It’s like high school all over again. Your eyes meet the back of their body across a crowded room and you feel your face flush just a little more than being sweaty from dancing usually makes it. Cause, seriously, my goodness can they ever move their body. They just look and feel so damn good to dance with!
Then they catch you watching, and you flush even more. You think to yourself “I just became that creepy person on the side of the room staring intensely at the object of my admiration”. You memorize exactly how long ago you asked them to dance, and how long it will be before you can reasonably ask them again. Then worry if you’re being just a little too intense for comfort. I mean, what if they don’t actually want to dance with you? What if they think your dances are boring, or if you’re not a good enough dancer?
Usually, it’s not all these thoughts at once. They’re also a lot less ‘intense’ than writing makes it out to be! However, there is a certain level of star-struckness that we inflict on the objects of our dance-affection.
I’ve had a few of these. I had one particularly bad dance crush that lasted for two years. I guess I still technically have a dance crush on that person, except now they’re about 300x less intimidating than back when I started dancing. It started when I watched him dance with another person. I determined then and there that it was completely unfair that a man should have better command of his hips than most of the women in the room. I think I secretly hoped he was gay for a while just to justify that fact…
Then I danced with him, and to newbie-dancer me… it was a disaster. He was almost an inhumanly good lead in then-me’s mind, but my nervousness and newness combined turned into a minefield of missed steps and off-time spins. I may have actually stepped on his foot as well, but I think I tried to block that memory out. It was traumatizing, but I sooooo badly wanted to do it again. I started Facebook stalking his statuses to find out what events he was going to (let’s be real – we all do this to our favourite dancers) so that I might be able to dance with him again.
This was the start of a two-year marathon of very awkward dance-related mistakes in my mind. It’s not that I only made mistakes when dancing with him; it just seemed so much worse because I really wanted to be able to keep up with him. He had a lot of extra years of dance experience on my measly 1 year, so I probably shouldn’t have felt so inadequate, but I did. That awkwardness on the dance floor translated into verbal communication as well. My sporadic shyness kicked in, and the most I could muster were some very very awkward, short conversations which I thought he sought to remove himself from as quickly as possible.
Fast forward three years. I’m a better dancer now, through lots of hard work. He’s also a better dancer, but I don’t notice the skill gap nearly as much as I used to. We actually talk now, on occasion. Even better: he actually asks me to dance. Maybe it’s because I don’t stalk him every dance so he actually has a chance to ask me before I come hunt him down, or maybe it’s because he actually enjoys dancing with me more now. It could also be that my presence at salsa is now more scarce, so I suddenly became novel again. It’s likely a combination of all of the above. He’s still totally one of my favourite leads, but I don’t freak out anymore when we dance. I think I’d occasionally even smile!
Best thing of all, I don’t think he ever really noticed how I would watch him just a little too much across the dance floor. Either that, or he has the lovely grace to *not* inform me and make me feel like a total idiot. If it is that, I hope he continues to do so, because I think he’s a pretty cool person and would like to cultivate the friendliness that we now have rather than return to incredible awkwardness.
Somewhere in this time that I’ve grown out of that awkward dance crush, another interesting thing happened. A few people confessed they had developed dance crushes on me. Suddenly, I was the intimidating dancer to someone just starting out. My first response was say wah? I don’t think of myself as intimidating. Somehow, though, after going through my own debilitating dance crush, it makes it so much more flattering and so much easier to understand what it feels like to be the other person (whether I deserve the admiration or not is an entirely different matter!).
To those suffering from a serious dance crush: it can develop into a good friendship. Also, unless you tell them, the object of your dance affection probably doesn’t actually notice… unless you go a little overboard in your pursuit. This is a post about dance crushes, not dance-stalking. (BIG difference. I’m guilty of both, especially in the early days.) If it’s a dance crush, I personally get super flattered and do an internal happy-dance. Who doesn’t like to be admired?
One, I must know who.
Two, I know what you mean re. the shock of people responding to you. Ppl think that I was born dancing; that I never had to learn.
Nice write ups L! I’m enjoying them!