When I was in eighth grade, my parents made me take a ballroom dancing class because everyone else was doing it. (For some reason, when I used that logic to defend many of my other adolescent actions, it didn’t fly.)
The class typically went as follows: 120 fourteen year-olds were crammed into a room built for 50; an underpaid, over-passionate instructor dressed like a Medieval balladeer yelled commands like “Swing your partner!” for two straight hours; and at the end of it all he played the “Cha Cha Slide” just to make us feel better (although I still have no idea how to do the Charlie Brown). Worse yet, there were slightly fewer girls than boys — so a few male stragglers were left dancing with each other (horrible) or one of the supervising moms (Oedipal).
Now, more than six years later, I barely know how to box step. So when I read stories about college students involved in ballroom dancing competitions, I get nostalgic and sad.
After all, if anyone should take home a trophy at a ballroom dance-off, it should be the guy who started in middle school; I should know my way around a mambo and a rumba and all the other exotic dances that soap operas have lead me to believe are instant turn-ons for middle-aged women. (And from what I remember of dancing with moms, they are.)
But the fact is that I don’t, and I think I know why.
Ever since eighth grade, the only dance I’ve learned is the bump ‘n grind. This is largely because females from this generation are more comfortable dancing with poles than with partners, and males from this generation have about as much rhythm as these guys. But I guess I should have expected that from a country whose best ballroom dancer is a Nascar driver.
So let’s get back to swinging our partners, Penn — ’cause if the dances our grandparents grew up with are too hard for us, then the Macarena might be too hard for our next of kin. And no one wants that.
Tags: ballroom, Cha Cha real smooth, Medieval
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