Yesterday, we’ve been to our third dance class and we repeated the “valse lente”, extended the “cha-cha-cha” (with the so-called “New York” steps) and learned the basic steps of the “tango”. I still find the “tango” quite difficult, because it’s a longer sequence of steps that I tend to confuse, after a while, with other dances, like the “valse”… Moreover, I’m kind of lost, when it comes to making a pause or trying to get around obstacles, like other people or poles… Nathalie, tends to keep going and “stay-in-the-rhythm”… which is probably the best way to be sure that we stay in sync with the other dancers… but I’m getting confused when this makes her the “leader” of the dance, which is normally supposed to be the man… quite a machistic approach to dancing, by the way…
Maybe, she’s right when she thinks and says that I’m a bit pretentious and that I like to “show off”… I guess I’ve been like that since I was a little kid… not that I’m saying that this would be a “good excuse” for not doing anything about it, but I also think that this is a tell-tale of what gives me “the kicks” and what motivates me to learn things. I nevertheless think I should be more into trying to better dance TOGETHER instead of “standing out from the crowd, myself”. We’re doing this as a couple; this is not about me, this is about us!
Learning to dance can be quite an enlightening experience, if you think about it…