Dancing In The Backyard And Dancing In The Ballroom

Freedom of a child to the discipline of an adult

“Dance is the hidden language of the soul” ― Martha Graham

My first memories of dancing are of sneaking out of the house after my parents had fallen asleep so I could dance under the moon in the enclosed backyard and sing songs to the stars. I used to spin around and do cartwheels on the grass, unbeknownst to my dreaming parents. I was 10 years old.

In 6th grade (age 11), we had to take the dreaded country dance class in PE where we actually had to hold hands with those icky boys with their cootie-covered hands. Blech!

PE in junior high was mostly track & field and body embarrassment, but there was one module of modern dance for 6 weeks that I loved. I never encountered modern dance again until I was in my 30s. (There were also horrible sock hops that I attended but hated. Luckily, no one picked me.)

High school was all rotating sports, like archery, swimming, golf, volleyball and tennis. There was no dance except the junior and senior proms, but luckily I was a nerd, so I didn’t have to go to those.

After high school, I was an exchange student in Germany for a year and learned how to waltz, which I loved like crazy.

When I returned to the US, I moved to San Francisco to be a hippy, and I danced in the parks while free music played, and danced in the disco clubs that only had a cover charge on the weekends, so on the weekends I danced at friends’ flats because it was so easy to throw a party in those days. Our flat threw parties with themes of wearing a weird hat, or wearing an outfit you made from black plastic, or come as your favorite indie movie character, and so on. I also took jazz dance classes on Saturdays. My days looked like this: go to work full time, then go to martial arts classes for a few hours, then eat a late supper, and then call up friends to meet at a club around 10:00 p.m. to dance until the club closed at 2:00 a.m., then get up at 7:00 and race to work and do it all again, every day for a decade. That was from age 18–27, 1974–’84. People wore a lot of neon then.

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

At age 27, I moved to England for a year. I lived in London there and went out clubbing every night with friends. This was the era of late punk and ska, so the music was really energetic, and the people wore a lot of rainbow mohawks (not me, I could never figure out the proper balance of sugar and hairspray). I had so much fun then, but it was miserably cold and sunless and I was a California girl, so I returned to the land of endless sun and outdoor parties.

I was almost 30 by then, not able to stay up quite so late anymore, and living in Silicon Valley working insane hours as a legal secretary for patent lawyers on the cutting edge of biotech invention. I worked 9–10 hours a day, then went to the local ballroom for 4 hours of classes every night, and 6 hours of free dancing on the weekends. I LOVED ballroom dancing! (Echo of those German waltzes.) I had seldom experienced anything so elegant, and I got pretty good at it after 2,000 hours (2 years of 20+ hours a week); good enough, in fact, that they were suggesting I should start competing. But no, my good hippy angel whispering in my ear wouldn’t allow me to spend $1,000 on a dress, so I just danced for fun.

“Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, just backwards and in high heels.” — Ann Richards

After two decades in the Bay Area, I was burnt out on the stress, so I moved to northern California. The university offered an African dance class. I totally sucked at that, so I gave it up, learned to play the djembe and joined the drummers so the students could dance to live music. Luckily, there was also a contemporary dance class, where I could revisit my early love of modern dance.

(This is something I hope to find again and study at length for the rest of my life — or until my knees give out. I’m researching places where I can go to study it after the Great Pause is over. Denmark, London and Budapest have contemporary dance schools.)

Then came a tough time helping my Mom look after my Dad in his last days. There was no dancing or joy for several years.

After Dad passed and I was sure Mom was doing okay, I moved to the Central Coast of California, because I had an old friend living there and I needed a change of pace from the frantic Bay Area and from hick central California. There wasn’t any ballroom in SLO, but I found a really good belly dancing teacher, and my friend’s daughter went with me. We both joined the troupe for a year, making our own costumes, and performing at old folks’ homes, competing in a few indoor competitions, and dancing at outdoor music festivals.

Then the Depression came, and there was no more work in small towns, so I moved to the state capitol to work for lawyers there. In Sacramento, I was introduced to Zumba and to Gabriel Roth’s Five Rhythms dance, which was a lot like the ecstatic dance of my early hippy days, and I enjoyed both of those for several years. I also got to participate in a flash mob dance one time.

I took care of my Mom in her last days, she passed almost a decade after Dad, and once again my years were grey with no music or joy.

But after a while, sunshine returned and life went on. Soon it was time to retire, and I became an ex-pat and moved to Thailand, where I had the pleasure of taking a short class in Thai dance. Now I’m sheltering in Bali, and I also got to enjoy a small class in Balinese dance here. Once the Great Pause has ended, I think I’d like to go to Argentina to learn the tango. Why not? Did you see Forever Tango? The younger dancers had more gymnastic moves, but the dancers with silver hair were sexier and smouldering!

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” ― Martha Graham

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