Come dancing

I recently wrote a story about dance lessons for brides and grooms to be. During the course of my interviews, one of the dance studio owners/instructors invited me to come to a group lesson, on the house. My patient and devoted boyfriend and I took him up on the offer last night.

The studio is located in a crumbling strip mall — the kind of place where you find Asian markets and pawn shops. But it was bright and open inside, with a beautifully polished dance floor. A crowd was waiting for the lesson to begin. There must have been 50 or more people, many of them men there on their own and several couples younger than us.

The instructor — a roundish, middle-aged man, who certainly didn’t look like a dancer — was quite light on his feet. He separated the men and women on either side of him. We learned the basic steps that way and then joined our partners across the room. Couples who came together got to dance together all evening. Singles switched out because there were more men than women. (Maybe it’s a good place to meet someone nice.)

We learned the Fox Trot, dancing a bit without any music. We learned the dance frame and the steps with our partners. Then we danced to music – some Sinatra. We learned a couple of turns, and the instructor gave pointers and tips to individuals who needed it. We learned not to watch our feet and to be offset so we didn’t walk on each other. We didn’t snark at each other when we made a mistake and found ourselves smiling and laughing quite a bit.