Adjusting and Moving Forward

Life only moves forward even when we sometimes don’t want it to. Plans are being made for my Dad’s memorial in June and we’ve all made arrangements to be there over Memorial Day weekend to sort through the house and start to close that chapter. So there is little to be done until then and it just made sense to get back to dancing.

Had a brief conversation with OwnerGuy yesterday after having the same conversation with PJ on Tuesday. My Dad’s service is on a Friday and Showcase is on the following Sunday. It just knocks about a week off Showcase prep so we talked about what we might have to do to adjust.

It is going to be hard to explain why this is so important to me. Yes, it is something we’ve been working towards since the studio reopened. And it is also true that if miss this one, it will be another six months before the next one. Maybe it is just a lesson from the pandemic that you can’t always count on something being there in the future and you need to grab the opportunities that are presented. Maybe it is that I planned to do a Hustle routine to an ABBA song for Mom and I don’t want to miss this opportunity. Could just be a combination of all of the above but there is just something in me that says I have to do this.

I’m not even really concerned right now about how well I do. There is a little joke that they always make before the start of an event like this. If you’ve found the dance floor, then you’ve already won. Or something like that. But that’s kind of how I feel. It is just more important at this stage to just get out on the floor. Whatever happens after that doesn’t matter as much.

So the last two days have just been rehearsing the dances I know – Waltz, Fox Trot, Tango, Viennese Waltz and Rumba. We added the Cha-Cha last night. OwnerGuy had shown us the steps but now he has a pattern so we worked our way through that. It was a good thing he was available because PJ hadn’t totally understood his directions (it happens) so he fixed what we were doing wrong.

I had been worried that things weren’t coming back but something seems to have triggered my memories because the Silver III Rumba and Cha-Cha steps no longer seem alien. I do know that we aren’t getting a lot of the lead/follow and other things that turn steps into a dance but that is less of a concern now. I know that will come with time and it is just more important to put as much on the floor as I can.

We finished the lesson last night with the four smooth dances. When we finished the Fox Trot, it was actually at the end of the lesson but PJ wanted to get the Viennese in so we did that as well. Turns out we had an open floor and OwnerGuy said that the Viennese was our best dance of the night because of how it moved. He wants more movement in all of them. That is a bit problematic on a crowded floor and when you’ve got new students. We almost ran over one (not really but we may have gotten a little too close for comfort) and I had to hold my Tango for an eight count until another couple moved out of our way.

The two lessons this week have been very positive. Maybe it is just an escape because Ballroom requires focus and if you are totally into the lesson, a lot of other stuff fades into the background for a bit. Not totally but it does at least offer an opportunity to think of other things and to feel positive again.

Because life always moves forward. So we need to keep dancing.