The Dance Lessons

Despite my long-standing reputation in ballroom dancing, I learned from my audition with Grazina, pictured here, that my expertise in the basic dances, particularly cha cha, was not enough for comfort. Who knows? I could be dancing with women whose skills range all the way from Annie Oakley to Ginger Rogers. So I contacted Grazina and arranged for some brush-up lessons. She was no longer able to use the studio where I'd had my audition, she said, but a friend who was usually out of town had loaned her the use of her basement recreation room where there was a good hardwood floor and a mirrored wall. I could meet her there; come in through the garage. Okay. On the day of my first appointment, my car was in the shop for some complicated surgery and the dealer had loaned me a Honda, saying that his BMW loaners were all in the shop; so many of his customers were having accidents. So of course, finding my way through the wilds of Ellicott City, I was rear-ended by a young girl who was texting on her cell phone, forcing me to stop for all that exchange of insurance information, call the service manager at BMW and tell him that I, too, had been in an accident - there was no serious damage and no one was hurt - and arrive late for my first appointment. Not a good beginning!

But during the last six weeks of weekly lessons, Grazina has taught me enough so that I think I will now feel confident on the dance floor. I have six or seven patterns in each dance and can put them together in myriad combinations that should be enough for even a Ginger Rogers. I took elaborate notes and identified the steps with their names - conversation step, cha cha chase, twinkle cross over, under-arm turn, Cuban walks (both open and closed) and the various breaks: cross over breaks, parallel breaks, open breaks and the ubiquitous back rocks, which can be done in almost every dance. I was feeling pretty good about all this when it suddenly occurred to me just before my last lesson that even though Stacy had not required me to learn the samba, if the ship was going to Rio, the combo in the lounge was sure to play sambas. I had to ask Grazina for a quickie lesson: the basic, progressive basic, balancetas (balance left, balance right) and cariocas, which go bum-de-bum-de-bum-de-bum in first a straight line to the right and then bum-de-bum-de-bum-de-bum back again. In between lessons, I've been practicing in my garden, where there is enough room for a grapevine advance, to the (I presume) consternation and (probable) amusement of my neighbors who by now must have grown weary of hearing the same cha cha's over and over. Even I'm tired of them.

Back in the days of the Swarthmore Junior Assemblies, I had a partner who helped me with my teaching and I had made a notebook of steps for her with diagrams and instructions that I thought would help her to learn them. In a fit of nostalgia, and because I thought I might add some steps from my past to the ones Grazina was teaching me in my present, I searched my cache of saved hope-chest-type items secreted away in a far corner of a cupboard in my basement. Surprisingly, there among the outdated address books and screaming newsaper headlines, I found the little notebook. Paper clipped to the cover was still a note from my then-partner thanking me for the book and expressing the hope that all that information might make it safely and intact, from the page through her head and into her feet. I now know how she felt. Do you suppose I can hide a discreet crib sheet in the inside pocket of my tuxedo?