I can only remember taking one dance class in my life. It was an Irish dance class, and I only took the lessons because my best friend in junior high school was really into Irish dance, and she looked so cool when she would practice in front of me. So, obviously, I wanted to look equally as cool. Unfortunately, it didn't quite work out and I quit before the recital, because the thought of going on stage with my skills was anything but appealing.
I didn't really know what to expect, but I knew it was probably a good idea to take some kind of dance lessons unless I wanted to subject my guests to watching Dustin and I slowly sway from side to side for three whole minutes. I used the amazing people at the International Affairs Center in our local Civic Center as a resource to help me research the possibilities in Nagaoka. We went with the cheapest option, but the minimum class size was 4. So, I recruited my boss and his fiancé, who are getting married a few weeks after us. They didn't really know how to slow dance either. We didn't exactly discuss what kind of dance we wanted to learn beforehand, but both couples agreed to bring in a CD of the songs to which we want to dance.
When we arrived for our first lesson, we were greeted by a tall, elegant man with perfect posture who glided towards us and dipped in a very un-Japanese bow to introduce himself. We exchanged names, and he wrote three out of the four of our names down; Kei, my boss's fiancé is Japanese, so her name was easy enough to commit to memory. He asked us what type of dance we wanted to learn: mambo, salsa, tango, foxtrot? Ummm... we all looked at each other bewildered. I asked Kei, "What is slow dancing called in Japanese?" She didn't know, but she told him something along the lines of, "We just want to learn some steps to dance to some slow songs at our weddings." He looked both confused and annoyed.
I handed over my CD. He put it on, and said, "This is very slow." So... he sped it up, and it didn't sound like the song to which I wanted to dance at all. But he started teaching us some steps. Luckily, dance terms are mostly in English, and the other words he used most frequently were words and phrases I've learned long ago: left, right, woman, man, you can do it. What we didn't understand, Kei attempted to translate, although she didn't always understand what he was saying in Japanese.
By the end of the first lesson, Dustin was ready to trade me in for a new dance partner, because I do not know the meaning of the word "follow." Try as hard as I may, I cannot help leading. I try to let my mind go blank and let him lead me around the dance floor, but at some point in the journey, I've become the one steering us forward. How do you learn not to lead?
We went back for 5 more dance lessons, one half hour session per week. Our instructor was amazed at our lack of progress. The second lesson was spent reviewing and trying to re-teach what was covered in the first lesson. The third lesson began with a new step, but we'd all forgotten the steps from the first two lessons, so he had to go over those again, and by that time, the lesson was over. The fourth and fifth lessons were much of the same, but he taught us a twirl right at the end of the fifth lesson.
For our last lesson, we spent 15 minutes re-learning the twirl and the steps we'd still never mastered from that first lesson. Then, our instructor looked at his hand (where he always had us foreigners' names written), and said, "Deena, you must teach something something something Dasuteen." I knew that I understood most of what he'd said. It was in Japanese, but I could have sworn I heard "feerings," which didn't sound very Japanese. I just stared at him with an expression of confusion. He then began slapping Dustin's shoulder and saying, "No, no, no." Dustin and I looked at each other, but neither of us understood what was going on. So, our instructor just began slapping Dustin more vigorously. At this point, I called Kei over to translate. She said, "Um, he wants you to teach Dustin about your feelings." Wah? We couldn't quite figure out what that means... but Dustin and I began to hold ourselves with more proper postures, and that seemed to satisfy him. I knew it would have taken many many years for me to teach Dustin about my feelings, and dance class was not the proper place to do it; trust me, I've been working on it for the past three, and we're still basically somewhere in the midst of lesson one.
It was sad to end our Japanese dance lessons. The saddest part was that we haven't really learned how to dance, and we'll be doing it so very soon. Hopefully, I'll have had enough champagne to take the edge off, and I won't be worrying about leading us into the nearest table full of guests. I might even be so giddy with the excitement of it all that I actually let Dustin lead for once. If you are at our wedding and you see Dustin whispering sweet nothings to me during our first dance, he's probably saying, "slow, slow, quick, quick, slow, slow, and corner, corner, slow, slow..."
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