Anyone who knows me knows I love to dance.
It's been a secret joy of my life for as long as I can remember. When I was in kindergarten I used to get in trouble all the time for randomly getting up from my desk to twirl and dance in the corner. I guess I was just in my own little world! (Not much has changed) Tonight I broke out one of the bag piping cds I got in Scotland and starting dancing a Celtic jig all around the kitchen. Then of course I had to dust off the old tap shoes and have a go at it. I realize this is not normal behavior, but when ya gotta dance you gotta dance!
One time I signed up for a hip hop dance class at a local college. I was nervous because I figured it would be mostly teenagers and I would just be the old fogey in the class who was a wannabe hip hop dancer. The class was scheduled to meet in the basement of a local church near the college...I showed up on the first day of class and walked down the stairs. When I got to the bottom there was a group of elderly women, probably in their eighties, sitting in the room. I said, "Oh, I'm sorry...I must be mistaken. I thought this was the hip hop class!"
[I figured I had accidentally wandered into a needlepoint class instead].
"Oh, no, honey...you gotta it right. We're here to shake our moneymakers."
"Uh, excuse me?"
As it turned out I was the youngest in the class by about fourty years. It was more like Hip Replacement than Hip Hop, the dances were so painfully slow I think by the end of the 2 months I had only learned one move (which I've since forgotten of course).
A couple years ago I took an adult tap dance class that was a full year (again, I dont remember any of it, but it was fun). I convinced my friend Nicole to take the class with me and she reluctantly joined. Pretty much the whole year we spent working on this one number that we were to perform at the recital in June. I had no problem learning the steps, it was so repetitive. But the day of the dress rehearsal came and my friend was so nervous.
"I just know I'm going to mess it all up!", she said.
She was sick to her stomach to perform in front of everybody.
To make it worse we had these embarrassing recital costumes we had to wear and looked quite silly to say the least. Not to mention my parents were out in the audience video taping like I was back in preschool.
The next day at the recital when it was our turn to perform I tapped confidently on stage to do my solo and promptly forgot all of the dance moves, messing everyone up behind me and officially ruining the dance the dance we had worked on all year.
I couldn't believe it. I had it all down so well. As I exited the stage, someone said..."Well, at least Elaina was the only one who messed up!"
I left the recital teary-eyed, vowing to never dance in public again.
If only that were true :)
Yesterday at the Christmas Concert practice at church this woman came up to me and said, "You have GOT to be on stage somewhere. You are such a good dancer". I'm not sure how she came to this conclusion since I was just directing the kids choir. But I guess my love for dancing must shine through. Like the song "I hope you dance", much of life is just being willing to get up there and make a fool of yourself. In the end we're all fools whether we dance or not...so we might as well dance!