Lesson 3: Lost in the Shuffle
Here on this last Tuesday in September, the dance studio reaches its everybody-back-to-school autumn glory.
The first week that I attended class, we could arrive early and drift around in the dance room, stretching and warming up independently. Last week, we had to wait in the lobby for class, because a yoga teacher rented the dance room for the hour before Tap One. I don't have a good attitude toward yoga. I've heard so many shallow actresses overstating its benefits on talk shows that, unencumbered by facts, I have rendered my verdict on yoga: silly by association. What I see from the lobby isn't helping yoga's case much. Last week, the instructor lit the studio with nothing but four candles. I could barely discern outlines of bodies flopped on the floor. New Age music played, and the instructor said things like "Sl-i-i-ide into cow pose," and the outlines stretched in ways that would snap my arm off. This week, the instructor has ditched even the candles. Their room is pitch black. I can hear her voice, but for all I can see, someone might be playing a recording of her voice in the dark as a prank on the waiting tappers.
The lobby also provides a view into a second, larger studio, where belly dancers learn to isolate abdominal muscles they never knew existed. With a median age easily exceeding thirty-five, the belly dancers fascinate me. I would stare through the glass at them far more if it didn't make them self-conscious. To American men, sexy females are about two things: big breasts and long legs. If you could take two straight parallel lines and find a way to graft a pair of bazongas between them, whatever that makes, most single American males would hit on it. In contrast, the belly dancers represent a culture where sexuality is about fertility and the womb. The dancers' undulations and ripples seem earthy and grounded, celebratory of what a woman genuinely is. They provide authentic counterpoint to the artificial Victoria's Secret ideal, which seems insecure by comparison: "Are my breasts pushed up high enough? Because if not, I can buy something to shove them higher." I try to watch the dancers without anyone seeing me watch them, which means I probably look furtive, shifty, and creepier than if I just stared. I'm intrigued that the older women seem to learn and understand the movements better than the young gals. Perhaps you can't truly grok belly dancing until you give birth.
Between the confident belly dancers and the stretching spiritual seekers, the lobby fills with beginning tap students. It's my third week and I should feel like a veteran, but I don't recognize anyone. (I would if no one ever changed their hair or their clothes.) Once again, I am the only male among six or seven women. I still feel like the only unpaired sock in the drawer.
Then Valerie enters, and now that I recognize someone, I feel better. I introduced Valerie in Lesson 1 as a beautiful 50-year-old. Since then, I've found out from Annette that Valerie is a dazzling 57-year-old. She has not danced a step in her life until a few months ago. She seems fairly assured during class because she has been taking individual lessons from Annette on the side. She has practiced psychotherapy in this town for over twenty years and, like me, tends to over think things. Dance has sprung into her life like an irrational blast of good news from Planet Rhythm, and she can't get enough. She is at the studio four days a week. She is my token of hope. If she can break from her past, dance this well, and take this much joy in it, maybe I can, too.
The Giggling Girlies greet me, only now they are no longer archetypes, they are actual individual people. Ming, the tiniest of the three, sits across from me as we change into our tap shoes. Struggling for words, she asks, "What … why did … um, what inspired you to take this class?"
"I need exercise!" I tell her.
She pushes her straight black hair behind her ear and asks, "Why not--?" and gestures like a weight lifter doing curls with dumbbells.
I make a face and shake my head. "Too boring!"
She nods as if accepting the answer, but her expression looks puzzled. She walks away and it takes me a minute to realize I have just been asked in the politest way possible, What the heck are you doing here?
Before I can feel awkward about it, a short lady with a sweet expression and gorgeous thick hair introduces herself to me as Vicki. She thanks me for helping her solve a computer problem, and I realize, oh, that Vicki! Vicki teaches ballet here, when not serving as the studio receptionist. She has been struggling to upgrade the studio's archaic computer to the latest Windows operating system, and Annette has been carrying her technical questions home to me. Vicki and I have traded messages for weeks without ever meeting. I'm delighted to put a face with the name. We chuckle ruefully about the studio owner's computerphobia.
More people are arriving. There's serious Joan, who glances into the dark studio and murmurs darkly, "Yoga is not for me," and there's the bright young college girl, whose name turns out to be Debbie. She glances at the belly dancers and exclaims, "Oh, there's my doctor!" She smiles and waves through the glass at a dark-haired woman who grins, waves back, and waggles her hips at us. Though this tap session is only three weeks in, most of these people have taken other classes and have known each other for months. Each new arrival is someone's cherished acquaintance. Annette arrives like a star, to many greetings and happy calls. The lobby has turned festive.
The door from the yoga room opens. We gather our gear, assuming the class has let out. Instead, the yoga teacher pokes her head into the lobby and shushes us all. She whispers something that sounds like scolding, and then retreats into the dark, closing the door behind her.
