunk, puppeteer”. It thinks “everyone else on the dance floor will move away, will think I’m some kind of lunatic to be avoided”.

Freedom of expression, especially via the medium of dance, is not something I’m too hot on. I’m terrified of people thinking I’m weird, or rubbish, or other negative things. I expect people to think it too.

I’m really chuffed that the arrival of Cam has already made me more likely to bust moves. I don’t care what people think of how terribly I dance when I’m holding him, just as I don’t care that people get to hear a weird, high-pitch version of my voice.

I’d quite like Cam to be a dancer (not a professional. I can do without having a Louie Spence on my hands. Erm, figuratively). I want him to hang on to the joy of dance that I see in young kids before self-consciousness has a chance to set in.

Maybe it’s time I took some lessons*

*it’s not.