What’s up in the Ballroom?

There isn’t a whole lot of new stuff to talk about. We got a coaching lesson last week to refine certain parts of the Argentine Tango routine. Also working on the Fox Trot routine and dealing with the comments from the last mini event. Just part of the endless cycle of working on improvements.

I think I mentioned this before but I did sign up to do another formation at the next Showcase. A formation is a group dance that you don’t get judged on. We practice once a week and there is no cost to taking those lessons. Not really sure why they do them but it is something different and it is a way to bring students from different levels together.

We’ve only done two practices and right now it is kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what the final picture is supposed to look like. Just a couple of groups of pieces stuck together but nothing cohesive. I guess these first two were sort of a trial for people to see if they are really interested in sticking around because we got told at the last one that we start the “for real” part next week. In other words, if you show up, then the expectation is that you are committed for the long haul.

It is interesting to see who shows up and who doesn’t. I’m not sure that too many people start taking lessons because they want to do a choreographed routine in front of a crowd but, given the opportunity, there are a whole bunch of us who seem to enjoy doing it. Lots of lots of hidden entertainers out there who just want to be on stage.

It does tend to bring out a lot of fears and anxiety in some people. Because this is open to all levels, they tend to use a lot of upper Bronze patterns figuring it isn’t too basic for the advanced dancers but not too much of a stretch for those who aren’t as experienced. I guess it is different when you know the patterns but it does freak people out when they don’t get it right away.

And there are so many people who assume that any mistake they make is going to be obvious to the entire crowd (spoiler alert – it’s not unless you make it clear that you’ve screwed up) As someone who tends towards perfectionism and had many periods when I was way too hard on myself, it is something you can easily recognize in others. Not sure if ballroom just attracts people like us or it is just a function of learning something new as an adult that changes how we view mistakes.

And, maybe with ballroom, it is hard to get to the point described in the above quote. I’ve done enough of these formations and had some that went horribly wrong that it is hard to get too bent out of shape if something doesn’t go right. You don’t get any critiques so it is really just to have some fun but everyone wants to do well so it can be hard to really let go and just try to have fun with it.

Now a scene from the movie “Stripes” just popped into my head. This won’t mean anything if you haven’t seen the movie but in trying to motivate his platoon so they can go to do a formation and he says this “We’re all very, very different, but there is one thing that we all have in common: we were all stupid enough to enlist in the Army. We’re mutants. There’s something wrong with us, something very, very wrong with us. Something seriously wrong with us!” Not saying we’re stupid for taking dance lessons but there might be something seriously wrong with us for signing up to do this formation.