This catches us totally off guard. Time-check: everyone glances at watches, cell phones, pagers, the wall clock. It is 6:58 pm and our class begins at 7:00. Technically, the yogsters should have dismissed at 6:55 pm. What the heck?
Most of us hush our voices, but a couple of the alpha females declare that the yoga teacher has overstepped. "She did the same thing twenty minutes ago," someone states matter-of-factly, "when it was just me and Vicki conversing."
I am disproportionately pleased that the "spiritually enlightened" yoga teacher is starting a petty turf war, since that validates my ignorant but negative concept of yoga. Then I tell myself to knock off the juvenile glee. Spiritually, I too have led others on metaphorical stretches in the dark. My current credo: The world would be better off, and we might be humbler disciples, if each of us started every day saying, "I am the main reason some fellow human being, somewhere, has decided my religion is bullshit."
More people arrive. Amber is a slender high schooler in blonde braids, and like most teens, moves energetically and slumps bonelessly. And then Bembebe happens to the room.
Bembebe joined Annette's tap classes several weeks ago. She doesn't know his specific ethnicity, but he speaks fluent English with an appealing African accent, and Annette tells me that when he dances, in between steps his limbs twitch to complex rhythms only he can hear. I've been anticipating his return for weeks, in part because I'll feel less like a wuss if another man shares this class.
Bembebe explained his three weeks of absence in a calm, matter-of-fact phone call to Annette: "I know I have not been to class for these past weeks. I got married and that took up some of my time. Would it be all right if I returned?"
He hits the lobby like the living embodiment of "tall, dark, and handsome," flashing a broad smile. Everyone knows he just got married, and the cries of congratulations and good will that greet him turn the lobby into a full-fledged party zone. Everyone talks at once. "We want to know all about it," Valerie demands with pretend authority. "You have to tell us. Don't leave out any details."
"Are there pictures?" someone calls. "Where are the pictures?"
"Was it a large ceremony?"
Past classmates mock-rebuke him for not telling them he was getting married. Bembebe looks surprised, and says, "I did not know this was something one announced!"
The response seems riotous. Just as I'm wondering how the yogis bear it, they drift out of the dark, wordlessly gather their belongings, and flit like sober wraiths into the night.
Annette enters the dark studio and it flickers into brilliance. I know just how that studio feels; she has the same effect on me. We surge into the light, happy and cacophonous.
As people hide purses and remove sweaters and stretch and tap, Annette pulls Bembebe aside and, gesturing at me, says, "I'd like you to meet my husband."
Behind his nerd chic eyeglasses, Bembebe's eyes light up with delight. "So, you da mon!" he exclaims, and gives me a big hug that ends with the Secret Cool Guy Handshake. "Tell me, what do you do?"
Assuming English is his second language, I try to describe in tiny words what "Internet security" is and what a "firewall" does. He interrupts me. "You are talking to IT, mon! I work in wireless!"
Now it is my turn to be delighted. IT is "information technology," and I write to an audience of 60,000 IT guys every day. For a full minute we geek out, filling the air with acronyms and tech jargon: IEEE, 802.11i, VoIP, SIP. What are the odds of finding a tap dancing geek buddy?
When class begins, we ten students sound as loud as a tap dancing nation. In any rhythm exercise unaccompanied by music, beginners tend to speed up. Usually when we do this, Annette points it out and anchors us to the original groove. Tonight when we speed up, she lets us. We Shuffle and Step-Heel from one end of the room to the other, and when we arrive Annette counts us back in at the new tempo. With growing momentum, we break like waves sloshing from one end of the room to the other and back again, faster and faster, and at a certain giddy speed we achieve lift-off. We are no longer a class. We are a confident, bad-ass, tap dancing gang. We are Jets. We are Jets all the way.
With Bembebe and the Indonesian Giggling Girlies, with a high schooler and a sexagenarian, and yes, even with a fat middle-aged white guy, we are a rhythmic microcosm of the world. Here, practicing between the extremes of earthy fertility and ethereal spirituality, we beginners celebrate life to the best of our growing abilities. We make mistakes but feel no shame, because we know we are all learners. We are for one another.
I feel surprisingly transported. I have gone to church services expecting this, and not gotten it. I came here expecting absurdity and self-consciousness, and got uplifted. Tonight I no longer shuffle along like I'm lost. Instead, I am lost in the Shuffle. ##
The first week that I attended class, we could arrive early and drift around in the dance room, stretching and warming up independently. Last week, we had to wait in the lobby for class, because a yoga teacher rented the dance room for the hour before Tap One. I don't have a good attitude toward yoga. I've heard so many shallow actresses overstating its benefits on talk shows that, unencumbered by facts, I have rendered my verdict on yoga: silly by association. What I see from the lobby isn't helping yoga's case much. Last week, the instructor lit the studio with nothing but four candles. I could barely discern outlines of bodies flopped on the floor. New Age music played, and the instructor said things like "Sl-i-i-ide into cow pose," and the outlines stretched in ways that would snap my arm off. This week, the instructor has ditched even the candles. Their room is pitch black. I can hear her voice, but for all I can see, someone might be playing a recording of her voice in the dark as a prank on the waiting tappers.
