A Dance Story – I Danced Pretty One Day
When a new person walks into our studio, we like to ask them “What brings you here?” We have heard many interesting replies, from preparing for an event, to overcoming fears, and reigniting a relationship. Whatever the reason, for most people, their dance journey started way before they stepped into our dance studio. This week, we would like to share a dance story from one of our students, Bryant Hankins, who has written about his real-life experience. In it, he talks about how he got started in Ballroom dancing, his instructors, and his first ballroom dance competition in a very articulate and humorous way.
His tale will be shared in 3 blog posts (1 each day). We think dancers will find this narrative to be interesting and relatable. For those of you who are thinking of taking dance lessons, this is a peek into the dance world and how the experience has been for one of our students.
I Danced Pretty One Day
By Bryant Hankins
My Birthday Surprise
In the forty-first year of my life, I found myself wearing a bedazzled tie and spending two days in the Westin dancing the waltz and cha cha with a Brazilian woman nearly half my age. I was surrounded by eight other couples trying to run me off the floor. The guys had black shiny pirate shirts unbuttoned to their navels revealing their darkly tanned and freshly shaved chests. Their female partners wore fake smiles and thousand dollar dresses with hand-encrusted sequins. Eight judges circled the floor with clipboards waiting for me to make a mistake. For the pleasure of enduring this torture, I spent about the price of a vacation to Hawaii for two. Welcome to the world of competitive ballroom dancing!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Six months before, I had decided that my wife and I needed to do something new together. After twenty years of marriage, we’d fallen into the familiar routines that one would expect. Instead of smoldering text messages about when we would remove each other’s clothes, our conversations had turned into messages about household logistics like who was picking up the almond milk or protein bars.
My wife had recently become co-owner of a gym and she now worked a lot of evenings. But when she wasn’t physically at the gym, she was mentally there. The curse or joy of being a business owner is that you can always be working. A typical evening at our house consisted of me arriving home from work and the dogs excitedly coming up to greet me while the rest of the family stayed glued to their screens. My wife would be updating the business Facebook, answering work emails, or planning the next classes. After spending the entire day communicating with and training other people, she was in no mood to spend a lot of time chatting with her husband. If we were lucky, maybe we would watch a show together. Was this the inevitable fate of all twenty year marriages?
Her birthday was coming up, and in my infinite wisdom I knew that we needed a new hobby. It had to be something different from our day jobs; something that would be romantic and could really reignite that fire. I discarded a couple of non-starters like Sybaris romantic hotel (too seedy) and cooking together (too messy). After a few days of deep thought I arrived at what I deemed to be the perfect option — dance lessons! It had everything: romance, tight holds, dresses, high heels, and sultry stares. Like many of my brilliant plans, this did not go exactly as I expected.
After deciding to move forward, I did extensive internet research to find the best dance studio for us. There was one near us that had twenty-nine five-star reviews. When skimming the reviews I noticed that many of the employees and their families had also left five star reviews. Was that allowed? Was that breaking the sacred honest code of online reviews? I decided that I wouldn’t let it bother me and made the call.
A woman with a Russian accent answered and told me that she would be delighted to help teach my wife and me to dance. Her name was Natalya. She had the sound of someone smiling while talking into the phone. I couldn’t help but wonder if that was a sales tactic? Eighty percent of buyers are more likely to convert if you smile when talking to them! Overall I got a good vibe, but I imagined that she would be harsh and critical of our complete lack of dancing skills. Maybe it was the Russian accent and the fact that I’ve seen too many 80’s movies where the Russians are always the harsh bad guys. Wasn’t it a Russian that crushed Rocky’s dreams of dancing?
We were told to dress in casual clothes and show up at the appointed time. The “studio,” as I would learn that it should be called, consisted of lots of mirrors and hardwood floors with fancy decorations. There were pictures on the wall of people in fancy dresses holding up their arms in fancy ways. I tentatively glanced at my wife knowing that she was not the fancy type. Luckily she was so far unfazed by what she’d seen.
We were introduced to Emilio, our instructor for the evening. He was a slender man with shoulder length black hair, a well-trimmed beard, and a black turtleneck. His voice was light and airy. He seemed vaguely of Eastern European descent. His look and manner of speaking immediately set off my gaydar, but I wasn’t sure. Maybe dancers just give off that vibe?
