I Love Dancing

I love dancing

Today I found out that my family doesn’t know exactly how much, they might not have even known that I loved it to begin with; it’s funny because I consider it as much a part of me as anything else. I’m not sure exactly when I realized I loved dancing, but it probably started with drunk nights out; then junior year (I think) of college I took a one credit ballroom dance class where me and my partner Jana placed in all the dances for the end of the semester “competition”; when I studied abroad in Argentina we took a day or two of tango classes, but it wasn’t until I moved to Costa Rica that I started to realize my love it.

In Costa Rica one of the other English teachers at the language school I worked at loved dancing and took classes, when I started making some money (only about $450 a month) I started taking them where she went and on Thursdays went with her to a dance club in town for social dancing.  Costa Rica is in Latin America, so I learned the foundations of salsa, bachata, merengue and cumbia. I remember the first and second time being extremely intimated, I didn’t leave my seat once. Well, maybe to do go the bathroom. To me everyone there seemed like a professional, how could I go up to a girl and ask her to dance when I knew nothing. {Side note:socially dancing at dance clubs is very different than dancing at a club club, at dance clubs you share a dance with a partner for a song or two and then dance with someone else, there’s no sexual intention or motives behind it, unlike at a club club when you go up to a girl to dance with an underlying intention behind it.} Something you realize and one of the hardest things to overcome is that, when standing on the outside of a dance floor it’s easy to be locked in a fear that once you’re on it, everybody will be looking at you; until you actually get out there, everyone else fades away, the crowd doesn’t matter, nobody is standing there judging you and if they are, it’s on them. Once you overcome this initial fear, that seems to always be with you at the beginning, you start having fun and enjoy dancing.

Eventually I left Costa Rica and moved to Spain. My first year in Tomelloso I continued my drunk dancing on weekends with no further formal instruction and my second and third year in Jerez again continued the same way. However, two of the elementary school teachers (Javier and Paula) I worked with in Jerez were really into dancing; Paula invited me to go with her and friends to a dance club one night, which is where I discovered a love for Kizomba, an Angolan dance. I hoped it would turn into a thing as she danced regularly, but sadly it did not. After that I found out Javier, one of the teachers I worked with in 5th and 6th grade taught Kizomba and Latin Dances! But lessons were on Thursday’s from 21:00-22:30 and were about a 25 minute bike ride away.  Also class started at 8:05 am on Fridays, my longest days. I couldn’t do it, something I now regret. So, sadly my time in Jerez also passed without anymore instruction in Latin dance.

Now you would think that if I didn’t further my knowledge of dance in Spain there’s no way I would in Korea and you would have been right, if it weren’t for the April intake of new teachers,  a suggestion to go to the beach in May and the decision to buy a car. That fateful day at the beach I met Sarah, who was friends with Mikhala, one of the new teachers in Boseong and one of the people who said they’d go to the beach. Sarah’s passion in life is dance, she’s been dancing for 15 years and instructing for a few less. We got to know each other a bit at the beach and decided that we’d meet on Thursdays to dance; she would teach us what she knew and what she could remember. With my newly purchased car, it made the impossible possible as she lives a 25 minute drive and an even longer bus whose night route ends at the time I would have been able to get there.

Fast forward to a few Thursday meetings later and this past weekend, my inspiration for this blog post. Sarah, Nicole (another Thursday dance class friend) and I went to Busan for the Busan Salsa and Bachata festival. I didn’t know things like this existed, but Sarah has gone to a plethora of them between the US, Canada and Cuba. When back in July she told us about it, I knew I wanted to go. I couldn’t pass up on an opportunity that so many times escaped me. The festival was three days of non stop dancing and learning.  The way it worked was that each night there was a show and then after the show there was social dancing until 3, on Saturday and Sunday there were workshops starting at 1 until 6, with a choice of two every hour. We arrived Friday night after a 3.5 drive, checked in to the guesthouse, had dinner and then made our way to the festival hotel for the 10 o’clock show. It ended around 11:30pm and then we spent the rest of the night dancing until about 2. I was extremely nervous about dancing because I haven’t really danced like that in years and could only remember some basic stuff from my time taking lessons in Costa Rica and pretty much forgot everything we were doing with Sarah. I did some dancing with the two of them and eventually got over my nerves and danced with a couple people. I was happy, at least I didn’t go the whole night too scared to ask someone to dance.

The next day, Saturday was workshop day, with five hours of workshops I took classes in: mambo footwork, bachata sensual, bachata, Salsa on 2 and men’s styling. After, we went back to the guesthouse, Nicole and I napped, I tried not to move until dinner and then we went back to the hotel for the 9 o’clock show. The performances were exceptional because they were done by the dancers giving the workshops. After the show it was three more hours of social dancing! Again, like Friday night it took me some time to get over my nerves. I know I’m not that good and don’t know many moves so I feel bad that I can’t do more. In the dance world, the numbers of girls exceeds the amount of guys, so if girls want to dance they go up to guys and ask them. There was a point where I kept being asked to dance after just finishing, and while I’d love to say it’s because they saw how amazing I was, it’s safe to say that definitely wasn’t it. Every time I got asked I’d think to myself “didn’t they just watch me! Why would they want to dance with me” and I’d start off by saying “I don’t really know much bachata, I’m not that good,” or something along those lines. But, the only way to learn is to do, if you’re too scared to practice what you learned you won’t remember it, I’m glad they asked me and in the end it doesn’t matter how much you know, but that you’re having fun with what you know.

Waking up on Sunday I didn’t want to pack to leave, I just wanted to wait in the guesthouse until it was workshop time, but we had leave. I was tired, my legs were tired, yet I was excited for the workshops to come. I started the day at one with chacha musicality, musicality is interpreting the music, or styling; then chacha the next hour, I took a break the third hour because I couldn’t go on, the fourth hour I did salsa on 2 and the last workshop of the day was dominical bachata. The reason it’s called salsa on 2 because in the rest of the world salsa dances on the first beat, the 1, which is how I learned it and how I’ve danced it, but in Korea they dance on the 2. For me it was confusing and difficult to get because my feet wanted to do the other one. We left a Busan and the salsa and bachata with it at 18:30 arriving to their town of Beolgyo at 21:30. Exhausted, tired, sore and depleted of leg energy is how I felt until Wednesday. It was the most dancing I’ve ever done in my life, about 14 hours in a day and a half and so worth it.