Save the last dance for me
A note on dance and body image
Here’s a fact that makes me feel old: I started going to dance class when I was in high school, 15 years ago. Dancing was hugely popular among teenagers at the time, and the class was packed. The first lesson was always chacha. I was stuck in a corner, craning to see where the instructor was. Every so often, I caught a glimpse of their feet when they were moving at light speed and making complicated twists and turns. To this total newbie, everything looked complicated. Even traveling on a straight line looked like some sort of voodoo. Where do I supposed to put my feet? When do I turn? Why is this music so fast? Why am I so bad at this?
I liked dancing alright then, but stopped going for a simple reason: I didn’t have a partner. Teenagers go to dance class with their high school sweetheart, or their crush, or their best buddy who was hoping to get out of the friend zone. My crush partnered up with his sweetheart, and so I was in an inescapable friend zone. I was also very tall and an ugly duckling (I’m pretty sure I still don’t fit the Vietnamese beauty standards now, I just don’t care anymore). Even the guys who were so desperate to find dates that they went to dance class didn’t ask me to dance. I went to high school prom alone, wearing a red and black outfit that made me look like a hybrid between a ladybug and a walking stick.
College wasn’t much better, especially at the beginning. I went to a tryout for a dance team thinking maybe they’d pick me because I already knew the footwork. Nope. Too tall and not pretty enough to match with the rest of the team.
At some point during college, a friend asked people to join him at salsa class. I hadn’t known what salsa was, but heck, I’d take it just to have a chance to dance. It turned out salsa was pretty cool, and soon I came to like it. With all bones and no curve, I was neither graceful nor sexy. I stiffened up even worse when I danced with a guy. But for the first time in my life, I was able to move in sync with music and a partner. It was a new feeling. Salsa is a social dance and there is a lot of interaction between leader and follower. It is almost like a conversation: there are prompts and responses. You’ll catch people smiling gleefully at their partners when they are dancing salsa. That’s how the girl says “That move was really cool, thanks for leading us into it,” and how the guy says “Wow, what you just did is really pretty!”
In grad school, I finally get to do what I started in high school: ballroom dancing. The footwork I learned back then is almost useless though, because now we are doing American style, as opposed to international style, which is what I’m used to. The differences are not obvious or even visible to onlookers but are huge to dancers. For example, in international rumba, the basic steps draw a cross on the floor, while in American rumba, they draw a box. American rumba music also tends to be faster and dancers have less time to “enunciate” their movements.
Ballroom dancing demands dancers be precise and fastidious. I fit right in with that perfectionist crowd. Every time, you work to improve your posture, your movements, and your techniques, just a little bit at a time. Good ballroom dancing only happens with a lot of practice. That attitude— constantly striving for a higher goal — is contagious. And I get to dance to all the music I love. Waltz is graceful. Tango is dramatic. Foxtrot is jazzy. Chacha is energetic. Rumba is slow and sexy.
Here’s the catch: ballroom dancing is not very useful if your goal is to dance up a storm at bars or weddings (unless it is your own wedding). You might want to try social dances, like salsa or swing. These dances are body conversations in music, conversations that you don’t have to talk. You can dance in a more crowded place (think bars on Friday night), to music more commonly played at those crowded places. Social dances are relaxing and cheerful. They are also good workout, especially for the followers, because there are a lot of turning and spinning and being thrown around. You can even wear jeans, or sweatpants, or sneakers, or flipflops, if you want to.
I was never really good at social dances. There is only so much you could practice on your own. Social dances require connection between partners. As a follower, I had to be able to react and respond instantly and constantly to the leader’s signals. These things only come with experience. I also needed to feel comfortable dancing with partners, and being as insecure as I was, that wasn’t going to happen. In college, I had one partner — my friend, and we only practiced for a couple of showcases. Our audience said it looked like I was leading and cajoling him, instead of the other way around. Oh well.
When I went to my first salsa lesson in grad school, it was more comfortable: at least I wasn’t too awkwardly tall among those folks. The instructor asked to “borrow” me to illustrate a dance (note: this happens to anyone randomly and does not imply I was a better dancer). We were about to start when he asked what my name was. He told the class: “Linh has this connection that comes out from her wrist. When you are on a dance floor, having a wrist like this will make everyone want to dance with you.”
That wasn’t completely true — not everyone wants to dance with me — but it pulled my self-esteem up quite a bit. I trusted my ability to dance more. I stopped thinking that I just sucked at this and that I should just quit. I might not ever become a wonderful dancer, like some of my friends are, but I am capable of becoming better to myself now. That’s all that matters.
So if you’ve just started dancing, or really anything, and feel like you are such a loser, let me tell you that it’s not true. It is only true if you allow it to be so. The wonderful dancers you see out there used to feel like that, too. They just didn’t give up.
