Rewind 50 years. St. Margaret’s Junior School. We are in a cavernous school assembly hall with all the dining tables and chairs, and gym apparatus stowed away, because today it’s… Country Dancing! I can still hear the groans from all the boys.
Our teacher is well versed in the ways of 10-year-old boys, and she knows full well that the session will never get underway if the boys have to pick a dance partner. So, it’s ‘girls choose your partners’. There then follows the strange and thrilling ritual of selection. A cruel way to find out your position in the boyfriend material pecking order. Pity the boy who is always selected last when teams are being picked for football. Pity him even more if he is selected last for country dancing.
Dancing commences, affording ample opportunity to indulge in juvenile sniggers at dance names such as ‘The Gay Gordons’ and ‘Strip the Willow’. Our outward behaviour seems to assert that the licence we are given to hold a girl by the hand or even around the waist means nothing to us at this age. However, betrayed by our blushes we dumbly go through the motions.
At the school Christmas party, we get the chance to put our learned dancing etiquette into practice. Except that, wired on jelly and ice-cream, and fizzy pop, we spend our time running in all directions until we finally collapse, exhausted in a hyper-ventilating heap.
Fast-forward 5 years and we are happy to dance. However, this time only as an expression of macho identity; to establish what teen tribe we belonged to. Though it was obvious from our attire, tribal affiliation was all about the music and how you danced to it. The two main dance forms at the time were pogo-ing without a pogo stick and playing electric guitar without a guitar. These two dance forms were mutually exclusive - you could never be an adherent to both.
It being the late seventies, dancing, music and any form of teen gathering was accompanied by an underlying threat of violence. At discos we stayed in groups for safety and never went to the toilets. Strangely the followers of soul music, whilst being the best dancers, had the most fearsome reputation. We stayed well out of their way.
As the years passed and inhibitions grew, alcohol became the catalyst for dancing, usually in a club. By then, however, dancing snobbery had taken root, and I couldn’t possibly dance to anything that would not reveal to all and sundry what impeccable taste I had. As with all dancing, timing is everything and if the perfect dance track came on before I’d had enough to drink then no dancing for me. If on the other hand the track came on after I’d had too much to drink, then that could be messy.
As time passes you dance less and less. You might risk a turn at a family wedding or a fiftieth birthday party, but it’s the youngsters who hog the floor and they dance to anything while your once-cool moves are derided as ‘Dad Dancing’.
But then, life might take an unexpected turn, and dancing might become part of your life more than you ever thought it could.
Men are 1.5 times more likely to get Parkinson’s Disease than women, and the benefits of dance as a therapy for Parkinson’s are well publicised. As well improving your fitness ‘dancing can enhance fluidity of movement, develop postural stability, flexibility of the spine and improve balance.’ Aside from this it can improve your mood and mental wellbeing because, well, it’s very good fun. As a result, Parkinson’s dance groups, such as those run by Ascendance are usually well attended by men. Some of them look as if they’d be more at home on the golf course or under the bonnet of a car, but they continue to come.
Whisper it, but I’ve always enjoyed dancing and looking back it would seem as if my dancing was a series of missed opportunities. Maybe so. Hopefully I can grasp the opportunity going forward. I’m certainly dancing to music now that I wouldn’t dream of dancing to in the past. Madonna for goodness’ sake! I bet she would beat me in a fight.