I'm fairly good at dancing around an uncomfortable topic.

Thinking further, it was a waltz, not a tango.

Well, as long as we're summarizing our dance achievements, I took:

11 years of tap
7 years of jazz
3 years of ballet (not counting the pre-ballet I took as a wee one)

You'd never know it to see me dance though :rolleyes:

And of course I can do basic east coast swing (jitterbug)

I'd love to go back to tap and maybe jazz, but ballet is probably permanently out due to a weird foot injury (to this day I don't know how it happened) that prevents me from fully pointing my left foot. So no more pointe shoes for me (oh...darn.) Odd thing is, I didn't do it dancing, I'd stopped dancing years before the injury.

14 years of tap, and I forget how many of ballet. Ballet I was never very good at due to some mishap in the way my hips were formed (except for jumps - I was an AWESOME jumper). But I was a pretty darn good tapper. The only photos of me on Facebook are old dance class photos. (I'm tagged in one, and fortunately not tagged in the other)

This is the only picture I currently have digitized that shows me as a dancer, taken just after a recital one year. (Some of you may recognize my friend Sari in the pic, and Cherny might remember my niece Jenny.)

I have some of the dance "portraits" around somewhere, but those are always pretty silly poses, not sure I wanna digitize those, LOL.



(scary thing is, I have approximately the same haircut now. Why does it seem to look better now than it did then?)

Did someone say dance?

Another option for a dance swanking could be at Paseo Colorado in the summer. The past two years they've had free swing dances with live bands on Friday nights. They always got huge crowds so I'd expect them to do it again this summer but I haven't heard yet. PBDA gave a quick lesson before the band played. And there are lots of restaurants right there.

Except for a disastrous attempt at tap (thanks to my mother) when I was five or six all my dance experience has been in the past nine years: East Coast swing (jitterbug), Lindy Hop, West Coast Swing, a touch of Polka, a failed attempt at Viennese waltz, Hustle, and a little bit of Shag. Right now I'm concentrating on Balboa. I found a video of my instructors somewhere. I'll have to find it and post a link. They're so good.

All right - Morrigoon was brave, so here are the only photos I have in digital form:

I did Ballet for 13 years, tap for 4, jazz for 2 and baton for 1. As an adult, I took ballet again for another year and started immediately back on toe. That wasn't fun.

I did jazz for 15, tap for 12, gymnastics for four, and ballet for six years.

The last four of those tap years were private lessons by the late Maceo Anderson, and under his choreography, I also used to dance on rare occasion with another student of his at the time - Van "The Man" Porter. Maceo was an awesome inspiration and incredible man. During my student years, and a few after he stopped teaching for awhile, he became a very close family friend, and even spent a couple Thanksgivings with us. I fondly remember his dog Tippy, that he'd let me walk as a way to "warm up" before lessons. I hated mundane exercise, so I think that was a bit of a trick to make me walk quickly, since Tippy was a rather large and strong dog with an even larger state of energy. I also remember when my dad helped rebuild the front-end of his studio when a racist vandal threw a brick through the large window right before I showed up for a lesson. I remember Maceo sitting there, saddened, with the cinderblock pieces and the glass strewn everywhere upon our arrival. That was my first firsthand experience at racial bigotry, and it angered me something fierce.

And now, after a 16 year hiatus, I have re-entered the world of jazz, and will soon resume ballet and dabble in ballroom. When Maceo died, my desire to ever pick up tap again kinda went with him, because I don't think any instructor could surpass him.

I'll have to rummage through our old family photo albums and see what I can find that is worth scanning and sharing.

Here's Laura and Jeremy dancing Balboa. I've been taking their classes.

This one's just for fun.