Sydney Salsa Magic ~ Opinion - your guide to regular, amusing and informative articles concerning Latin Dance in Australia's Sydney Salsa Scene. Return for future updates or take a look at previous articles in our archive
The Revenge Dance and Other Dances
(article #12)
On an earlier article, I mentioned the Challenge Dance (see article #3), now let's talk about the other types of dances I've discovered along the way.
Early on in my dancing career, I hate to admit it, I was pretty shallow. I was still living in beginer's hell and it took all my courage to ask some of the better dancers for a dance. Some of them took one look at me and said no, still others did say yes but made me feel like I was crap throughout the whole dance. To be honest, I probably was indeed crap, and to be totally honest, the girls didn’t do this to me, I did it myself. I made myself feel crap by putting too high an expectation on myself and of course disappointing myself. This is if course in hindsight and with all the wisdom gained since.
But back at that time, I was feeling very hard done by, and so back then I swore to myself that I was gonna get good. I was gonna be the greatest dancer ever. And when that day happens, I'll show them. Let them beg me for a dance, HAH! So fast forward two years later and I see one of these girls on the dance floor. I have now done lots of classes, I've assisted in many classes, I've even performed. I think I'm good enough. So I ask her for a dance, and I danced with her and I laid it on extra thick. She responded, she was oohing and aahing at the right moments, at the end of the dance, she gave me a look that I took to mean, "Wow!" I thanked her for the dance and I swaggered off knowing that I had just done a Revenge dance. But how satisfying was that? She didn't know who I was anyway, she doesn't remember that one night two years ago when I was a fledgling Salsero. This is really just all bullshit games I'm playing in my head.
The true revenge dance was one I had with my ex-wife. I was a completely hopeless dancer when we were married. Which is a shame since she absolutely loves dancing. She's since remarried, and one day we met at a dance event and I asked her to dance. I wanted to test myself and see if she can tell that I can now dance. As it turns out, I had outdanced her, I was now better than her, wohoo! She jokes to me afterwards, "You're really good now, does that mean I have to divorce my new husband so he can dance as good as you?"
Another type of dance can be a nasty one, I call it an "obligation dance". This is when you see someone that because of your relationship with them, you feel obligated to dance with them. They could be your dance partner, life partner, sibling, friend, teacher, student, relative or customer. What makes an obligation dance bad is when you dance with them because you are afraid of offending them by not dancing with them. Rather than dancing with them because you genuinely want to dance with them. Don't kid yourself, they can tell when when they've become an obligation dance, and then they'd be offended anyway. They'd rather you don't ask them to dance rather than be insulted that you had to force yourself to dance with them. Come to think of it, giving someone an obligation dance is probably what gives birth to someone's revenge dance.
There is another type of dance that sounds bad but, I think is quite nice actually. I call it the Charity dance (or a pity dance). Nobody likes to be pitied, so I don't focus on that. Instead I tell you what my mental process is for arriving at a charity dance. Every night, I look around the room and I try to find the sorriest, most miserable looking person in the room and ask them to dance. I find this one person who is definitely not having a good night, and I try to turn it around for her. I'm saying to her "This dance is for you, and I'd be damned if you aren't smiling by the time we finish!" It's amazing how wonderful this works. I take her back to her seat smiling and she now has a happiness aura around her. This then starts to attract other dancers to her and she'll be dancing for the rest of the evening.
It's a great ego stroke for me to shift someone from thinking "I'm having a shit night, maybe I should just go home." into "This is so cool, I'm having a great time." To paraphrase from Spiderman: "With great power comes great responsibility."
21 July 2006
Don Miguel
The Destroyer*
Previous articles:
(article #11)
(article #10)
(article #9)
(article #8)
(article #7)
(article #6)
(article #5)
(article #4)
(article #3)
(article #2)
(article #1)
*Rumours have it that he once single-handedly destroyed a Salsa club by toppling a light stand which shorted out the building's electrical system. No lights, no music, annoyed guests, and a very cross club owner.