An anthropology professor performs an experiment with her classes every semester. She tells them that there is a "witch" in the class. This witch might be male or female, and is secretly the cause of all of their troubles. If they stubbed their toe, it was because the witch cursed them to do so. She then asks the students to write down who they think would be the witch. Since this is done in a large lecture class where students don't necessarily know their classmates, she has each student stand up, one by one, and say their name. One can expect that none of the students actually believe in that kind of witchcraft, and they have very little information available to make this decision. They have physical characteristics: appearance, dress, voice. And they have each person's name and place where they are sitting.
I would have expected that any pattern that emerged would point to the students who stood out, by appearance or speech, as being "outsiders." A lone Boston accent in the Midwest. Or the safety pin punk. It turns out that her students do overwhelmingly identify a specific kind of student as "the witch," but not by appearance. It's the students who sit within the "T" in a classroom: across the front row, and down the center. Those students are the outsiders.
On my first day of ballroom dance lessons, the leads and follows arranged themselves in rows on opposite sides of the room. I chose the front row because either a) I would pretty much already know the steps, in which case I might as well be seen doing it, or b) I needed to learn the steps, in which case I wanted the best view of the instructor. There was one woman who seemed to always be a little further forward than the rest, and so I used her position as the line where the front row should start, and I assumed that the other women were just sort of lagging back a little.
I later learned that the instructor had a pair of assistants, advanced students who could model the steps for the class, so that no matter whose part the instructor was demonstrating at the time, there would be at least one person modeling each part. That girl I was standing next to wasn't the front line, she was in front of the front line. Or rather, she was supposed to be. So, rather than just showing confidence or eagerness to learn, I was apparently also announcing that I thought I was helping teach the class. Oops. I might as well have worn a black pointy hat and a sign on my back saying "burn me."
So now, I hang back a little further. But I'm still the witch. I want a good view, and I don't really care what it looks like. Or rather, I care what it looks like, I just don't care if anyone likes me. I make sure to dance with the instructor after class.
(Which is, actually, what I'd meant to talk about in the first place.)
The thing is, these ballroom dance lessons are ridiculously easy. I may have only learned how to rumba a week or two ago, but a rock-step-outside pivot turn is the same step whether it's followed by a cha-cha-cha or just a step-and-hold. It's the same step in salsa, and mambo, and rumba, and cha-cha, and nightclub 2-step, and even if I didn't already know two of those five, we learned all of them in class. So when the instructor asks, after we've done a few steps in tango, if I've done this before, I'm not sure how to answer.
I think I learned in college that a basic American tango is one two three four five six seven eight, and the basic step (for the follow) is back, back, back-side-together. I doubt I've been taught anything more than that, but all I have to do is keep that rhythm and follow where I'm lead. So I step on one three five six seven and go wherever he puts me. If we were getting into the specifics of the hold and the steps, the line of the legs, the angle of my feet when they hit the floor, that's not the same. I don't know that. But all we're learning is one, three, five, six, seven. And I don't know how to answer his question. I've taken maybe two hours of tango lessons for a PE class in college. But I've been learning choreography since I was 9, and I learned how to hold a frame when I was 23. So I look at him and say, "um, sort of?"
I have the same problem when people ask me how long I've been swing dancing. Here's the timeline:
13 years old: I learn a basic east coast, triple-step, triple-step, rock-step, as choreography only (no actual lead-follow communication). I learn a basic solo Charleston. I don't actually do anything besides learn them once.
18-21 years old: I learn some turns in east coast, with an understanding that I am following a lead, but no real understanding of frame. I go dancing once a month. I take two lessons in lindy hop while on vacation, fail miserably (no frame yet), and forget.
23-24 years old: I take real lindy hop lessons, actually learn how to hold a frame. I don't go out dancing, but I take lessons once a week for maybe 6 months, maybe a year or so. Then I mostly stop.
27 years old: I join the U Iowa swing club, and for a year I manage to go to lessons once a week. I go to a few dances during that year, probably not more than 5.
28-31 years old: My schedule gets in the way, so I quit the club. I still occasionally go to events.
I could pick any of those ages and say, without lying, that I've been dancing since then. But I'm not really telling the truth, either. Usually I give a helpless shrug and say, "I don't know."
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