Well hello there, dancers! I know it’s been awhile since I’ve visited our home here. I hope our paths have crossed elsewhere and it hasn’t actually been that long. If you’ve missed me, I am on Instagram most frequently as of late. It’s easy to upload a quick reel of the sunset or the beautiful views around my home without feeling like I lose too much time actually experiencing said sunsets and views.
While I continue to write, the words don’t always turn into pieces that I wish to share with the world. They are more for my own musings, or story ideas still in their infancy. It’s been a long time since I attempted to grow an idea into something that would take up more than a blog post or two. I’m excited to say something bigger has planted its seed in my brain.
I also still dance – Zumba and ballet mainly these days, plus mini dance breaks in my office whenever a good song plays. Speaking of dance, did you see what I did last week??
For the first time in over a year, I had a ballroom dance lesson! I drove 1.5 hours down to Portland on Friday, to the new Fred Astaire studio that opened just a couple months ago. It was NOT a 3-hour round trip for just one private lesson. I also signed up for the group class that preceded it, which turned out to also be essentially a private lesson due to some last minute cancellations.
I told the teacher I would be happy to just dance lead-follow for our lesson time, meaning no choreographed routines. The teacher would improvise the steps and I would follow his lead as best I could. I requested Slow Waltz and Viennese because I missed that feeling of floating over the floor to 3/4 time. We also visited Tango and International Rumba. I thought it would be a lot of awkward stumbles and bumping into each other while I tried to shake off the rust that I was sure had built up over my dancing muscles, but actually, the Waltzes flowed almost naturally. There was definitely some rust in my Tango and I had never really trained in International Rumba, but we did that just for fun because the group class was Latin styling/choreography.
Here are some clips of us waltzing:
It felt wonderful to be dancing ballroom again. Even though I’ve been going to Zumba and ballet classes regularly, I had new sore muscles the next day! It’s funny and incredible how different styles of dance can work your body in completely different ways.
Getting to dance ballroom again also revealed that my relationship to ballroom has changed, like so much else in my life. I used to need ballroom dance as an escape. It was my one happy place in a stressful world. Then I moved to Maine and I found peace and contentment in my everyday life. If I need an escape, I can just walk out my door and watch the deer grazing in the fields or go for a stroll in the woods behind my house. Ballroom dance is now an additional joy, rather than my only joy. It was a strange feeling at first, almost like my enthusiasm or passion for ballroom had tempered. In reality, it was the almost-desperate need to escape that had faded away, leaving more room to be present and enjoy the movement.
It will be another month before I head down to Portland again. I was gifted a lesson package, but that drive is not something I want to do every week! I plan to schedule double lessons and book them on days when there is also a group class or a practice party to attend, so I can make the most of my time there. I look forward to working my ballroom muscles again!
In the meantime, I’ve decided to do something else I haven’t done in a long time – participate in this holiday weekend’s shopping extravaganza! If you’re looking to dance through the holidays, be sure to check out my shop starting tomorrow, a.k.a. Black Friday, through Cyber Monday.
Update: Use code BACKTODANCE to get 20% off any and all books/journals! Sale is through Monday, November 27, 2023.
The Girl with the Tree Tattoo 