What
elements combine to ensure a fantastic and memorable weekend? Good music?
Hanging out with old friends?
Making new friends? Dancing until
your feet hurt and the DJ goes home? If
these sound like the ingredients to a memorable weekend, then we are cruising
on the same steamboat to Rollin’ On The River, an annual Swing dancing shindig
hosted by the West County Swing Dance Club.
The
weekend kicked off late Thursday night when my best friend from college (whom I
hadn’t seen in over ten years) arrived in St. Louis from Arizona wearing a
leopard print cowboy hat. I’d forgotten
how tall she is, but I had not forgotten her wry sense of humor and easy going
nature. All of these, by the way, worked
in her favor for getting dance partners as the weekend went on.
Saturday
morning, we drug our exhausted bodies out of bed and went to some dance
workshops in the morning, took a nap in the afternoon, and then danced the
night away. Our dance partners included
people from Chicago, Indiana, Cincinnati, and elsewhere. Over 500 people from 26 states joined in the
fun. For me, the evening was about
getting comfortable dancing with new people and learning to relax into it. There were so many new people to dance with,
and the atmosphere was so much more relaxed, almost euphoric, than any of the
regular dances I go to here in town.
For my
“Tall Friend from Arizona”, as she came to be known, I quickly discovered that
all of my worries that she might feel left out were completely unfounded. She was the hit of the dance floor. Between her stature, excellence as a dancer,
and willingness to ask people to dance, she had no lack of partners all weekend
long.
Over
the course of the weekend, we made new friends and grew as dancers. I actually started hearing the music that I
dance to, rather than perceiving it as a distraction to the physical feedback I
was trying to sense in my partners’ frames.
Some of my regular partners commented that my dancing had smoothed out
(although I still bungle their leads every now and then). Some of the guys from out of town came and
found me for second and third and fourth dances, an enormous boost to my
confidence on the dance floor.
My
friend rediscovered the joy of dancing in a more social setting than her school
offers. In what may sound like a strange
comment, she also discovered that she can unconsciously follow a lead when one
of the out of town guys started her off in a Fox Trot; she didn’t realize until
halfway through the song that they weren’t doing a swing. For her, that Fox Trot was the most memorable
dance of the weekend.
After
three nights of dancing until our feet hurt and we were too woozy with the late
hours to make coherent conversation, we hung up our dancing shoes and started
making plans for next year’s Rollin’ On The River.
- Rollin' On the River: http://www.wcsdc.com/ROTRPage.html
- Sponsored by the West County Swing Dance Club: http://www.wcsdc.com/
- Sanctioned by the American Bop Association: http://www.americanbopassociation.com/
- A Shameless Plug for my Club, Southside Imperial Swing Dance Club: http://www.southsidedance.org/
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