Turkish Rumba

I went to a Rumba group class taught by the young Turk recently.  He's a piece of work - he started at the studio after I did, but he was dedicated, focused and single minded (I'm generally... not so much), and now he's an instructor.  He's clearly a natural athlete (which I am not - more about that later) and a natural or very learned performer (also, me, not).  Don't get me wrong, he put in the time and worked his ass off and deserves it.  He's also a good teacher.  Lots of natural athletes can do it right after seeing it a few times, but can't break it down, analyze and articulate it, and talk about it to a nerdy, all-up-in-my-head learner like me.  Lest you think I have a crush on him, I'll just mention he talks really really fast.  Maybe he's talking as fast as he learned.  I kept waiting for my brain to catch up with his words.  Not even the concepts or an understanding, just the words.... 

It was an intense class - we definitely got our money's worth. He expects you to learn fast too.  He covered a fairly long series in a single class.  I felt like I was a little behind and never quite catching up all class, but I never felt like I'd completely lost sight of him.  As soon as I started feeling like the footwork was coming along he was talking about frame and leading and using the floor and cuban motion.  But if we started thinking about that too much and lost the basic footwork, he dropped all that, declared it optional, and hit the basics again.  Intimidating, but we really did cover a lot of ground.

I also took a class on "dancing with emotion" that he taught.  He says it's a class he finds challenging to teach, and it's incredibly challenging to learn, for me personally.  I'm usually up in my head and thinking about footwork, leading, frame, floorcraft, and a million other things.  I've gotten feedback on my dancing that uses words like "distant" and "platonic", and I was not dancing with my sister at the time.  I have a very easy time getting up in my head and a very hard time getting in my body.  And an even harder time getting out and making a connection with my dance partner.  Having a million details that want to be in my head and aren't automatic in my body doesn't help.  The only thing that's automatic is beat, and I still manage to get onto the wrong foot and have to restart that once in a while.  But all this is between me and my partner.  There have been a couple of exceptions, but...

The Turk used Rumba which he characterized, wonderfully, as "the pillow talk dance", and Argentine tango.  The point of the Argentine tango, I think, was to free us from the straightjacket of rhythm, and let us move and feel, feel and move.  Of course, for me, rhythm isn't a straightjacket, it's a comfy tee shirt I wear all the time.  On the other hand, the rhythm in my body is definitely something I lean on, and not having to think about rhythm isn't sufficient to get me out making a connection with my partner.  Maybe knocking away that crutch was helpful.

Of course, I've had no Argentine tango, so for the most part it was just a new set of footwork for me to distract/occupy/obsess myself with.  Not good for connecting to my partner.  But that's me, I'd have found another excuse not to connect.

And connecting with a partner is very much the point, and the challenge for me.  If she's not there and real and human, and I'm not aware of her body, I can't lead, I can't respond to where she's at, I can't guide and protect and display her as I should, and desire. And we're both missing most of the fun.

Not to mention, connecting with my partner is the point in other, deeper ways.