Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Gotta Dance

I need a new pair of Swivels (mine were black):



Laura and I tried our hand at Salsa last night which was overall pretty awesome, except for the fact that about 2.5 minutes into class I looked down trying to figure out why my shoes felt so funny only to find the heels were disintegrating out from under me!  I guess after roughly a decade of fairly significant use that is to be expected.

No worries, though, I popped on my split soles and took my position on the guy's side of the room.



Yes.  I said the guy's side.  It is not an unknown fact that the distribution of men to women at pretty much any and every partner-needed dance class you will ever go to is grossly unbalanced.

It is also a fact that most women would rather, or are more comfortable, standing around for a good half of the lesson waiting for the instructor to rotate the leads to finally give them a chance to dance for a round or two before being rotated back to the sidelines for the next available guy rather than take up the lead with another partnerless female.  Last night was no exception.

I, however, shared the bulk of my dancing lesson life with my loving and wonderful sister who is possibly one of the greatest follow-leads ever.  Early on in our swing dance lives she would frequently grab my hand, fling me around to the guy's position and start the steps we had just learned, leaving me to figure out how to do them in reverse in classic sink or swim fashion.

Times like those made me wish the ability to watch someone do a dance step once or twice then be able to repeat it with fairly decent accuracy was a marketable skill or else Laura might as well have been dancing with a post.

These days I pretty much expect to step into a lead role at most dance classes I attend (which is sadly too few), and am often surprised when there are enough guys to go around that I can learn the girls steps.

This brings me to my utterly confused point: what is WRONG with you guys?!?

I don't think very many men would deny their excitement at finding a woman who shared in their interests, the one who prepared a feast of game day munchies on Sundays or wore team jerseys to all the home games.  Moreso the ones who made an effort to enjoy those activities with their significant others, even if they weren't interested before.  So why is it that men have such a hard time learning to dance?

To add to our list of not unknown facts, I believe one of those is women find men who dance sexy.  Heck, men who even make an attempt to dance are sexy!  Not to remention the fact that there are almost always so many more women than men at dance gatherings, it's practically a buffet!  Why is it, then, that there aren't more men tapping into this opportunity?

Until logic and men meet on the grounds of suck-it-up-and-give-it-a-try I suppose I'll continue to exercise my left brain and fight muscle memory to play the guy role.  At least that way I won't spend half my lessons with sideline blues.

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