“Dancing is poetry with arms and legs.”
(Charles Baudelaire)
“I can’t feel my legs…”
(Ross Konikoff)
A few weeks ago I was in a pretty tough spot. The most dreaded night of my year was quickly approaching and I grew more overwrought as the date closed in. When it finally arrived I faced it bravely, somehow surviving, but it’s only now that I am able to talk about it.
I’m just a sideman trumpet player, but I’m really, really trying to like dancing. I really, really am. I admire people who feel the music and let their bodies move accordingly, but I grew up playing in dance bands, making the music while watching in wonder as others let the music move them. The very few times I’d attempted to dance were uncomfortable, embarrassing failures and I vowed never to try it again.
Then one night, I became ensnared in the tender trap. The woman I flipped for was a ballroom dance competitor, now retired, but one for whom swing dancing would always be a vital component of life. Following our swift betrothal she made it clear that I was to be her one and only dance partner. I was dragged, kicking and screaming, to dance classes where after a mere two decades, I had developed sufficiently to squire my bride across the floor for an hour or so, ping-ponging off many of her former dance partners, who’d lay the side-eye on me when they thought I wasn’t watching. However, thi
