– In which Dorn and Kathleen face the music.
athleen and I caught that 1937 Fred Aistaire/Ginger Rogers classic Shall We Dance Sunday morning, on one of those oldies channels that fill cable these days (more evidence that cable is a dying business, catering mainly to people who have been watching it so long that it’s too much trouble to change). We caught it at the very end, at the odd number with dozens of Ginger Rogerses dancing with Fred to the title song (this number:)
Kathleen reminded me that we used to dance, and suggested I write a blog post about those days.
It’s true. We were never much good, solely because I was never any good (Kathleen was a natural, but I was always a geeky stiff Scandinavian). Kathleen would sometimes try to teach me to dance better, but her lessons always seemed to involve exhorting me to “just feel the music”. (This was quite beyond me, but I got her back—once when she wanted me to teach her some aspect of calculus, I told her she just needed to “feel the math”. Ha!)
When the County offered ballroom dance lessons, we signed up for them. They were taught by an amazing old character, Neil Valiant, a ballroom dancer from the Old School. He told us he was the man who brought the Salsa to the US from Cuba in the forties. He claimed he could teach anyone to dance, and he was right. Under his tutelage, he even taught me to dance (poorly) the Foxtrot, Cha-cha, Waltz, Samba, and my personal favorite, the Tango! I was still Scandinavian (and hence wooden), but at least I knew the steps.
Luckily, as Kathleen pointed out, you don’t have to dance well to enjoy dancing. We would sometimes dance in the aisles at the grocery store, when the muzac playing over the store PA system was right. It was fun and romantic, and when our young daughters were with us, it had the additional positive effect of mortifying them.
When we decided to have a re-wedding, we invited Neil to be the reception entertainment: he brought his collection of ballroom oldies, and after he performed some of his teaching magic on the guests, we all danced to them. Kathleen and I kicked it off with a Tango first dance. We all had a lot of fun and it worked out great.
We had our own Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers experience at a swanky hotel in Switzerland. We were doing a budget-tour of Europe tacked onto a business trip to a conference in Germany. We decided that at one stop, we would splurge and stay at a multi-star hotel, under the shadow of the Matterhorn in San Moritz. It was quite swanky (for us) and even a bit intimidating—I remember the table settings having more utensils than I had ever eaten with before, and wondering the purposes of the extras.
But when they started piping in the music, we plucked up our courage and waltzed through the hallways, up the grand stairs, and out onto the balcony. The setting could have been one from those Fred Astaire high-society dance fantasy movies, except it was in color.
We weren’t magically transformed into Fred and Ginger, but we didn’t embarrass ourselves either, and when other dinner guests there saw us dancing, although they didn’t rise and join us, they did watch and smile. We were content.
My Fred Astaire (or maybe Sean Spicer, if I’m honest) moment was many years ago now (we were the youngsters at the hotel, back then), but it still warms my heart. Maybe more than ever, as my mis-steps fade from my memory and only the courage and the triumph of the dance remain. Thank you, Kathleen.
And thank you!
Dorn
10/7/2019