Lesson with RT... Working my Way Out of Oblivion

Yeah you read that title right... I had a LESSON!!! The timing of the whole thing was just too uncanny....



Shortly after my last post about my gym now being steps away from the dance studio.... I will admit to having gone to the gym without actually going to the dance studio... the shame of where I could have possibly let my self go to was too great... Two days after that post I received a call from RT... (who never ordinarily calls). The phone rang out, and I saw the number to the studio...I decided at the last second to answer it instead of letting it go to voice mail. The end result was a scheduled lesson!



Between phone call and lesson time I did think of rescheduling a few times... I didn't want anyone to notice how truly bad I was, or for RT to notice how out of shape I'd allowed myself to become! Of course the logical train of thought is that if I didn't go back in for my lesson to see exactly where I was at then how would I even know how bad I've become... of course... I didn't have THAT thought... depression isn't exactly something that allows for logical thinking... my thought was ok.. if fate is gonna lead me here... then I'm going to go.

I've written this lesson out twice now.. and it turned into nothing short of a novel. So, in an effort to keep things at a readable length I'll do this a third time. :-)

I ended up being late, sad I know, and probably only the second or third time in my dancing life I'd ever been behind. Again, depression is a bad bedfellow. I apologized and we commenced our lesson.... Blissfully not as technique filled as I was dreading.

We opened with swing, West Coast (of all things) and East Coast... thankfully I remember both... especially West Coast, as I'm sure you all have noticed.. I dance it about 4 times a year... and still to this day, can only follow RT in it. East Coast fared a bit better... while my feet absolutely know where they're going.. I feel, sadly, that a lot of my technical finer points have left me. As have ankle strength in my right side, and any semblance of arm styling.

We moved on to Salsa (I was waiting for it to show up!) which was better, but not great... despite RT's "Wow" comment to a lead I followed that I have in fact missed in the past. Salsa will always and forever be "my" dance with RT... can't have a better time at it with any other lead.

Then came Rumba... I can't tell you how surprised I was at how much I missed it... actually (and if RT hears this he'll be more shocked than you'd imagine) the technique of it all....getting the hip to settle at the right moment, staying on the inside edges... dang it all... I think I might be a dancer for wanting all that! Not that I actually did it all okay mind you. I need to come back a bit more and stronger before I actually have it back... but I do miss it!

The second Rumba we did was worth noting...not because I did exceptionally well at it.. but because of the song that RT chose... it was actually a Bachata. One I've heard several times... and yes you can Rumba to a Bachata... the funniest part is... The song just made me smile... like a real smile, I don't find myself doing that often these days... Only I'm not sure if it's because I have history with this song, or because I know the artist...could possibly be both, within the first two measures... I was smiling, before we even took the floor to dance to it. Sadly the song didn't last long, but it did prompt a brief break down of one of the later Rumba steps I had learned WAAAAAY back when I was actually taking lessons regularly.

At first.. the idea of breaking something down and learning it again had my devastated... I do believe my hands went over my face and I muttered something like "Oh dear Lord no..not today." which was then promptly discarded as a plausible response to RT's teaching... and we moved forward to learning it.

Thankfully after the two swing styles that left me feeling completely fat and like the worst student to ever have graced the floor with RT, the Salsa and Rumba portions were quite nice. I did have the opportunity to inform RT of my new gym membership and the fact that I was feeling really bad lately.... which was just taken and accepted, and we moved on... which is exactly what I needed. There was nothing he could have said to make me any better... just the dancing was enough.

At the very end of the lesson, RT tried to schedule me for one more... I have one more solitary lonely lesson. It has to be with Largo of course....but I wasn't ready to schedule it just yet. So I declined scheduling... and told RT I had to immediately go to the gym. As if on Que HFC walked up (this is amusing) and asked if I was going to stay for her technique class. As I was calmly stating to her "No, but thank you I have to go to the gym." RT, completely out of character for him, snaps at HFC, boldly and simply stating that I had someplace else to be. Clearly my going through another round of cardio is more important to both of us, although perhaps in that moment, a bit more important to him than me. :-)

We left my final reserved lesson unscheduled and I went off to the gym, thinking the whole time about how uncanny timing can be, and how I still need work to come back to where I was, but I don't think I completely embarrassed myself in that lesson.... Also, the thought of my liking Rumba technique and how still after all this time and lessons how I want desperately to be considered a good dancer kept running around in my brain (which then made me work harder on the cardio equipment), life is just crazy, and fate... is my friend.

This whole gym being right by dance studio thing could really work out as soon as I have my schedule set for the winter, and I have GOT to, simply GOT to make it into the dance studio more often.