Keep dancing!

 We took up ballroom dancing as a result of David's need to do things properly.

He didn't want our first dance on our wedding day to be just a shuffle around the floor.  He didn't mention this to me, though, until one Saturday after doing our shopping, he suddenly left me at the bus stop saying "I'll be back in a minute".  He soon returned and led me around the corner, into the Mond buildings and up three flights of stairs to a dance school.  He'd arranged for us to have a dancing lesson then and there. Our teacher put the shopping in the fridge and we took our first steps in the Social Foxtrot.

We followed up with the Waltz, and then after the wedding joined the beginners' class. We took private lessons as well. And then we stopped going for a while;  I had some problems with my health, and was also working until 8.30 pm every other week which made it difficult to keep up with lessons.  We never missed an episode of Strictly, and often talked about taking it up again.  We took part in classes organised by our HR department's Health & Wellbeing team but they finished after a number of weeks, and we didn't take things any further.

Then David decided he'd like to take it up again and made enquiries. He found that our first teacher had passed away.  There was another dance school that we hadn't considered joining in the first place because it was at the other end of town. Back then we hadn't had a car so it wasn't so easy to get to.  One day he came home and said, "I've called in to De Marco's, they've got beginners' classes starting next week and I want us to start dancing again!"

I have to be honest, I wasn't so sure, but I went along with it.  And it was SO MUCH FUN!  Our first teacher had taught by demonstrating the steps first to the men, then the ladies (or vice versa) and then the couples would join up and dance together.  Our new teachers, Mario and Rebekah, had a different way of teaching - we learned as a couple, dancing together.  They also taught in blocks - so you learned one Latin dance and one Ballroom dance for four weeks, then moved on to another two dances.  Eventually you'd have covered them all and start again, but with different choreography - or you could move up to a more advanced class if you felt confident enough. 

I remember that the first week we did Salsa but I can't remember which Ballroom dance we learned - I think it might have been the Waltz.  In any case, we were hooked again, and began going regularly.  There were weekly socials and special parties  - the Christmas Fancy Dress party was the highlight of the season for us! 

We eventually graduated to the Intermediate class and were persuaded by Mario to start taking medal tests.  It seemed like a good idea at the time.  However, on the day of our first test (Pre-bronze Cha Cha) I was as nervous as I'd been on my driving tests!  

After that we worked our way through the dances, with a few notable incidents - like the time we foolishly opted to do Jive and Quickstep in the same test.  Jive is the fastest Latin dance and Quickstep is...well, it's quick.  At our Cha Cha test, the examiner had stopped us after we'd gone once through our routine.  This time though, with a different examiner, we did about four circuits of the floor before she'd seen enough of our Quickstep and THEN we still had to do our Jive! 

I can honestly say that David and I had very few disagreements in all the years we were together - except when it came to dance.  If he thought I was doing something wrong - usually not facing him square on or anticipating a turn - he'd glare at me, or stop dead and make me start again.  He was also apt to forget the choreography and accuse me of making things up, or stop in the middle of a figure and say "Hang on, I'm wrong-footed somewhere!"  There were quite a few occasions where we drove home with me determinedly Not Speaking to him, but he didn't notice because he was busy giving a running commentary of what I was doing wrong and how I could correct it.  During our Rumba test, he gave me such fiendish looks of hatred that I had a meltdown on the way home afterwards.

Thanks to Mario's excellent teaching, we passed every test with Honours.  We'd completed our Bronze medals in Ballroom, and had started on Bronze in Latin (we'd done Samba and were working on Paso Doble and Cha Cha,) and Silver Ballroom (Waltz) when David was diagnosed.

When Lockdown started, we continued with lessons over Zoom and were looking forward to getting back in the studio.  I'm still dancing, although with new partners.  It'll never be the same, but it brings back happy memories.