The lobby also provides a view into a second, larger studio, where belly dancers learn to isolate abdominal muscles they never knew existed. With a median age easily exceeding thirty-five, the belly dancers fascinate me. I would stare through the glass at them far more if it didn't make them self-conscious. To American men, sexy females are about two things: big breasts and long legs. If you could take two straight parallel lines and find a way to graft a pair of bazongas between them, whatever that makes, most single American males would hit on it. In contrast, the belly dancers represent a culture where sexuality is about fertility and the womb. The dancers' undulations and ripples seem earthy and grounded, celebratory of what a woman genuinely is. They provide authentic counterpoint to the artificial Victoria's Secret ideal, which seems insecure by comparison: "Are my breasts pushed up high enough? Because if not, I can buy something to shove them higher." I try to watch the dancers without anyone seeing me watch them, which means I probably look furtive, shifty, and creepier than if I just stared. I'm intrigued that the older women seem to learn and understand the movements better than the young gals. Perhaps you can't truly grok belly dancing until you give birth.
Between the confident belly dancers and the stretching spiritual seekers, the lobby fills with beginning tap students. It's my third week and I should feel like a veteran, but I don't recognize anyone. (I would if no one ever changed their hair or their clothes.) Once again, I am the only male among six or seven women. I still feel like the only unpaired sock in the drawer.
Then Valerie enters, and now that I recognize someone, I feel better. I introduced Valerie in Lesson 1 as a beautiful 50-year-old. Since then, I've found out from Annette that Valerie is a dazzling 57-year-old. She has not danced a step in her life until a few months ago. She seems fairly assured during class because she has been taking individual lessons from Annette on the side. She has practiced psychotherapy in this town for over twenty years and, like me, tends to over think things. Dance has sprung into her life like an irrational blast of good news from Planet Rhythm, and she can't get enough. She is at the studio four days a week. She is my token of hope. If she can break from her past, dance this well, and take this much joy in it, maybe I can, too.
The Giggling Girlies greet me, only now they are no longer archetypes, they are actual individual people. Ming, the tiniest of the three, sits across from me as we change into our tap shoes. Struggling for words, she asks, "What … why did … um, what inspired you to take this class?"
"I need exercise!" I tell her.
She pushes her straight black hair behind her ear and asks, "Why not--?" and gestures like a weight lifter doing curls with dumbbells.
I make a face and shake my head. "Too boring!"
She nods as if accepting the answer, but her expression looks puzzled. She walks away and it takes me a minute to realize I have just been asked in the politest way possible, What the heck are you doing here?
Before I can feel awkward about it, a short lady with a sweet expression and gorgeous thick hair introduces herself to me as Vicki. She thanks me for helping her solve a computer problem, and I realize, oh, that Vicki! Vicki teaches ballet here, when not serving as the studio receptionist. She has been struggling to upgrade the studio's archaic computer to the latest Windows operating system, and Annette has been carrying her technical questions home to me. Vicki and I have traded messages for weeks without ever meeting. I'm delighted to put a face with the name. We chuckle ruefully about the studio owner's computerphobia.
More people are arriving. There's serious Joan, who glances into the dark studio and murmurs darkly, "Yoga is not for me," and there's the bright young college girl, whose name turns out to be Debbie. She glances at the belly dancers and exclaims, "Oh, there's my doctor!" She smiles and waves through the glass at a dark-haired woman who grins, waves back, and waggles her hips at us. Though this tap session is only three weeks in, most of these people have taken other classes and have known each other for months. Each new arrival is someone's cherished acquaintance. Annette arrives like a star, to many greetings and happy calls. The lobby has turned festive.
The door from the yoga room opens. We gather our gear, assuming the class has let out. Instead, the yoga teacher pokes her head into the lobby and shushes us all. She whispers something that sounds like scolding, and then retreats into the dark, closing the door behind her.
This catches us totally off guard. Time-check: everyone glances at watches, cell phones, pagers, the wall clock. It is 6:58 pm and our class begins at 7:00. Technically, the yogsters should have dismissed at 6:55 pm. What the heck?
Most of us hush our voices, but a couple of the alpha females declare that the yoga teacher has overstepped. "She did the same thing twenty minutes ago," someone states matter-of-factly, "when it was just me and Vicki conversing."
