Dancing Lessons

December 3, 2007 | Filed Under A Brooklyn Lad 

I did something new one night last week and when I arrived home at 9PM wearing ultra-baggy gym pants, the look on Heidi’s face was one of both concern and incomprehension.

“WHAT are those? Your boss bought you those? YOU bought those?”

“$28” I said, twirling stiffly, “they were on sale.”

4 hours earlier I had been crammed into a cab heading from West Chelsea to Chelsea proper. I was hungry and grumpy. My 4 colleagues, all women and all my senior were chattering excitedly. I sat next to Carol the actress, the only colleague less than 2 decades older than me.

“I know!” exclaimed Barb, my boss, looking at Carol and I, “I’ll tell them that you are journalists from the New York Times and you are writing an article about hip-hop dancing and seniors.”

“No!” Said Carol.

I shrugged. I felt so sick with fear; words were not an option for me.

“Oh go on,” Barb continued, “Then you won’t feel self conscious if you can’t dance.”

Her reasoning sounded dubious to say the least, but my fear of dancing was so great, that masquerading as a journalist paled into insignificance next to it. I said nothing.

“You never know Simon,” she continued, “you may discover a whole new side to yourself and really love it.”

I grunted.

I was trapped in a cab headed to a hip-hop dancing class in Chelsea. I do not dance. Also, I was deeply terrified of a changing room full of gay men. Who else would take a class like this I thought? Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that I thought anyone would take a fancy to me; far from it in fact, what terrified me was imagining how my feeble frame would measure up against so many well-tended physiques. I could picture them with their pronounced abs and their shiny golden pectorals. I look like a plump shaved albino ferret. With fluff stuck on.

I wondered what Barb would do if I just ran off. Would I be up on a disciplinary? Does she even do disciplinaries? These things aren’t very clear in our office. ‘Stop!’ I admonished myself, ‘you are over-thinking this as usual, just empty your mind and pretend you are going to the pub and all will be well.’ This sustained me for about 10 seconds, until I imagined myself actually dancing. Then the guttural horror returned.

My fear decreased when we pulled up at the Equinox gym. This was far from the sort of back street dive I’d been feverishly imagining. There were people of all shapes and sizes, the place was bright and snappy and we were greeted with rapturous enthusiasm at the front desk. I concluded that this place must cost a fortune to join and so I was never coming back again. We were half an hour early, so I bought myself a chick-pea salad. They didn’t do burger and fries.

I looked about the place and I was struck by something profound. People don’t exercise in jeans. I was wearing jeans and I had nothing else with me. All I possess in the world are dorky shorts and jeans. Heidi had refused to let me out wearing dorky shorts, so I’d been planning to dance in my Levi’s.

I realized that if I entered the class in jeans I was going to look absurd. Like I was taking the piss. I went to the store and bought black Adidas pants with Day-Glo stripes down the sides. They have little holes in them that let your legs breath. I haven’t bought sports pants in 20 years, so this innovation is new to me.

I gritted my teeth as I dodged my way through the men’s changing rooms, averting my eyes with lightning rapidity every time a pink bottom came into view. Bottoms were more prevalent than sausages thankfully, but it was still too much for me. I don’t recall seeing so many male bottoms since middle school. How can people parade themselves around like this? Maybe if I had their bottoms I’d think differently. I found a safe looking crevice with only one bottom on display and slipped into my new gym pants. I obscured my old-fashioned burgundy underpants behind my sweater. I correctly surmised that Tesco’s bikini briefs are not de rigueur on the Chelsea fitness scene.

Excepting Barb’s exuberant impressions in the office, I knew nothing about our teacher Calvin. Here’s a taste from his website:

“Calvin is known for his unique and provocative style of teaching and motivating others. Calvin not only breaks new ground with his dynamic choreography, but without a doubt he’s a pacesetter for the fitness and dance industries. Calvin has pioneered and branded his teaching style “Calvinography”, which maintains the philosophy, that beauty, art and brilliance can be elements in fitness.”

Had I read this before I went, I would have literally shit myself.

