Sometimes it all just comes together. For a poorly co-ordinated and extremely shy child it never seemed that dancing would ever be possible but here’s the story of my relationship with dancing.
What do I mean, my relationship with dancing? Well, I love it but I don’t often do it. As a child I took up dance lessons several times and withdrew from the classes in embarrassment at my failure to co-ordinate or remember the steps. When we emigrated to Australia a church we attended was the venue for Scottish dancing classes and perhaps in an attempt to preserve our heritage my sisters and I were sent along. Strangely enough I learned well and began to enjoy it, then we moved house. I had even been walking to school tiptoe to strengthen my legs for points, the most stylish way to do Scottish dancing. In High School I was hopeless. Apart from mortal fear of girls keeping me to the side benches at the school dances I was completely incapable of finding my rhythm when I got up. My crush, Suzanne, finally agreed to go to a school dance with me and I was so incapable of making the bits of me move in time to the music or with each other that she ditched me. I didn’t go to the end of year ball. This was the year Weeties or some other cereal put dance moves on the sides of the boxes.
In my great year, 1971, I went to James Cook University for a time and spent my time talking to people. I met an interesting group of people who smoked marijuana and (some) dropped acid. We all went to a pub which played Creedence and other music with a strong driving beat, in a room with ultraviolet light and strobes flashing in time to the music. On my first night there I found my rhythm and I’ve never lost it again. My friends failed to convince me that their drug centred lifestyle was worth trying but they helped turn me on to a trip that for me is much better – dancing! I love dancing but over the years the opportunities I have had to really let myself go with the music have been too few.
At the end of that year we had dances in the Refec. of Queensland Uni. after the demos, street marches and protests. There was plenty of room and I was able to jump around, making up the steps as I went. Later, I went to dances there with a beautiful girlfriend and as she was a great dancer we had a wonderful time together. It seems as if I have some natural ability, locked up by my shyness for so many years.
To my dismay, my wife’s dancing was conservative and not energetic. I liked to dance vigorously and could keep going for hours despite my usual avoidance of exercise. The music carried me and I just kept going and going. Sometimes I felt exhausted and left the dance floor only to hurry back on after a few minutes. The opportunity to dance didn’t arise often. We didn’t go out for dancing and in the circles we moved in there were few parties of that sort.
Occasionally I would dance alone at home, making up moves and trying to be cool, imagining that I could attract admiration by it, a lot of other dancers noticing I was pretty good. It has been nice sometimes to hear people tell me my dancing was good. Someone once asked me if I had learned Rap when I was young. It was a double compliment because I was too old when Rap came on the scene. Maybe I treasured that so much because of the disaster of my High School dances.
When I left my marriage one of my firm intentions was to dance more often. A friendship with an ageing rocker and his band was a great opportunity. I went to every gig in the small town I lived in and just let myself go. A close female friend also loved dancing and at some of the functions at the hotel she ran and at a couple of other things we went to together we danced and I taught her a bit about ‘freestyle’ dancing. I lost my inhibitions to the point where I once danced alone when everyone else in the hall had retired in exhaustion. This was when I was on heart medication! I believe music can take the body well beyond its limits. My doctor just looked at me when I told him about it.
The wonderful little Wintermoon Folk Festival in North Queensland (Australia) was more an experience of listening to music than dancing to it but on a couple of occasions I got up, inspired by Campbell the Swaggie, a unique man of about my age, who went into a dance trance right in front of a huge speaker cabinet. He did the same at a Folk Festival in Townsville. Health was a big obstacle around then and I didn’t feel I had enough energy to get up sometimes. In a central Queensland mining town where I felt like the only sensitive New Age guy around I combatted the alienation by playing music and dancing to it in my home. Lovely.
I came to China expecting to do a bit of the nightclub stuff that tourists get into but I decided fairly quickly that it was not my scene. There were venues that some of my laowai friends went to but the Chinese tend to play dance music at dangerous volumes. I got into it a couple of times but left the ear-splitting noise much sooner than I would have if the sound was at a reasonable level. I mean, loud is good but not that loud. I want to be able to hear the music when I am old.
Then I met Latinfan, a natural dancer whose wonderful movements were part of what drew me to her. Now we are living together in Wuhan and she will break into dance at any given moment. I haven’t had a lot of physical energy since we arrived here and too seldom join in. Now I have organized my music, having copied everything I formerly owned when I went back on my last trip to visit the family in Australia. I’ve added the things I bought in China and have almost finished sorting them into folders. I have to find out how to sort everything suitable for dancing into playlists. Celtic, Rock and Latin (for Latinfan).
It would be good to think music could be a path to fitness and improved health for me. That’s not looking likely just now as I have either become damned lazy or just can’t conceive any more of doing anything physical. No, no self-condemnation please. I do have serious health problems.