The Not Knowing

The past week we’ve been in Winchester, VA – birthplace of Patsy Cline. I’m traveling on business but the trip is long enough to allow a weekend in VA with time for dancing. So, Friday night we set off for a place called ‘The Gables’ less than fifteen minutes away. Their website looked good, pictures of happy people drinking and partying and some verbiage about their dance floor. It wasn’t going to be a visit to a historic ballroom but a good night of dancing would be a welcome distraction from a week filled with the minutia of work.

When we got to the place it was – how do I put this politely – a skanky dump? Never got in – at eight o’clock when the place supposedly opened the doors were locked and the windows were dark. There were cars in the parking, even people in the parking lot, but the Gables seemed closed. We took two runs at the place and then turned back to Winchester for dinner at a local Thai place.

Dancing is about taking chances, I think. You don’t learn a new step without being willing to try something you’ve never tried before and then take it public where there’s a real chance you’ll screw up and land on your face in front of spectators. Finding new dance venues is the same in a lot of ways. You set off in your car, following a map to somewhere you’ve never been, and sometimes what you arrive at is a real flop – other times its gold.

It’s the chance at gold that keeps me going. Knowing you’re in for a treat is great but finding something that most people aren’t aware of – that’s special. The sense of possibility is what took Kelly and me to 8 Seconds Saloon and the Starlight Ballroom in Indy. This time it led us to a dump in West Virginia that didn’t live up to its hype in any way, shape, or form. That’s rolling the dice, no guarantees.

Tonight we’re off to a historic ballroom in Maryland. Glen Echo Park has been around since 1891 and up until a year after I was born had one of the premiere amusement parks on the East Coast. The Spanish Ballroom was restored in 1933 and shares a corner of the park with a bumper car pavilion built in the same era. There’s a ton of irony in that fact – frankly I’ve been on plenty of dance floors that could be considered bumper car pavilions! The Spanish Ballroom is suited for 800 dancers, though, and I can’t imagine a plain-old Saturday night swing dance pulling that kind of crowd. Then again we were wrong about The Gables so who knows!

Like I said, it’s the not knowing that keeps me going.