A Week without Dance

Over the past week I took a vacation, a chance to relax, recuperate, and focus my attentions on writing. It's been a great time and I've accomplished a lot during my break - but, through coincidence, it also happened that we didn't dance most of the week too.


The whole thing started last weekend when we were booked up with friends and relations for the whole weekend and there wasn't a dance on Friday night. Having a break is good, it give your body a chance to recover and keeps dancing from becoming routine. We took a trip to Cincinnati with a couple of good friends and celebrated my mother's birthday while listening to the Indy 500 on the radio. There was no Monday dance; I think I've said before Memorial Day doesn't much feel like a dance day anyway.

Usually Tuesday is our dance lesson day and we spend time with Melissa or Shayne getting some new steps and brushing up on the old ones. However, again by chance, this week we didn't have a lesson scheduled. Instead we decided to go to a club near our house and, since I was off for the week, we could stay later than usual to enjoy dancing. The place we selected was Smee's, and on their website they advertize Tuesday Night West Coast Swing dances for every Tuesday. Well, the advertisement wasn't exactly accurate. They do have Tuesday night WCS but the program had been halted for the month of May. So, we had dinner and went home without dancing.

The dance drought finally came to an end on Friday night when we travelled down to Nashville, IN to Mike's Dance Barn where we attended a 50's and 60's Dance. All I can say is thank you, Mike! We needed to get back on the floor again! The music was fast, the floor perfect, and we had a blast.

Moving from no dancing to Rockabilly Swing is a big leap. If you take a week off and go to a ballroom dance, you're sure to feel a little rusty. It's natural, it happens to everyone. But in a ballroom setting you can do a few slow rumbas or foxtrots to warm yourself up again. Rockabilly is all or nothing, though. The rust came off in chunks and I found myself baffled by moves we have known for a long time. By the end of the night, though, things were right again and I breathed a (tired) sigh of relief.

I think the point of this all is that there has to be some burnishing to keep the rust away. Even on an 'off week' I need to dance through a song or two. It keeps the movements fresh in my head and muscles. Some repetition is good, I guess!