I am disproportionately pleased that the "spiritually enlightened" yoga teacher is starting a petty turf war, since that validates my ignorant but negative concept of yoga. Then I tell myself to knock off the juvenile glee. Spiritually, I too have led others on metaphorical stretches in the dark. My current credo: The world would be better off, and we might be humbler disciples, if each of us started every day saying, "I am the main reason some fellow human being, somewhere, has decided my religion is bullshit."
More people arrive. Amber is a slender high schooler in blonde braids, and like most teens, moves energetically and slumps bonelessly. And then Bembebe happens to the room.
Bembebe joined Annette's tap classes several weeks ago. She doesn't know his specific ethnicity, but he speaks fluent English with an appealing African accent, and Annette tells me that when he dances, in between steps his limbs twitch to complex rhythms only he can hear. I've been anticipating his return for weeks, in part because I'll feel less like a wuss if another man shares this class.
Bembebe explained his three weeks of absence in a calm, matter-of-fact phone call to Annette: "I know I have not been to class for these past weeks. I got married and that took up some of my time. Would it be all right if I returned?"
He hits the lobby like the living embodiment of "tall, dark, and handsome," flashing a broad smile. Everyone knows he just got married, and the cries of congratulations and good will that greet him turn the lobby into a full-fledged party zone. Everyone talks at once. "We want to know all about it," Valerie demands with pretend authority. "You have to tell us. Don't leave out any details."
"Are there pictures?" someone calls. "Where are the pictures?"
"Was it a large ceremony?"
Past classmates mock-rebuke him for not telling them he was getting married. Bembebe looks surprised, and says, "I did not know this was something one announced!"
The response seems riotous. Just as I'm wondering how the yogis bear it, they drift out of the dark, wordlessly gather their belongings, and flit like sober wraiths into the night.
Annette enters the dark studio and it flickers into brilliance. I know just how that studio feels; she has the same effect on me. We surge into the light, happy and cacophonous.
As people hide purses and remove sweaters and stretch and tap, Annette pulls Bembebe aside and, gesturing at me, says, "I'd like you to meet my husband."
Behind his nerd chic eyeglasses, Bembebe's eyes light up with delight. "So, you da mon!" he exclaims, and gives me a big hug that ends with the Secret Cool Guy Handshake. "Tell me, what do you do?"
Assuming English is his second language, I try to describe in tiny words what "Internet security" is and what a "firewall" does. He interrupts me. "You are talking to IT, mon! I work in wireless!"
Now it is my turn to be delighted. IT is "information technology," and I write to an audience of 60,000 IT guys every day. For a full minute we geek out, filling the air with acronyms and tech jargon: IEEE, 802.11i, VoIP, SIP. What are the odds of finding a tap dancing geek buddy?
When class begins, we ten students sound as loud as a tap dancing nation. In any rhythm exercise unaccompanied by music, beginners tend to speed up. Usually when we do this, Annette points it out and anchors us to the original groove. Tonight when we speed up, she lets us. We Shuffle and Step-Heel from one end of the room to the other, and when we arrive Annette counts us back in at the new tempo. With growing momentum, we break like waves sloshing from one end of the room to the other and back again, faster and faster, and at a certain giddy speed we achieve lift-off. We are no longer a class. We are a confident, bad-ass, tap dancing gang. We are Jets. We are Jets all the way.
With Bembebe and the Indonesian Giggling Girlies, with a high schooler and a sexagenarian, and yes, even with a fat middle-aged white guy, we are a rhythmic microcosm of the world. Here, practicing between the extremes of earthy fertility and ethereal spirituality, we beginners celebrate life to the best of our growing abilities. We make mistakes but feel no shame, because we know we are all learners. We are for one another.
I feel surprisingly transported. I have gone to church services expecting this, and not gotten it. I came here expecting absurdity and self-consciousness, and got uplifted. Tonight I no longer shuffle along like I'm lost. Instead, I am lost in the Shuffle. ##
posted by ScottPinzonTest at 10:48 PM
2 Comments:
Another artful, amusing installment. It's fun to watch where this journey is taking you.
This is the best installment yet. Oh, not as side-splittingly funny as "Video Face" (but then, few things are) but more grounded in universal human experience. There is magic in the music, and even children enjoy dancing together. It may be the most universal human communication after smiling, and as innate for us to respond to, and enjoy doing.
It is possible to find yoga teachers and students who aren't into some New Age trip, but it is often a spiritually involved experience, as dancing is. When we reconnect with our physical selves, when we are focus on how we move and not the bustle and mental clangor of daily life, it refreshes and empowers us. This, too, seems to be a universal need.
Keep up the good work, IAOTFMD is on my 'read every installment' list.
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