Caroline Child: February 2008 Archives

I recently heard this song by Cy Coleman and it reminded me why I love dancing.  There aren’t many places where you can go these days, meet thirty strangers and come away feeling somehow more alive, more present and that you have had another wonderful night.   You go to bed with aching feet and wake up feeling refreshed becuase you've slept the whole night through.  There is no terrible hangover as you have drunk only water all evening. 

It doesn’t really matter the dance, whatever dance evening I go to, I tend to love it.  I love picking up the rhythm in the music: the fast pulse of a Latino beat; the slow curvaceous sounds of a crooner; I love spinning around, skirt twirling, catching a hand before being spun again; hundreds of pairs of feet moving in time.  You don’t know the person you’re dancing with, you might not say anything but a ‘Yes’ and a ‘Thank you’ all evening but it doesn’t matter, indeed verbal conversations sometimes lessen the experience, because you have conversations through dance.  You swiftly get to know who you naturally dance well with; who is energetic and loves to move quickly; who likes the slow dances and will move elegantly and with confidence and who likes to laugh, sing along and enjoy the music.  After a few weeks of dancing regularly, you feel very comfortable in the dance hall as you have danced with or watched most people there.  I also think that human touch is really important and certainly in London, one can too easily go through the whole day with the only human physical contact being a shove on the tube or a business hand shake.

There are of course, as in any society, your share of idiots: the man who is too sensual for comfort (everyone will have different limits on this); the jokester who extends a hand for you to grab and then whisks it away like he’s played a hilarious joke, or the man who’d rather focus on his own balletic gestures than admit he’s dancing in a pair. I am sure there would be a similar list of undesirable qualities in female partners, but someone will have to inform me of these.  But these are the minority, I always come away and feel I have met a wide range of society and a lot of interesting people away from my normal circle of colleagues and friends.

British men all too often seem to have this fear of dancing; they need to be utterly paralytic and surrounded by similarly drunken mates to venture a foot onto the dance floor.  They scoff and smirk at the man who likes dancing while they down another pint of beer.  It’s a shame.  Is this a recent phenomenon?  Dancing seemed more part of the culture in British society certainly in the older generations who seem to know how to do the waltz, the foxtrot and a variety of other dances.  I think an important social interaction has been lost.  Now, we pay money to go into impersonal gyms and sweat in silence with i-pods and television screens as our company, twelve hours indoors working, now in your leisure hour, go indoors again.  There can be a danger of loneliness, and dare I say it, isolation, in our society that dancing helps to combat.

Some might complain this kind of dancing is incredibly sexist or that they don’t like having to follow a set routine or pattern, they are too individual.  Rubbish!  If you get any good, there is tremendous freedom in dance, it’s only for those of us learning the ropes that it’s terribly structured and that helps give you some security when dancing with someone you don’t know.  Sexist, well yes it is I guess; the man leads and the woman follows but to be honest, I don’t give a damn! I like losing myself in the music and not having to worry about what move I should do next.  I have to concentrate to make sure I am following and there is still freedom in the movements. 

Have I persuaded you to get on the dance floor?  If I have, have a look on the web at your nearest Ceroc venue or salsa dance night.  There are usually beginners and intermediate classes followed by ‘freestyle’, you can just go for a one off try, it's usually about eight pounds but that's all you spend.   As Cy Coleman and Dorothy Fields wrote,

‘And The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat,
Puts a tingle in your fingers and a tingle in your feet,
Rhythm in your bedroom,
Rhythm in the street,
Yes, The Rhythm Of Life is a powerful beat’

How wonderful to come out of a film feeling happy!  After last week’s viewing of ‘No Country for Old Men’ this is indeed a different feeling.  I can go to bed with a feeling of contentment, a pleasant evening spent laughing; an element of hope.  I won’t have to wake up tomorrow feeling like I’ve come out of a strangely disturbing dream; I won’t have images of spurting carotid arteries popping into my mind throughout the day; nor will I be wondering whether or not the next stranger I have to interact with is a psychopathic killer (incidentally I can’t believe this actor, Javier Bardem, is going to play the main romantic hero in ‘Love in the Times of Cholera’, one of my favourite novels, how am I going to make the switch? Such an inconsiderate choice.)  I must have spent three days chewing over the plot, the images, the feelings.  As much as I left the film feeling miserable, it did allow much thought and discussion.  ‘Definitely Maybe’, did definitely not provide such musings, but I don’t care; it was just what I wanted.  The joy of the rom com: I can see it, enjoy it and forget it!  

‘Definitely Maybe’ was a little quirky in its structure, the interesting framework of a father explaining his pre-marital relationships to his ten year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin from the delightful ‘Little Miss Sunshine’) provided humourous interjections as we are aligned with her in trying to guess who the mother is. Admittedly he does end up telling his daughter some pretty weird stuff (such as her mother’s lesbian affair) which makes you question his parental role… still New York children are pretty mature these days.   Cleverly timed, the Clinton presidential campaign provides an interesting early context with the Lewinsky affair mirroring the main character’s disillusionment with politics and life. 

 The film is charming but ultimately forgettable.  It doesn’t really try to be realistic: it doesn’t dwell on the pain of divorce or separation, and the way stunningly beautiful, amusing and clever women seem incredibly easy to come by may well infuriate single men.  More appealingly to us thirty-somethings, the characters don’t seem to age from 24 to 33.  The main message seems more to be you just end up with the right person at the right time without it being very much in your control.  This film is one for an enjoyable night out; the silver screen can lure you into its world and leave you with a happy sigh and a pleasant sleep, maybe.