Spreading the love

So, tonight was the night. White Boy and I have been getting together every Monday night since the end of June (except for that one miserable week I was sick), practicing and refining our nightclub two step. Fell in love with NCTS dancing at the MAC in SLC with Utah Swing Ambassador. Didn't even know what it was then, just that he led it so well, and it just seemed to flow so smoothly.

Anyway, when Minnie asked me about teaching dancing to the mid-singles, I decided that NCTS was the way to go. It's a symmetrical dance, very easy, on the slow side, and perfect for 30-somethings who may not have ever danced a partnered dance in their life except for the dead-boring-high-school-slow-dance-junk that most people never progress beyond.

Looked on-line for a dvd that I could order so that I could get more solid on how to teach the basics. However, most of the easily commercially available stuff looked really cheesy. I did find one dvd by Michael Kiehm that looked promising, but this was much further down the line.

Anyway, after the initial disappointing dvd search, I turned to the next obvious source ... youtube! Again, some older, arthritic looking stuff, and some decidedly country stuff. Then, I found this clip and this other clip of my pal Jeremy with Monica, and I knew that this was definitely what I wanted to teach. Found a couple of other clips of Michael Kiehm and Jim & Katie to review for material, and everything else just followed.

For the class, we had abnout 30-ish people show up. In the end there ended up being about four extra women who were brave enough to stay in the rotation. Of course, some just couldn't stay put, and the rotation got all messed up, but both White Boy and I stepped in as leads, and I think it wasn't too bad. One nice thing is that I was able to get around and look at couples on a personal level, and help out those who were having trouble. Yes, there were at least one guy who was absolutely hopeless, and a couple women who were next to hopeless, but all in all, they weren't bad.

Before we ever got to the actual NCTS, I did a little primer on lead and follow technique. Men: set the direction, pace and moves, also, keep the hands level despite nerves (no chicken wing dancing), and don't squeeze your partner's hands too tightly. Women: follow, and fill the hand, whether it's open or closed position. Really simple tension and compression ideas. All that, and the importance of breath mints! As Steve Garrett says, "Dancing is the one time that a man can tell a woman what to do, and she's expected to do it." To which I like to add, "So don't mess it up."

We taught the basic, an outside turn, travelling crossovers, and the hug-me turns. Ended up leaving out the Miranda Roll with walkabout, and the Spanish Archer. And if you don't recognize the names of all the moves, it's because I didn't know what they were, and just made them up!

After the lesson, there was a lot of standing around and talking. Which isn't unusual, just puzzling. We'd just taught a great lesson, everyone seemed to be excited about what they'd learned, but no one was taking advantage of the large dance space and music. So, White Boy and I took a couple turns around the floor just for kicks. Maybe I should have talked a little about asking other people to dance, but you'd have figured that single people in their 30's would have figured this out for themselves. And White Boy did tremendously, for just having learned the dance a few weeks ago. If he weren't already exclusively dating someone, I'm sure he would have been able to ask out almost any woman at the event, and gotten an enthusiastic yes. If only all the other men were so enlightened about the attractiveness-enhancing properties of a man who knows how to lead and dance well.

Afterwards, Shimai J and Feminist A asked about places to go dancing, and I promised to send some links to some of the fun weekend venues. We also got invited out to dinner with Minnie et al, but I bowed out because of work the next day.

Dancing ... it's all about spreading the love!