Step It Up!

One of my New Year's goals was to join the line dancing group here in my community. I used to know quite a few of the popular line dances when I worked full-time. A group of us would go to one of the country-western bars in St. Louis and tear up the floor. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but we definitely left a few marks on the floor.

One year we hosted a college student from Japan, and a few of us took our students to a country-western bar. They got out on the floor and were having a great time until a couple of the local men made a scene. They thought the students were making fun of them. Once we explained they were here going to school and had never seen line dancing before, the men backed off and in fact helped the students learn a few dances. 

But it's been a long time since those dancing days, and I have forgotten more than I ever learned. Except the Electric Slide, which is super easy. I decided to go to the first session in January, thinking there would be other new people joining. Nope - just me. The line dance group here meets once a week for an hour, and most of the women (with a couple men thrown in for good measure) have been going to the class for years. So it is a little intimidating to come in as a newbie.

The resident instructor invites new people to come a half hour early to refresh, so I thought that would work well. However, I soon found out that most of the members show up early just to get an extra half hour of dance in. That means there is not much opportunity for individual instruction. I almost quit after the first session. I was so lost. But people encouraged me to come back, so I did. I've gone every week, unless I have a conflict. 

It has been really helpful to me to look and see if any of the dances we are doing have a tutorial on YouTube. Then I can practice the steps before I go the next week. The problem is she rarely does the same dances two weeks in a row. But I practice anyway just in case one of them shows up. I'm getting way more comfortable, and really enjoy going each week.

In addition to that some friends of ours here asked four other couples if they would like to learn Social Swing. So every Sunday night Jim and I have been learning that style of dance. We learn two new dance moves each week, and I think we are up to 14 different ones now. Physically we are just not able to do all the moves, so we are picking and choosing which ones work for us. It has been a lot of fun, and we are hoping to show off some of our moves on our next vacation.