Show up at at the gym, say hey to Justin, the thirty year old body builder dude who runs the morning shift at In Shape. I like seeing him there, he's a small town guy from Eastern Oregon, kind of a redneck, but good natured about it. He also loves him some St Louis Cardinals, and he's excited that baseball season has finally begun. I'll say something stupid like 'can't we get some new women around here' or 'Go Yankees'. It's my way of saying hi. We like each other. BTW Justin is freakin' huge and loving it. Guy works out like a demon and he's ripped.
Go into the studio, change out of my shoes into my dance shoes, which are these black, supple workout shoes that let me spin with ease. It's a hundred percent better than trying to dance in sneakers, especially when it comes to turning. I'll keep a sweatshirt on until I get warmed up, and then I go find my spot. I'm one of the only people who changes his spot frequently. There are folks who have danced in the same place in the room for years, but I like seeing things from different angles. It does something to your brain to have to adjust like that, and a big part of dance class is working the brain. These days I'm going toward the front on the right side and I'm happy there, dancing next to Nancy who is about my age, a cool woman who among other things, provides foster care for infants until they get placed into an adoption. She's had maybe twenty kids that way...
The music starts, the warm-up begins, same one each time in Dana's class, which is a good thing. We know what's coming so you don't have to pay too much external attention, but can focus inward and start feeling your body as it loosens up. Hip isolations, shoulder isolations, chest isolations, lots of circular movement, some cracking of vertebrae especially on the head rolls. Now we're into some plies, leg lifts, side bends, front bends, each thing preparing the body to dance. By the end of the warm-up it's time to pull off the sweatshirt and learn the combination.
Dana is a very good teacher, and she'll choreograph a new combination every 4 weeks or so. That is what makes class so satisfying, the process of learning something new, getting it into my body, overcoming whatever synaptic issues I need to deal with, perfecting the movement to the best of my ability, and then DANCING!. It's almost like a reward for the work that I put in.
I think I'm a fairly quick study, at least by the standards of this class. Now that I've been doing it for awhile, it's easy to recognize the movements, process them and have my body perform them. But there's always something new, something we haven't done before and that's when it gets interesting. Sometimes, especially when there are important arm movements along with something a bit complicated in the footwork, my brain can short out and confuse itself. So I need to break it down. What are the feet doing, let's nail that before trying to add the arms. It's not that different than learning how to play the piano. It helps to get one hand automatic and then you can concentrate on the next thing. That kind of labor division in the brain is very satisfying to a guy like me. I have to break it down into component parts, program myself to perform the actions and then through repetition, get it down. It's the thing I love best about class, the problem solving aspect which leads to the freedom. I'm sure there's a nice metaphor in there, and I'll come up with it eventually.
And I get frustrated sometimes when I don't get something as quickly as I think I should. When I was more of a beginner, I'd have to leave class sometimes, I'd get so pissed off and triggered by my inability to absorb something. I would become like a ten year old who struck out in a baseball game, and once frustration button would get pushed, it was really hard to un push it. I don't know if I've become more mature (unlikely) or maybe just a better dancer, but I'm not getting too frustrated these days. Maybe it's just an easier class, who knows, but now when I don't get something immediately, I have a better attitude about it, and can hang in there long enough to get over the hump (the hump being myself)
Between dance class, and Zumba class and Ecstatic dance and swing dance on the weekends, I'm probably dancing 6 or 7 times a week and it's clearly my main form of exercise. This is a good thing....
