Can you dance?

Shalimar said:
I love to dance, many different styles. Belly dancing went a long way towards ensuring I didn’t have student loans to pay off after I graduated from university. 😁
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Dancing on my 'plates of meat' is difficult enough these days Shali, but I'd wager that dancing on my belly would be a non-starter. Can you still dance on your belly? :) ;)
 

Heh, my parents also sent me to ballroom dancing classes when I was in eighth grade convinced that it was a social grace I'd need to have. I can still remember sweating in a jacket and tie in a stifling, non-air conditioned building while an elderly woman who may have been hot in the 1920's taught us things like the Cha-Cha right before no-touch dancing became the norm in the '60's. Decades later, I'm still waiting to demonstrate my competence in the Waltz and of course the Fox Trot, which came naturally to me anyways...
 
John Lennon made an arrogant remark when he said that before Elvis, there was nothing. Typical Lennon.

But that fades in insignificance compared to Chubby Checker who declared that before The Twist, the kids had nothing.
In a letter to Billboard Magazine, Checker wrote that he ranks himself in terms of greatness amongst Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Dr. George Washington Carver, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney, and suggests that he alone is responsible for people “dancing apart to the beat.” According to Chubby, “dancing apart to the beat is the dance that we do when we dance apart to the beat of anybody’s music and before Chubby Checker it could not be found!” As he clarifies in the letter, essentially, if you dance with someone and you are not touching—and you are dancing to the beat… well, Chubby Checker invented that.

Wonder what happened to Chubby Checker?
 
Never believe 'em, Fuzzybuddy! I forgot to mention up-thread that although I love to dance I'm not particularly good at it, and one reason I love ballet is that it breaks down into particular steps so it can be learned at a very slow pace and then sped up later. Your friend just wasn't a very good teacher.
 
Della said:
Never believe 'em, Fuzzybuddy! I forgot to mention up-thread that although I love to dance I'm not particularly good at it, and one reason I love ballet is that it breaks down into particular steps so it can be learned at a very slow pace and then sped up later. Your friend just wasn't a very good teacher.
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Well said Della, my wife and I used to teach the beginners and improvers. Many a man told me that he was unteachable, two left feet and all that. The only couples that gave up were the ones that didn't really want to learn in the first place. As Della points out, breaking a dance down into it's component steps, you learn as you would with anything else, by repeating and repeating. It was particularly satisfying when a middle aged fellow ( I was much younger than him at the time,) who wanted to dance with his daughter at her wedding, told me that he not only thought that he couldn't learn but what he had learned, he thoroughly enjoyed.
 
horseless carriage said:
Well said Della, my wife and I used to teach the beginners and improvers. Many a man told me that he was unteachable, two left feet and all that. The only couples that gave up were the ones that didn't really want to learn in the first place. As Della points out, breaking a dance down into it's component steps, you learn as you would with anything else, by repeating and repeating. It was particularly satisfying when a middle aged fellow ( I was much younger than him at the time,) who wanted to dance with his daughter at her wedding, told me that he not only thought that he couldn't learn but what he had learned, he thoroughly enjoyed.
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True. We took many years of lessons. We had to work hard at it. Practiced a lot and went out dancing. I remember someone asking us once if had taken a dance lesson! ONE dance lesson...yeah, right.
 
horseless carriage said:
John Lennon made an arrogant remark when he said that before Elvis, there was nothing. Typical Lennon.

But that fades in insignificance compared to Chubby Checker who declared that before The Twist, the kids had nothing.
In a letter to Billboard Magazine, Checker wrote that he ranks himself in terms of greatness amongst Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison, Dr. George Washington Carver, Henry Ford, and Walt Disney, and suggests that he alone is responsible for people “dancing apart to the beat.” According to Chubby, “dancing apart to the beat is the dance that we do when we dance apart to the beat of anybody’s music and before Chubby Checker it could not be found!” As he clarifies in the letter, essentially, if you dance with someone and you are not touching—and you are dancing to the beat… well, Chubby Checker invented that.

Wonder what happened to Chubby Checker?
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He certainly started something with 'the twist', lasted a good few years before it disappeared.
 
I can still slow dance, I think, but have not in ages. I used to love dancing in my younger years and would go out to dances. I really enjoyed that.
 
I remember that during the 1960's, "Twist" lessons were televised during commercial intervals in my NYC broadcast area. It was a big deal, almost a social movement in those last days of innocence with celebs going to "The Peppermint Lounge" where the trendy went to Twist and be seen "Twisting." Chubby Checker came to me in a dream once. We twisted the night away... 😺

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It was a big deal! I remember reading Twist instructions in the newspaper: Pretend you're holding a towel behind you with one end in each hand, then just dry your backside.
 

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