We made our way to the studio on the top floor; it was a large room with polished wooden floorboards. Several fat speakers hung from the ceiling, and a vast mirror stretched from one end to the other. As the minutes ebbed away the room filled with people. Some boys, some girls, some old, some young. Our group slunk to the back of the room. Barb told her New York Times story to a couple of our immediate neighbors, but they didn’t seem terribly impressed. This was some small relief at least.

So full was the place by the time Calvin appeared, I didn’t even see him. Then I heard him; he clapped his hands and skipped toward the center of the room. He welcomed us all as his children, making a point of welcoming newcomers. He was preposterously likable. Like the friendliest puppy in the world. I could see from the beaming grins on those closest to him that he had quite the following. I briefly pictured myself as a Calvin groupie. It was a pleasing distraction from my abject terror.

He walked back to the PA system and put on a little Flamenco number. My second worst genre of music after jazz. He told us we’d warm up to this and then we’d be spending most of the class dancing to jazz. I grimaced hopelessly.

As the music progressed, something peculiar happened to me. The Flamenco fusion, or whatever the hell I was listening to started to sound magnificent. Maybe it was the quality of the sound system, I don’t know, but I had this irresistible desire to move. Everyone around was similarly afflicted and when Calvin eventually showed us some warm up moves we copied him eagerly.

For the next 10 minutes I had a genuinely good time. Unbelievably, Barbara had been right when she told me I might discover a new side to myself. I was moving my body without any alcohol inside me and I wasn’t burning with resentment. It was a miracle.

Then the flamenco ended and the jazz happened. It was fast, furious and loud. I was still in high spirits though, and it didn’t sound like any kind of jazz I’d heard before, so I wasn’t particularly put out.

Calvin swooshed his leg in the air, and we all copied. I didn’t so much copy as arbitrarily twitch my leg. He moved so fast I couldn’t even see what he’d done. I was stood next to Barb and she had a similar approach.

“Just do whatever you think he’s done,” she said, “don’t try to copy or you’ll never get anywhere.”

This sounded like wise advice, so I proceeded in this fashion. All went well until about the fifth move. The dance went something like this: swish, kick, twirl, swing, spin. I became totally disoriented after the twirl, just about nailed a semi-swing, but the spin happened before my brain had time to compute it.

Over the next hour and a half Calvin piled on the moves relentlessly, 5, 10, 20. I had the first 4 down and the odd hand flourish toward the end, but apart from that I flailed around the place randomly. In fact, there were so many people that it took all my concentration, not getting swatted by a neighbor. I’d spin in the opposite direction to the others, crouch down when I should have been standing tall, kick my legs when I should have been twiddling my fingers and stand erect when everyone else went floppy. It was deeply humiliating and after about 45 minutes I sat myself down on the floor for a good sulk. Why am I such a shit dancer, I thought? If only I could dance like these people! I’d be, I could, well… jeez, what was happening to me?

I looked around the room at the other dancers. One guy looked like Larry David, only a foot shorter and a decade older. He was getting every move. Pat, Barb’s sexagenarian accountant, plonked back and forth happy as a duck. Even Barb’s impressionistic approach was miles better than anything I’d been able to muster. True, she looked like a woman who’d just noticed her pajamas were on fire, but you couldn’t fault her for effort. My misery grew and I shrank further into the wall.

Then, as if by magic, Calvin switched off the music, sat everybody down and gave us a little pep talk. He said:

“If you’re getting every move, nobody cares! If you ain’t getting any moves, NOBODY CARES! Remember this is New York City. You are here tonight to enjoy yourselves, to feel the energy of New York City. I love this city! All you gotta do is move to the music and have a great time. That’s why we’re all here, we’re gonna shake off those thanksgiving turkey biscuits…”

He said many things, and he said them in such a nice way I positively had to pull myself up again and give it another bash. I took my place next to Barb again and did a little swoosh. I failed miserably, time and time again, but managed to keep myself moving until the bitter end.

I left feeling strangely elated and couldn’t sleep till well into the early hours. I was picturing my dramatic entrance on the MTV music awards, tossing a chubby Britney half way across the stage, then with 5 perfectly timed high-speed twirls I’d catch her where she fell, muscles quivering from the impact. Bravo me, I thought.

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