DANCING FOOL
Little kids, I was reminded while I was watching one of my grandkids in her sweet three-to-four-year-old dance class, truly Love to Dance. They hop about, trying so intently to coordinate their little bodies, in their tiny dance shoes and dance costumes, to truly DANCE! They are so concentrated on what they are doing, that their small faces are pinched into an intensity that is so serious, it's comical, in a gentle way...
I didn't begin to dance until I was about ten years old. I was in sporadic dance classes, all ballet, with my younger sister Pat. As with all activities I wanted to try to have lessons for, Pat would want to take the lessons, too. And so, off to dance class we'd go. Pat was advancing more than I was, which was often the case when we took classes together, but she obviously really didn't like ballet. So, she "dropped out", never to really return to dance again. I, however, assumed that I was going to be a ballerina some day, like my idol, Maria Tallchief. Every lesson I could convince my mother to take me to, was one step closer to this, unknown to me at the time, Impossible Goal.
By age fourteen, I was finally able to start 'on pointe'! My fantasies of dance fame and glorious beauty as a Dancer were beginning! I worked and worked to dance on my toes in my lovely pink toe shoes! I practiced every day, lightly balancing my self at the kitchen sink rim as my dance 'bar', while I practiced my plies and attaches and arabesques over and over. I would be a dancer! It was only a matter of time! a great deal of time! but, that was OK, because great art could not be achieved for years, and I was going to to work and work until I too was in a great Dance Company, maybe even in Chicago!
The Dance of the Hours was the piece we were learning, on pointe, to dance in recital...I was beside myself! I stuffed my toes into my toe shoes each practice session, ignoring increasing pain in my toes and my arches and backs of my legs. Great dance was achieved only through such pain, I was certain! Then the day came, that ended my dance career dreams forever...
My teacher, frowning at me for the tenth time or so, as I painfully hobbled around on pointe, demanded, "Miss Everiit. May I see your toes, please." Shaking in guilt and trepidation, I took off my toe shoes, unwrapping the lambs wool tucked all around my toes. to reveal them, as directed. to my judge. She tisked, tisked at me. "Miss Everitt. You have the wrong toes for pointe. Do you see? The toes must taper into the toe of the slipper. Yours are uneven. You may continue ballet, but you have the wrong feet for pointe." My mother, walking in to 'pick me up' from class came into the room. My teacher looked up at her, "She will never be a Dancer.", she told us, without mercy. and turned back to the rest of the class.
To this day I can recall her face, her hair in her tight, severe bun, her tiny frame next to my large-boned self, saying these very words, which were, to my young and impressionable ears, a death knell to a dream of glory, fame and the life of a true dancer...right after the recital, which she had me do in the usual ballet slippers instead of on pointe, I quit the lessons, in dishonor and sorrow....
Not until my fifties did I begin to dance again. I had decided to use all my funds from my recent divorce from my second husband, to go back to college to become a teacher, having worked for twenty-five years straight as an RN. I was also going to take English-saddle horseback riding lessons. and, I was going to dance. I was going to dance and dance and dance and dance. There would be no stopping me this time! My children were grown. I was responsible only to my very own self! I would Dance!
I embarked upon a course in uncharted waters. I was determined to learn every form of dance I had ever wanted to try. I learned that there was a class for learning folk and 'alpine' dance, whatever that was, close to my home, for a reasonable price. Having gone to a few square-dances at one time, I thought this genre would be a good one to begin my Dance Binge within...it was a very good choice, as it turned out!
The truly jolly, kind lady, who taught the class at the community center, was welcoming and patient and thorough without being bossy. She just kept moving the class, all older folks in the main, through the repetitive and satisfying dance moves and patterns that make up the folk dance world. All the moves were so much fun to learn! We all had a good time! She changed partners for us all the time, too, so that we would learn to dance with lots of different 'leads'. Soon, we were ready to debut at a German Folk Festival, to show off our Alpine dances and skills, or, at least, to participate and have fun!
Off we went to an Oktoberfest Dance. I was amazed! I hadn't known there were this many dancers in the entire Bay Area, much less all gathered together in one place, simply to eat, drink, and frolic around dancing! I was very pleased to be asked to dance many times, and was straining to learn from all 'leads' I had to follow with all these different partners. I was dancing!
One of the best dancers on the floor kept asking me to dance. I was so flattered, I was practically simpering with delight! He was Austrian, which seemed very exotic to me at the time, and told me many very funny stories with his wonderful accent while we danced. He was an Art Teacher at a local high school, and seemed very intelligent to boot. I was smitten. I could have danced all night, as the song goes!
Soon, he and I were an 'item'! We went to every Alpine, folk, or German dance there was. By then I had learned that he also was a ballroom dancer, and loved Cajun and Country and Western Dancing and East Coast Swing as well. What riches! I would have to learn all these dances at once! Off to classes I went!
There was a wonderful teacher in Oakland, where I lived, who would teach me all of these dances! We began with the waltz. proceeded to the Cha cha cha. on the the two-step. the rumba. the Viennese waltz. the salsa. the east coast swing. country and western. west coast swing. fox trot. tango. polka, even. Cajun and Zydeco. I even took coinciding ballet classes at a nearby dance studio, for workout and flexibility. The only form I wasn't indulging in was Tap...I just couldn't see myself doing tap. Besides, my new boyfriend didn't do tap....
We had a Cajun Dance party at his house, and taught the steps to our friends! We danced at the Alpine and German festivals all over the Bay Area. We schmoozed with other professional and amateur dancers, even a wonderful Dance Troop from Georgia, from the exotic Carpathians of Eastern Europe. We swung with the East Coast swingers. We danced around in the large circle with our cowboy boots on, to Country and Western Bands. We bounced in the three-step and four-step polkas to accordion and button-box bands whenever we could. We waltzed and fox-trotted, and cha cha cha'd, and two-stepped at Ballroom Dance Extravaganzas. I was finally a DANCER!
In 'pointe' of fact, I was a Dancing Fool!
I was singing as well, in several song genres: Irish and German Folk, in the main. When you put both pursuits together, what I was, was a PERFORMER! I was considered a "fine" singer. Together, we were a "fine" Dance Couple. Ah, glory. Ah, fame, even just a teeny amount of local fame. Ah...the fall....
My boyfriend, progressively over nine years, nurtured and developed multiple phobias. He became so neurotic that it was painful to live with him. He was No Fun At All anymore as well. He was starting to be cruel to me. I was not the sort of person who goes for being treated poorly, especially when I was sure that I was not at fault at all. It was time to leave the relationship. Somehow, that translated into leaving the Dance World as well....
My next partner in life was a fine, good, normal fellow, who used to dance at jazz venues when he was a Beatnik in San Francisco, when he was younger. He and I danced at home, now and again, just for fun. We matched eachother's steps nicely....
I don't know why I've never danced again as I did in those years. Perhaps I will dance again, some day...
For almost ten years of my life, though, I was a Dancing Fool...
I would not trade those years for any others.
They were a dream, a Dream -
that Really Came True....
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