There’s a stage post-toddler years that I’ve observed in myself and others, where every handlebar is like the handle of a buggy, and you find yourself accidentally gently pushing shopping trolleys or scooters to and fro, as if to soothe a sleeping child.
It’s kind of like that in the post-dancing years, whereby each low railing or bannister is a potential barre, and you have to remind yourself not to grab hold and start plies.
Like many parents of little girls, my mum took me to ballet classes when I was a toddler (it didn’t go well – apparently I wet myself twice so we gave up). A couple of years later, she tried me on ballroom dancing lessons, which I stuck at better – I danced mostly at least weekly up until the age of 21.
My time at university with Cambridge Dancers’ Club was such a lifetime highlight that it’s hard to put into words. Alongside the ballroom, I learnt salsa, acrobatic rock ‘n’ roll, and off-beat. For a while, I was doing this for five nights a week. Every Friday night was General Dancing which was so fun and sociable and ended in drinks across the road. Every term there was a ball, like a proper ball, with a huge dance floor and a big band and people in suede-soled shoes who all really knew how to dance. The rock ‘n’ roll team also got to do a round of the university May Balls as performers, which was a pretty epic way of ending my three years at university. I'd highly recommend it.
We were ballroom dancing before it was cool. Two of the Cambridge club teachers, Erin Boag and Anton du Beke were excited to get asked to join a new TV show which turned out to be the phenomenon that is Strictly Come Dancing. Now everybody’s at it!
I remember thinking, why would I want to live anywhere other than here so I can keep seeing these people and dancing every night? But I did keep living there, but I didn’t keep dancing. I got busy getting married, renovating a house, doing a job which initially required me to mark every evening, there was a brief and unsuccessful flirtation with a new hobby, sailing, then there were children.
It’s not totally gone away though. I tried adult ballet which was like the fulfillment of a childhood dream. Learning the order of barre exercises was like taking part in a book or film. The teacher was delightfully strict; we grown women loved being told off if our buns weren’t tidy enough or if we were a minute late. But it was hard to commit to classes with a new baby.
Then there was Mummy and Me Zumba which was fun, if completely exhausting in a not great way. Dancing with a baby in a sling and a toddler clinging to your leg is probably not the best thing for your hips either, especially when you’re recovering from PGP. I gave up when the toddler completely lost patience. Then there were chances to help with school show choreography or sports days or even leading the hokey cokey at the toddler group – fun little reminders of what I used to love.
But still, if you saw me doing jobs in the kitchen to music, you’d see it. It’s inefficient but fun. I like to chop veg and clean to the salsa rhythms of “In the Heights”, or chasee and whisk across to the oven, little patterns of steps ingrained into muscle memory, even after nearly half a lifetime of absence. My older body is of course a bit disappointing, how my leg immediately rebounds back if I try to kick, how inflexible I am. Or at church, the movement just comes creeping, wiggling up me, even though the church we currently go to isn't exactly a dancing kind of church. And also when I watch people dance, I feel it. I catch myself shifting in my seat, muscles responding in sympathy, imagining what it might feel like.
So I am so excited to be joining Jazzercize tonight! Even if it’s horrible, or full of grannies.
Maybe I can imagine I’ve dropped the ‘ex-‘ and pretend I’m really a dancer again…
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