Published: February 02, 2008 05:46 pm      

FOXTROT FOR MY VALENTINE: Columnist takes dance classes

It is often problematic, a man choosing an appropriate gift for Valentine’s Day. It is too easy to pick out the wrong jewelry or clothes, or the box of chocolates with built-in regret. This year, the gift to my wife, Carrie, is the solution to a problem.

She and I have long been the ones at the party or the wedding reception who sat at the table while couples got up and danced. As they whirled and smiled, we watched: not exactly wallflowers, but neither were we full participants. She can dance a little, but I move like a battleship. This year for Valentine’s Day, I’d learn to dance.

At the Niagara Falls studio of dance instructor Joevene Viola, I was shown the basics, in anticipation of Lesson No. 1 several days thereafter at the Barton Hill Hotel in Lewiston. She and fellow ballroom dancer Lionel Southwell teach dance, promote and judge the kind of competitions you see on television and have traveled the world in this milieu. They also serve as local missionaries for getting amateurs onto the dance floor for some rumba or some foxtrot by organizing dances and lessons across the area.

Good. People who know what they’re doing, who won’t be discouraged by an intimidated student who is tall, wide in the middle, and oafish (my wife, incidentally, is short and slim with a radiant smile. Together we resemble Rocky and Bullwinkle, a match that somehow seems inappropriate for the proper bearing of the dance world).

Joevene put me immediately at ease with some gossip from the world of dance (how southern Ontario is filling up with expert ballroom dancers, mostly European émigrés who settle in Toronto, and how her business is booming since the television program “Dancing With the Stars” generated new interest). I made it clear that all I sought was the ability to glide my date across the floor without anyone getting killed, and we were off with the basic box step. Left foot forward, right foot forward, left foot to the left, right foot to the left. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Repeat.

As we danced across the studio, it occurred to me we were moving diagonally, like the bishop on a chess board. The simple steps were being committed to memory, but we were slewing sideways. Then Lionel explained that my right hand, parked on Joevene’s back, was “for steering, like a sports car.” Suddenly I’m not only dancing, more or less, but guiding a partner who is responding, more or less, to my direction. (Women have to do the moves backwards, taking cryptic commands from the man’s hand, while wearing high heels. Is this why ballroom dancing isn’t as common as it once was?)

After an hour of this, I was infinitely better informed, no one was injured and I actually looked forward to the group lesson on the oak floor in the Barton Hill lobby.

Joevene’s and Lionel’s charges, about 50 of them (with the women outnumbering the men) were watching their teachers’ feet, and watching their own, as we entered from a snowstorm. The women seemed eager. Many of the men had that deer-in-the-headlights look of distressed confusion, and huddled close to the wall (shades of high school). Most of us arrived as couples, and when the recorded music started (the Cole Porter tune “Night and Day”), we all slammed into our partners and clumsily rocked around the floor. Slow, slow, quick, quick. Since my steering was imperfect, my date and I diagonally danced ourselves down a hallway. Getting back to the action, we began anew and I accidentally body-checked her into a wall.

We tried again, and I observed that plenty of toes were being trod on and that we were by no means the worst ones out there. In this game, apparently, enthusiasm for the task can mask plenty of imperfect technique. There was laughing but no wisecracking, and a lot of silently mouthing “1, 2, 3, 4” by the men concentrating the most. Somehow it was simultaneously a stressful and stress-free experience.

Dancing is one of those activities wherein improvement comes with practice, and eventually we stopped counting and worrying and merely danced. Lionel explained the right-of-way rules of the floor (generally, dancing is done counterclockwise), and encouraged his students with optimism.

“The first night is always brutal,” he offered cheerily.

After 40 minutes of this, I felt as though I’d scrimmaged with the Boston Celtics, but I was getting the idea, as well as scoring points for trying something this surprising. We’ll be hitting the dance floor on Valentine’s Day, not as Fred and Ginger (more like Gilligan and Ginger), but with a confidence that I need not alert any emergency rooms, either.

Ed Adamczyk is a freelance columnist who says “yes” to things before his brain tells him “no.” He can be reached at niagaraliving@gnnewspaper.com.