{"id":9687,"date":"2023-08-29T08:38:57","date_gmt":"2023-08-29T08:38:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9687"},"modified":"2023-08-29T08:38:59","modified_gmt":"2023-08-29T08:38:59","slug":"born-to-dance-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=9687","title":{"rendered":"Born to Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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La Sylphide Ballet with Rebeca Brenner\/Will Brenner-Columbus\/flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When I finally mastered some of the steps at my Zumba class the other week, I felt I could risk not looking at my feet for once and looking in the studio mirror instead. Big mistake. I wasn\u2019t expressing a vibrant fusion of Latin rhythms with Bhangra beats; I was channelling Wilson, Keppel and Betty<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t think my mother knew what she was about to unleash when she sent me, at the age of five, to Miss Ballantine\u2019s dancing class, to learn ballroom dancing and ballet. Her main aim was that I should master the social skill of ballroom dancing, for she was not to know that by the time I was of an age for social dancing, the prevailing style would simply be a free-for-all of hip-shaking, with more or less artistic arms thrown in at one\u2019s discretion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, of course, I fell in love with ballet. For several years I did nothing but draw pictures of girls in tutus or long ballet skirts and feet en pointe. I practised the dying swan pose (see Uliana Lopatkina on YouTube for how to do it properly). I even wanted to change my first name to \u2018Ballerina\u2019. It didn\u2019t matter that that my parents told me that I would be too tall to be a ballet dancer and would never be able to find a partner (Sylvie Guillem had not been invented yet). On reflection, I think they could see that I wasn\u2019t very good, but couldn\u2019t bring themselves to say so to my face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless, I persisted and went on going to dance classes as an adult. Things didn\u2019t improve. I remember one dance teacher, who had a comb-over and an uncanny resemblance to Ted Heath, cruelly demonstrating to the class all the things I was doing wrong: head sticking forward, arms up round my ears, and stomach sticking out \u2013 not a pretty sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if I couldn\u2019t achieve the soaring, heaven-bound grace of the ballet dancer, perhaps I could do better at something earthier, more spontaneous, and less rooted in perfection: salsa! Off I went to classes. Sadly, years of one-size-fits-all bopping had done me no favours. \u2018STOP JUMPING!\u2019 was the teacher\u2019s constant refrain, and I just couldn\u2019t reproduce the shimmies-within-shimmies that characterise the truly accomplished salsa dancer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So I must accept it. I wasn\u2019t born to dance. I was in fact born to read. Sitting down. Still. On a sofa. But that doesn\u2019t stop me, in the words of Noel Coward, \u2018wriggling my guts\u2019 whenever the opportunity presents itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I even wanted to change my first name to ‘Ballerina’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,67,182,55],"tags":[526,378],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9687"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9687"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9687\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9690,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9687\/revisions\/9690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}