We started to learn the Rumba dance, which I imagine they teach to newcomers because it’s a slow romantic dance that gives you time to learn the steps without rushing. The problem is that a huge part of the dance is this mystical way of moving your hips called cuban motion. When done correctly, your hips move in this synchronized undulation like some kind of dancing foreplay. Actually doing it was a different story though. It felt less like foreplay and more like juggling while doing trigonometry. As if dancing to a beat while moving your feet and arms wasn’t hard enough, you now have to move your hips in a figure eight motion. Oh yeah, and don’t forget to point your feet the correct way and bend and straighten your legs at the right time.
“No problem. It just takes time.” Emilio told us. That would become his mantra.
Of course, being an athlete that worked out every day, my wife was a natural. Emilio would show her a set of four moves and she would just instantly repeat it. She actually got bored practicing because it was too easy for her. Things were a little different for me.
Emilio would try to explain it slowly to me by saying “Step on a bent leg, now straighten, settle the hips. Hold that for a beat.”
It was like he was teaching a newborn baby to walk but speaking in Portuguese. My wife would look at me in bewilderment as I hobbled across the floor trying to imitate him.
Occasionally Emilio would give me an example of what I should be doing. He would gracefully move one part of his body while isolating another. It was almost like watching the slow motion running of a cheetah or the way a snake slithers through the grass. All I could think is that my body would never move like that. He said not to worry and it would just take time, but I was unconvinced.
After our lesson, we were encouraged to look into purchasing dance shoes at the studio because of course we needed the correct shoes to dance well! I saw the price and was skeptical. Was this just a merchandise upsell like the extended warranty at Best Buy? But when I saw that my wife’s shoes would be high heels I was on board. Getting my wife to wear high heels and not gym shoes was something I dreamed about, but didn’t think was possible. This gave me a glimmer of hope; I immediately purchased the shoes.
As we left the studio, I saw an older man in a tight blue shirt dancing in the corner by himself and I immediately felt sorry for him. Was that my future? Was I to become old and dancing alone on a Tuesday night? I put the thought out of my mind.
We left that night thinking that we started something new and who knows where it would lead. Later I would learn that my path would follow closer to that older man’s than I would’ve ever thought possible…
My First Steps
We started regularly attending classes every Tuesday night. At this point our “dancing” looked more like the shuffling of zombies in popular post-apocalyptic tv shows, but don’t worry our instructor told us it just takes time. I wondered if they said that to everyone. Couldn’t anything be accomplished given enough time? Didn’t they build gigantic pyramids in Egypt with enough time? All you need is twenty years of lessons and you’ll be a great dancer! Did they ever tell anyone “Sorry your dancing is just so bad that I don’t think we could ever fix you no matter how much time and money. Have you considered another hobby like bowling?”
One night he observed how our arms hung limply at our sides while dancing. He demonstrated a sassy arm movement for my wife to accentuate her feminine side by shooting her arm up in the air and then seductively brushing the back of her head. Imagine something Marilyn Monroe would do and you’ve got the right idea. My wife promptly told him that she wasn’t going to do it; she doesn’t believe in doing anything that’s too “showy.” I thought it ironic that our male instructor had no trouble doing this seductive feminine movement, but that my female wife did. I smartly kept my mouth shut. He persisted with getting her to try and she persisted with saying no. I was worried that it might turn violent and I was pretty sure that she could take him. I could see the headlines now: Local Female Gym Owner Pummels Dance Instructor. The only witness was the gym owner’s husband and he’s too afraid to talk.
As we spent more time at the studio, I noticed that there were two camps of people there — the newbies and the veterans. The newbies, like my wife and I, shambled around without really knowing what they were doing. They also tended to take group classes together where they break down the basic steps.
Our newbie group got lots of encouragement. “That’s it!”, “Good job”, and “I can tell you’ve been practicing!”.
The newbies also tended to spook easy like a herd of wildebeests who might bolt at any minute if someone watched them dance. The instructors often pulled a curtain to separate the studio and give us a level of privacy. One newbie was unable to dance in front of anyone else and needed the studio to be completely empty while she practiced.
On the other side of the studio were the veterans who had been there at least a few years. They didn’t care about dancing in front of anyone because they knew what the hell they were doing and weren’t afraid to show it. They had mostly private lessons and didn’t attend the group classes with the lowly newbies. Because they took so many lessons they felt like they owned the studio so some of them made outlandish requests like having the studio temperature set to slightly below frigid.
The instructors were much more critical in their lessons. “I told you to stop counting!”, “I didn’t see the right steps there…are you sure you’ve got this?” I was glad to be a newbie for now.
After a while we started to get the hang of it. We were actually able to dance the Rumba box (the most basic step) and not step on each other’s toes. Every now and then we would even throw in some fancy arm movements. I was ecstatic. My wife and I were actually dancing together and having fun. She even wore high heels. Sadly, this was too good to last.