Old Home Weekend

Sometimes there's no place like home. I'm not talking about home where you sleep and eat and keep your stuff…I'm talking about those old, familiar haunts that you visit and revisit so often you know them as well as you know your own home. For us, the dance versions of these homes away from home are the Starlight Ballroom and the Indiana Roof Ballroom. If you've read my entries for the last month - and I encourage you to do that, I'm not writing for my health here - you'll already know that we've paid our last visit to the Indiana Roof for the year…sadly the Roof's New Years Eve festivities are only so-so even though they're held in spectacular surroundings. Tonight we're visiting the place we'll be spending New Year's Eve - Starlight Ballroom.

Starlight is kind of generic when it comes to the interior. It's just a square, new-ish building with a good floor - no points for style unless you call drop ceilings stylish. Still it's the location Indy Dancers calls home once every other Saturday and, therefore, so do we.

Really it's kind of funny when I think about having a 'usual' place to dance. I mean we've traveled from Iowa to Cincinnati to dance, we've attended workshops on Lindy Hop, Arkansas Street Swing, St. Louis Imperial Swing, and Carolina Shag, we're into taking chances with our dancing - yet here I am extolling the virtues of the same-old-same-old. Strange how wandering can wear you out. Maybe it's something about the time of year…Thanksgiving always has been a 'family' holiday for me and with Yule right around the corner maybe it's natural to start thinking about the kith and kin, home and hearth.

I guess that means for the rest of 2008 we'll be exercising the dance steps we've learned throughout the year on the floors we've come to know and surrounded by the dancers we've come to recognize (for good or ill). I'm good with that, really good with it when I think about it.