One of the greatest pleasures of dancing with a regular partner is creating a specific dance that belongs to the two of you. You find yourself making small adjustments, not to compensate for the other persons shortcomings, not even to exploit their strengths, but to contribute the aspects of your own dancing which will best suit your joint dance. You find yourself changing your posture, your walking technique, your quality of movement, when and how you decorate, to suit this intangible but lovely thing which is somehow forming between you. And Im not talking just about achieving a technically more proficient dance. With my partner, The Slow Semite, I am learning the places where our dance has flow, the ribbons of movement that I would like to leave to unfurl silky, but plain, and the places where small but emphatic decorations add a little salt and pepper to its otherwise perhaps too bland smoothness. The places where a more dynamic style of walking suits us and where it feels right to delay the corkscrew of an ocho. When to place my left hand on his shoulder blade and when it feels better to wrap my arm around the top of his shoulders. Its not about adapting to him so much as its about adding to something that already has it own character and style. Like shopping for a garment and asking does it go with whats already in my wardrobe? Can I combine it with x; does it clash with y? Is it me? Or like looking in your kitchen cupboard for a spice to add to an half-finished recipe: what does it need? Would a little cumin be good? Maybe the allspice would overpower the other ingredients? A sprinkling of pepper might bring out the other flavours. Sometimes, I even feel that dancing with someone regularly is a bit like raising a child together. Its not about what you need or what he needs. Or about one person submitting to the other. Its about getting to know this new person, this new entity, who contains part of you both, but is clearly their own separate being. Perhaps this is why my favourite dances of all, my very highest peaks of bliss, are rarely found in the arms of graceful strangers or of sleek professionals (though both can be lovely indeed). Usually, my favourite dances of all are with those I dance with regularly. Because I love the feeling of developing and growing together.
Posted on: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 06:24:39 +0000
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