Hey, we can dance too!
article by
vanhunks
Before I venture into this, let me state categorically: I am not a dancer. I wiggle my hips when I hear DanceNation Rave Music my elder daughter was so fond of; I sing along (at least, I can hold a few notes) with Frank Sinatra and do everything my way and I listen to classical music. Lots of it. But I don't dance. If someone should ask me whether I tried a waltz, I'd say: "Oh, yes, but how on earth can I move when I have two left feet?"
No, I don't dance. Sometime before the end of the next millennium, I will do a passable waltz, I promise. But for now I am content to watch, observe, file, index, analyse, annotate, cross-reference and do all the things spectators do at dance competitions. Like er... being obnoxious, frantically and fiercely supporting my offspring doing their thing on the floor, kissing and hugging the little darlings for being so brave. Ag, shame! Aren't they cute? Hey, Mom! Take a picture of me! Smile! Flash! Snap!
So, okay, here's me, a non-competitor, non-dancer and non-smoker and I
introduced myself a few years ago to The World of Dancing (on a point of
clarification: I mean introduce myself to watching dancers), seeing for
the first time in my life (I've passed half a century but let's pretend
I didn't say that) a ballroom competition. There was this man who said,
"And now for the beautiful slow foxtrot." Whenever I think of our
inimitable Vivier Nel, I think of that line. I think I'll write a story
one day with quoted line as the title. I saw very cutesey juvenile
couples running in the quickstep. "Oh, my goddes! They're so little and
they're doing that?"
I went to the next...and the next...and the next. It helped - naturally - that my irrepressible daughter just started ballroom dancing and was competing in the Junior Bronze. Just turned thirteen and dancing Adult Bronze nogal. Then she pronounced with stunning conviction, "Dancesport is my sport for life."
Now here's the deal. In MOLBER (My other life before retirement) I was
an athletics coach and official in the good old SACOS days and therefore
my frame of reference for sporting excellence and fitness had always
been the lore of running, jumping and throwing in Track and Field. Ever
since I can remember there has been this mistaken belief in the throwing
events of athletics: being chubby [fat, obese, big-boned, large ]
equated with power and strength. Teachers tended to select the really
plump children to put the shot, or throw discus. The perception was that
if an athlete was very chubby, he or she could be the best in throwing a
shot put ball. How many times didn't it happen that a much more slender,
equally tall athlete would be the winner in the shot put? It was a
mistaken belief. Jan Zelezny [Javelin ] - three times Olympic Champion -
isn't fat; US shotputter John Godina is simply very muscular and
unbelievably strong. And, a gorgeous, well-toned hunk like Bob Skinstad
was a rugby forward. These days forwards are running like backs. [Uh, we
shall not include sumo wrestling in this little diatribe].
The truth is, it is the combination of POWER and SPEED that can hurl an
iron ball, a discus and javelin the farthest. Or, push the scrum to
hell, gone and back. I was always saddened that obese children never got
on the school team for running, jumping, three-legged race and
egg-and-spoon racing reserved for the greyhounds, or, if they did, they
were ridiculed. Mostly ridiculed, I guess. They lost heart and lost
interest and got fatter, developed a poor heart rate and built up
unbelievably high cholesterol levels AND remained unfit for the rest of
their lives.
Hello?
Is it any wonder that chubby children got fed up with school? Why, they were only good enough to hurl implements, or be the butt of bad Yo' Mamma jokes. Not for them a place in the cheer-leading squad. For that you had to be pretty, have lots of curls, and do the "Spirit Fingers" thing. Or, be a "trompoppie" and twirl a baton with such dexterity I've always said the girls had a special little implement in their hands to make the stick turn. You weren't good enough for the team, not good enough to put a shot at any reasonable distance. In the Phys. Ed. classes of the week, you were so slow that the teacher gave up and said: "Hey, you! Go sit on the bench. Carry the water bottles! Be the Towel Rail."
Enter BALLROOM.
Surprise? Shocked? Stunned? Happy? Here's me, picturing girls who moved like ballet dancers. Mostly, (like said Science Masters of Yore), I imagined girls and boys - lithe, lissom, slender. I made a very early concession that pretty faces and curls were not on my list of criteria for any dancer. After all, Fred Astaire had a face only his mother could have loved. And who would forget Jimmy Durante with that nose, or James Cagney with a cut-loaf hairstyle? No, the pretty looks didn't matter, but my own preconceived notions that only long legs, thin bodies and incredibly graceful figures was a requisite of sorts, nose-dived right down into the depths of the Atlantic Abyss and there it remained to this glorious day. Like someone said: "That was the best mistake I ever made" when something turned out to be better than it had been before the mistake. See? Well, now I had such an experience. It was the most pleasant surprise, the most unbelievably humbling experience I ever had. There I saw not one, not two, not three dancers, but many dancers who had roly-poly frames that struggled to get into a leotard or black trousers. They came in all odd shapes and sizes, their bellies bounced up and down when they moved through any dance; their shirts could never quite fit snugly and they definitely would not have been allowed on the school's cheer-leading squad. These days, hunks like Bob Skinstad get to be a rugby forward.
The Chubby ones had few complexes; there was no embarrassment when they
danced, they were supremely confident of their abilities in whatever
section they were dancing in; they changed from uncomfortably looking
weighty boys and girls and the moment they moved in a waltz... Boy, you
ain't never seen such floating grace.
In a second they had in me a champion for life. I will defend them, because this I know implicitly: A fat child who would otherwise have sat at home getting increasingly unfit and unhealthy, was on the floor, moving like a dream, making mom and dad proud. Making me proud.
Let's look at this a little more objectively: These young roly-polies are saying: "Who said we can't do a sport?" They are saying they have more training in the sport in one week than an average high school rugby player, or soccer player. Codes like soccer, cricket, swimming, athletics are seasonal and athletes struggle to get fit AFTER the schools reopened in the new year to run an 800m in his inter-house sports day scheduled for mid-February. I could go into another dissertation on Injuries Incurred from Racing Unfit. DanceSport is not seasonal, and dancers as young as six years old are doing more basic exercise than they would have during the school's Phys. Ed. classes, because they are in training from January to December at least two nights a week. Isn't that the reward? It puts to shame those kids who have no direction and who stand on street corners hanging their lives away. It puts to shame the learner at school who has no interest in sport of any kind. It puts to shame those parents who put their own obese children down and who harass them with: "pull in your stomach, for heaven's sake!" It puts to shame any parent who doesn't have the courage to believe in their children, and so they keep them from doing anything they think the kids will never master.
Hooray, shall I say, for ballroom?
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vanhunks
2001