Shall We Dance?

You know all of those lists of things that you are supposed to do before you die? Well, I'll never do the majority of those things (or see the majority of those things that are listed under things to see before you die) but I am doing one thing that has always been on my list and i don't need to go to Egypt to do it (just SoHo): I'm taking ballroom dancing lessons. I started taking lessons in March, and I have progressed to the point where I can actually have a conversation with my instructor (my very, very young instructor) and do the rumba at the same time. A few weeks ago that would have been impossible as it's hard to talk when you are counting out loud and looking at your feet.

My instructor has infinite patience and the body of a ballet dancer, and for forty-five minutes a week he acts as if there is nowhere else he would rather be than across from a middle-aged mother of two who can recite most of Baby and Johnny's lines from "Dirty Dancing" by heart. During my lesson this week my instructor, N., informed me that "God gave you knees for a reason." Apparently I never learned the lesson so often repeated by my Austrian mother on the slopes of the Catskills: "bend zee knees!" Also, apparently breathing is helpful when dancing, as I am reminded by N to "breathe through the steps." The last time someone reminded me to breathe was during childbirth, and the cascade of four letter words ensured that he would not remind me again; I would have to remember on my own.

The best part of the lesson this week was practicing the "corte" in the Tango. The corte is when the man and the woman stop and "strike a pose" with the woman's body in the shape of an arc formed by extending one leg forward and lowering into the knees while bending the body backwards. The tango is all together the most sensually charged dance, since it is all about wanting and then being rebuked and then wanting again and being rebuked again, but continuing to dance nonetheless. And that's why an English teacher loves dancing. It's all about the metaphors.

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