yer dancin’ photos
What’s new, pussycat? Tired of all things pumpkin? Hows about a little dancin’? Yippie!
That lovely gal in the photo up there is Dana. She hangs over at Whisks & Words, and unlike yours truly, she’s actually updating her blog. Like, frequently. Dana will be updating her blog every day this month. (I, on the other hand, will be thinking about updating my blog every day this month.) She sent me these photos a while back, and I thought you might like to see them as you recover from the switch over to standard time/the days of darkness. Her words will make you think of summer breezes and carefree days. Oh, and dancing. Because dancing is awesome.
Thanks for the reminder, Dana.
. . .
Good morning, Movita!
I have loved seeing your dance posts! I have had a complicated history with dance. When I was five, my mother put me in ballet, which I was psyched about. Each class, a girl in the class was called up and she got to wear the special tutu. Pink. Puffy. Perfect. Each week, I waited. And each week, I was passed over. Finally, I cried to my mom about how unfair it was. I never got to wear the tutu. So my mom, indulgent woman that she is, bought me a blue tutu. It looked like cotton candy. And I loved cotton candy.
At the final class, my name was called. I wore both tutus for class that day. And then I swore off ballet forever.
When I got older, I found myself enamored with tap dancing. I watched Singin’ in the Rain and thought, okay, I can just learn to dance like Gene Kelly. No sweat. I enrolled in tap dancing classes. I came out 9 months later with a pretty sweet shuffle-ball-change, but that’s as close as I got to performing my own vaudeville number.
So a few years later, a friend and I tried Latin dancing. She has more thoroughly buried herself in Latin dance culture, but I’ve learned salsa, bachata, merengue, and a little bit of cha-cha. This spring, that friend of mine, Heather, and her boyfriend, met up with me and my girlfriend at Town Point Park in Norfolk (where we live) for the spring wine festival. We were each about a bottle deep when a cha-cha song came on the loudspeaker nearby. Heather’s boyfriend extended his hand to me, and we danced on the dock, the breeze blowing behind us, the wine providing all the courage I needed to dance cha-cha, my weakest style, in front of a lot of drunk folks. I wasn’t wearing dance shoes, we didn’t have a proper floor, but in a lot of ways, those are my favorite times to dance: when the technicality of it all is gone and all you’ve got is music and movement. Give me barefoot dancing over cha-cha heels any day. Give me living room floors, or better yet, harbor docks. Give me music and someone to dance with. And above all, give me my tutu, or better yet, two.
Dana (from blog Whisks & Words)
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Do you have a dancin’ photo you’d like to share? Of course you do! Maybe you should send it to me. And if you’d like to see more dancin’ photos, click here.
I love the image of kid-Dana wearing her two tutus with all the pride a child can have. I bet the other kids were proper jealous.
Nice:) I want clothing made out of real cotton candy!
Love it. Heading over to her blog to make fun of you behind your back.
I must take photos of people dancing at the conference later this month. It’s being held at the hotel where they shot Dirty Dancing. So I figure with enough alcohol in some of the attendees I’ll have enough blackmail photos to last me a lifetime. I’ll forward some of the most embarrassing ones to you of course. Cuz I loves ya.
of course this is absolutely adorable!! 🙂
I love this.. the feeling, the dance, the opportunity to seize a moment of pure joy (the wine is pretty awesome too, I’m not gonna lie). I always think I can “run, dance, ski, ..” pretty much do anything brilliantly when I’m out having fun with my friends!! xx
Between you and me… I can’t keep up reading daily blogs. I think you are doing great!
Comments on this post are now closed as it was published in November 2012.