Let’s be clear – I am not a massive Strictly fan, and I certainly don’t regard myself as anything like a good mover on the dance floor. For the sake of marital harmony, however, I have decided that the best way of achieving my wife’s long held ambition for me to learn to dance is to really bite the bullet and become part of this year’s Martel Maides Dance Challenge, organised by Jamie and Vanessa Le Tissier and the Guernsey Amateur Dance Association (GADA).
There’s nothing like a live audience to motivate you, especially when pictures of John Sergeant’s elegant manoeuvring are still fresh in the mind’s eye!
The event goes something like the television series, but tailored a little more to Guernsey;
- take 11 talented dancers and 11 of their complete opposites
- put them together in pairs (one who can, one who can’t)
- then give them 2 mind blowing dance routines
- with only 3 months to learn them in
- and wait until the end of April to see them either triumph or perish in front of a full house, at Beau Sejour leisure centre.
And so the countdown begins.
Saturday 24 Jan 2009
James and Claire Taplin are professional dance teachers from the UK who visit Guernsey regularly and are great supporters of GADA.
This weekend, they are taking all 22 contestants through their steps (1 group dance, of 5 participating couples, and 1 solo performance per pair).
My partner is Lyndsey Bromley – almost everyone tells me what a hard taskmaster she is, which is a good thing if I am to get anywhere.
Our allotted one and a half hours are under the tutorage of James today, who takes us through the Viennese Waltz. Very, very slowly – for my benefit. It looks massively complicated and I panic quietly to myself – how the hell am I EVER going to learn these steps, let alone in 3 months. Hopefully the taskmaster bit is true.
Worse is to come, though.
Sunday 25 Jan 2009
If I was concerned about the Viennese Waltz yesterday, I’m not anymore. Easy. Piece of cake.
Because I’ve just had one and a half hours with Claire, who has taken myself and Lyndsey through the extraordinary moves of the Jive (which we will need to perform on our own, in front of an expectant audience – the Viennese Waltz will feature 5 couples on the floor at once, all trying to keep out of each other’s way, which shouldn’t be so bad.
There’s some comfort in numbers. Out on our own, though – that’s a different story).
Now I am really panicking. Because when I say I can’t dance, I REALLY mean that I can’t dance. At all. Just the shuffle-your-feet-awkwardly kind of dancing towards the end of a Ball, when enough alcohol has weakened the senses and the wife persuades you to glide her not so gracefully across the generally over crowded dance floor.
Only time will tell whether there are enough practise hours in the day to make any difference to my two left feet.
I hope so.
It’s going to be a busy 3 months.
Not sure when Part 2 will be. I’ll let you know.
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
Leave a Comment