Learning the Steps

Trying something new, together, one imperfect step at a time. 

My wife loves to dance. She feels everything fully, and when music hits her, it travels straight through her body. Movement comes naturally to her.

I’ve always carried a broader and deeper appreciation for music than she does. It moves me emotionally, sometimes powerfully, but that energy rarely makes it past my chest. I’m not a dancer. More to the point, I’m not someone who enjoys feeling awkward, and without the right music, that’s exactly how I feel when pushed to dance.

So imagine her surprise when I signed us up for dance lessons. Between the two of us, I think I was at least as surprised as she was. I dreaded looking like a fool in a room full of Fred Astaire hopefuls. But Marilyn does a lot for me, and I figured the least I could do was give this a real try. So I booked a couple of lessons.

It didn’t take long to discover that neither of us knew how to handle structured dances such as the waltz, the swing, or the foxtrot. I can manage a two step only because nearly everything you need to know about the two step is in the name itself.

We approach learning in completely different ways. I start with the intellectual side. The waltz, I learned, is built on a three count. ONE-two-three. ONE-two-three. It’s what you dance when the music is in three quarter time. A swing, on the other hand, is for songs in four quarter time. ONE-two-THREE-four. Or sometimes just ONE-two-three-four. Most popular music lives there.

Alright, I think, that actually makes sense.

As I dig a little deeper, it turns out we’re wired to move differently depending on the beat. With three quarter time, our bodies tend to turn. With four quarter time, we want to march. It’s physiological. We walk with two legs: LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT-RIGHT and back to LEFT. But with a waltz, you repeat after three steps. LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT, then start again. That means stepping twice in a row with the same foot, which naturally creates a sense of rotation. A box step hides that a bit by tracing a square, but you still feel the difference.

Then I think, maybe I really am starting to understand this dance thing.

Marilyn’s approach is simpler. She listens. She feels the music and moves.

There’s no mystery about which of us is the more comfortable dancer.

We learn differently, and dancing makes that plain. I start with why something works. Once I understand the structure, I can relax into it. Marilyn jumps in without worrying about any of that. She trusts her body to find the shape of the song.

Somewhere in all this, we meet in the middle. Our dancing is far from pretty, and Marilyn may be considering steel toed shoes, but we’re having fun. There’s something satisfying about learning a new skill side by side, even when we come at it from such different angles.

We had a disagreement before one of our recent lessons. Nothing dramatic, but enough friction to put some distance between us as we walked into the studio.

Then the music started, and we went back to stumbling through steps we barely understood. Somewhere in the effort to coordinate our feet and keep track of the count, the tension eased. We found each other again in the quiet work of trying something new together. And I was reminded why I signed us up in the first place.

It wasn’t really about learning to dance, although maybe that will happen if I live long enough.

It was about finding connection in the space between our differences.

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