Being Happy

Without getting too philosophical, I believe it is every human’s right, goal, and reason for living to be as happy as possible. And yes, I also believe that includes helping others, but one can’t assist anyone else if the well is dry, so to speak. Being happy obviously means you must know what brings you joy. Duh. But I think you also have to be aware of what doesn’t.

Gary and I have taken that very seriously with our dancing, which must sometimes drive our dance instructor Melissa crazy, although as you know from many previous posts she has risen to the challenge. We have chosen not to follow any prescribed dance course, deciding instead to follow our own hearts.

The downside to that is there are, and I’m not kidding, probably a million dances from which to choose. The odds are good that we may try some we don’t like. Sometimes that can be a big disappointment.

Take the shag. Don’t you just love that name? And it’s a beach dance…the shag is danced regionally in southern coasts on open-air dance floors, soft island breezes playing through one’s hair while sipping fruity drinks with umbrellas…sigh. OK, so maybe I’m romancing it a bit, but I had such hopes for the Carolina Shag. Gary too. We’ve tried to like it; we took a class in it last year during the 2008 Moving Across The River dance workshops, and also this year.

But we just didn’t feel it.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very cool dance, sort of swing/river dance shuffle mix. We saw many many examples of expert shaggers over the weekend. I love some of the fancy footwork and pretzel-like turns. And then we had a revelation. Why not take some of those moves and put them into a swing we DO like? I mean really. If we can put samba and cha-cha moves into our West Coast Swing, surely we can add a bit of shag in there.

So that’s what we’re going to do. We learned something called a shag belly roll which sounds creepy but in truth is a wonderful face to face intricate step. It’s a definite toe-smash risk, but so worth it. And, if we ever do go to one of those romantic beach dance floors we can do our WCS Shag…The Wag, ha ha.

Check out these shaggers: it may not be for Gary and me, but maybe it is for you.