uhh...you did what?

Well, since you asked, I just got back from a ballroom/swing dance at a local church. Now before you go into shock, assuming you haven't already, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for this. I heard about it as a swing dance with lessons beforehand in an email sent out to the young adult group I'm in. Having been to such a thing way back in my UIUC days that was set up by InterVarsity, and having enjoyed it, I figured I'd give this one a shot. I expected plenty of people like myself to be there, most of whom would also have no idea how to do any kind of dancing, and some of my group would also be in attendance. Not to mention snacks and tables to talk to folks at if the dancing got boring (which I fully expected it to--I was going for the people not the activity). You know, basically a young adult gathering thing at a local church. So I figured I knew what to expect. Heck, I even talked another guy in the group into coming along.

When we showed up I knew I was in trouble. You could imagine our surprise when the three of us who rode together walked into a room with mostly middle-aged and older folks wearing slacks and nice shirts--not shorts and t-shirts like my friend and I. We weren't sure what was up but it clearly wasn't what we had come for. The lessons had already started and a lot of these people seemed to know what they were doing. Unsure of whether to take a chance or go with our gut instinct and bolt for the door, we hung around for a bit without paying the $10 entry charge. I think the only thing keeping us there--at least for me--was the fact that we had all rode together and nobody wanted to ask the others to skip out. But when we met up with two more from our crowd we decided to stick around. So we swallowed what little pride we had left at that point and jumped into the lessons crowd.

We then realized it wasn't a "swing dance" but more of a casual ballroom dance with some swing music mixed in. Turns out it's a club of sorts unaffiliated with the church that happened to be meeting there this month. After stumbling through some lessons we tried our hands--and feet--at the dancing to music part. Thankfully out of us five my friend and I were the only ones with zero prior experience, and one of the women was good enough to do a lot of coaching throughout the evening. There were other inexperienced people there, but those who came later were good and the vast majority seemed to be regulars.

We ended up staying the entire three hours plus the 45 minutes or so of lessons beforehand. Believe it or not I actually enjoyed myself. Quite a bit. We only danced to one out of every two or three songs and the rest was spent talking. The music wasn't bad and the floor was never too crowded--a very good thing for us rookies. And for the first time since moving here I felt like I actually connected with someone in the group on more than a small-talk basis. Myself and the guy I had talked to beforehand had some pretty good conversations and learned we have a lot in common. The dancing was a new experience, of course, for a guy who's been to one other dance his entire life and generally avoided them like a disease. It was hard but fun, although at times I felt awkward dancing with people who knew so much more and were offering tips and leads and stuff in something that I'm supposed to basically lead and direct. Not to mention doing more than the most basic steps and thus confusing me. Screw the details and fine-tuning, I was just concerned with trying to stay in step and avoid either plowing through another couple or sending my partner into someone else. And there were several near misses. (There must be some sort of etiquette for couples to avoid each other out there. Unfortunately I don't know what it is and couldn't react fast enough if anyone came within a few feet, so we'd basically stay in the same place and leave it up to the others to avoid us.)

One of the best parts was watching the others. There were lots of really good dancers there, and some of the elderly folks were the most impressive. One woman was celebrating her 80th birthday that week and those two were among the best. You'd never tell from the way they walked but they were lots of fun to watch because they did so much improv and solo stuff--we all agreed they must have grown up doing it back in the big band days to be that good. It was fairly easy to tell the newbies from the pros though. Some couples were kinda clumsy in their steps and didn't move around the floor much, but most seemed to know their stuff like it was second nature and a few were just plain scary.

But overall it was a great time and something I'd probably even go to again if someone else I knew would be there. I might even go regularly if I was better at it and could go with others. The more I learned and the more I could do the more fun it would become. Supposedly there are classes for such things, and I think it'd be cool to try one out as long as I was with someone I knew who was also learning. Never thought I'd hear myself say such blasphemous things but what the heck. New ways of having fun I guess.