Leave the real one far behind
At some point during the dancing portion of the reception today, Heather was trying to get David M and me to dance; we both said that we only waltz. David explained some of why he doesn't dance, and I explained some of why I don't; among other things, I noted that people who are good at (and/or who teach) physical-movement stuff tend to be incapable of putting it into words, and I usually need words to make sense out of things, so learning physical-movement stuff is often hard for me.
So Heather started explaining to me, in words (as she demonstrated), some basics of dancing. It was remarkable and eye-opening; it's been rare that anyone's done that for me before. (Susan R taught me to waltz, and a couple of people have taught me some basic English dancing at various times, and various people have given me tips on playing DDR; and there've probably been a few other instances I'm not thinking of offhand.)
So I got up and stood next to her (we were off to the side of the room, not on the dance floor), and watched what she did, and tried to do what the Wii DDR tutorial says: “don't match the timing with your eyes, feel the rhythm with your soul!”
It was kind of fun. I can't see myself going out on a dance floor for real anytime soon, and I got all tangled up when we tried to go from half-speed to full speed, but it was much nicer than any of my previous public freeform-dancing experiences.
It was also possibly the most embarrassing thing I've done in public recently. I got through it by trying to keep my eyes entirely on Heather and trying to ignore the three to five friends who were watching. (They were mostly complimentary, though they also gently mocked my attempts at hand motions.)
It occurred to me that one of the things DDR doesn't teach (besides hand motions) is hip motion. I've gotten reasonably good at putting my feet down on the right squares on the right beats, which requires shifting weight at the right times, but even when my DDR-playing is flowing smoothly, I'm not thinking about my hips. I'll try and pay more attention to that next time I play.
(I know that DDR is not real dancing. But it's made me significantly more comfortable than I used to be with moving my body in time to music, which seems like a decent first step.)
Anyway. Fun and interesting, despite stretching my comfort-zone boundaries a little. Thank you, Heather, for making it easy and relatively comfortable, and especially for talking through it in actual words! And thanks to y'all others who were watching for being encouraging.
