A Completely Useless Exercise

June 1, 2008

By one of those weekends I meant an SOS weekend. Being there did not solve all of the world’s problems of course. It took me a little while to ask someone for a dance. Even though it was a perfectly fine dance, I couldn’t get myself to start another dance for next 3 songs. Finally what got me going was a little challenge to myself; I will try to alternate between On1 and On2 as long as possible.

I knew it was a stupid idea within a few seconds of thinking of the idea. Still I decided to go ahead with it because I thought it was a way to get me going. Also I did tell myself last time in London that I should try using London for more On2 practices.

In the end I managed to keep this up until what I thought was the last dance of the evening. It was dancing On2 with my first dance partner of the evening making for a neat symmetry given that the first dance was on On1 timing. Then I realized that I still had a time for one more dance. I gave my next partner a choice, and she chose On2. So it means I had one more On2 dance than On1 dances tonight.

It was something of a challenge to pick partners to make this feasible. Towards the end, I started dancing with one person first On2 followed by On1 if I felt that my partner probably would prefer to dance On1. I mentioned my silly scheme to a couple of other people including Vera and Amir.

I cannot say that it was a great experience. There were few positives. I could say is that I managed to stay on time pretty much at all times. Some of the dances were decent although I cannot say that any were outstanding. On the other hand, I never felt particularly care-free even when dancing On1. I don’t think there was any fundamental improvement with On2 dancing while On1 suffered a bit. Musicality took a back seat especially while dancing On2. Some of the dances might have been choppy. I think my last dance partner was particularly unimpressed – possibly because I was keeping things too simple or possibly because she didn’t think that the way I led the dance did not fit the music.

If nothing else I suppose I can now say I did it. I don’t think I would care to repeat the effort. It got me through the night. I think I sucked. I think it sucked – it was like deliberately handcuffing myself – all very useless and pointless. Perhaps I can label it masochism for masochism’s sake.

Other features for the evening included minimal leading and large amount of time spent on shines especially with On2. There was a dual birthday dance for Leon and Tamambo. Julian the Duke was the DJ, and his set worked quite well for what I was doing – and I’m guessing that I probably would have liked it just fine on a normal SOS evening too. It was something of a LDA reunion meeting with Roger, Sean, Andrew, Julian, Helen. Susana was there as well, and I think I spotted Shaan briefly as well.

Nicest comment received. "I was going to go home but since you asked me…" I don't think I have known her very long.

Postscript. As I was about the get off the train at the Cambridge station, I spotted someone I knew at the other end of the car. So I had a friendly chat during a short shared walk down the Station Road taking full advantage of not having to worry about background noise.