So You Think You Can Dance?

Um…NO! So for our 9 year anniversary back in May Shawn got me a real surprise. Really, I was shocked! He bought 5 sets of private dance lessons to take as a couple. I was totally caught off guard because Shawn doesn’t dance and has definitely never shown any interest in learning how. I myself don’t dance but always thought it would be fun to learn. This fact, of course, made his gift super sweet and thoughtful – a serious score for him!

Although I appreciated his gift I actually never thought we would do it. I left the scheduling up to Shawn and a couple months went by without mention of the dance lessons. All of the sudden in August, out of the blue Shawn’s like “Oh, I scheduled our first dance lesson for Tuesday night.” What?!!

Skip ahead to now. We just completed our 4th lesson this week. We have learned some Waltz, some Rumba and some Swing. The bad news is that I truly think we are the worst students our poor instructor has ever had. In fact, last time we were at the studio we asked our instructor (Isabella) if we are the worst student she’s ever had and she just laughed so hard she couldn’t breathe. I’m gonna go ahead and take that as a “yes.” Here are just a couple of our problems:

Every time we come back Isabella says, “Did you practice?” and we just have to hang our heads and give a defeated “no.” Also, because we’re so busy our lessons are always way too far apart.

Another thing is that I have a hard time following the lead (shocking!) This is what Isabella said to me during our first lesson, “It doesn’t matter how things really are in life, on the dance floor the man is the lead. The best female dancers make the same mistakes as their partners.” Huh?? Anyway, I guess she didn’t think she got through to me because during our third lesson she made me dance with her until I could finally follow the lead. It took me a good fifteen minutes (with Shawn just having to patiently watch) and I’m still not convinced she didn’t just give up.

And finally Shawn isn’t always the best lead and doesn’t exactly have the most rhythm (sorry Shawn, but you said it yourself!). Shawn loves to switch up dance moves in the middle of a dance to kind of keep things going which would be fine. The problem is that when you do this you’re supposed to give your partner certain signs like, depending on the move, putting a little more pressure on their back or adjusting hand positions. Let’s just say I don’t always get those signs and we end up falling all over each other. The other day Isabella was showing Shawn how to be more clear (or firm) with one of his signs and he almost pulled the poor lady to the floor – that was good times!

In the end I have to say that even if we are never any good, even if we never actually learn a complete dance, I’m glad we did it. It’s maybe been more entertaining than enlightening, but what’s wrong with a little entertainment?!