A Foot Apart

That’s how we had to dance when we were kids – not like teenagers these days . . .

AHUNDRED and twenty young people between the ages of sixteen and nineteen were due to arrive at the theatre that morning, and already they were beginning to flood in from the coaches that stood in the car park.

They were loud and exuberant – typical teens on a day out of college.

“Where do we go?” a tall, beautiful girl called out.

They’re all so tall these days. There didn’t seem to be one among them who wasn’t taller than me, male or female.

“East Arlan College?” I called back.

There was a chorus of assent.

“Leave your bags and stuff in that room there,” I called, pointing across the foyer.

It was Dance Off Day

– an annual event at which Performance and Dance students from colleges across the county compete.

I am the woman who manages the place – a medium-sized regional theatre that puts on everything from tribute bands to kids’ shows, and from pantos to conferences. I take all comers and I try to make it work.

One of the teachers from another college hurried in ahead of his cohort.

“Oh, is it Mrs Richardson?” he said with a laugh. “Didn’t you used to be –”

“A teacher, yes,” I interrupted. “I think I taught you, Jason . . . Masters?”

“Marsden. You did. And you were good at it, so I ended up in the trade, so to speak. I teach Dance and Drama now at Haston FE College.”

“Well done,” I replied. “I think.”

My tone was ironic because behind him was coming a wave of humanity. There were probably only 30 of them, but they had the appearance of a ravaging horde, pushing through the swing doors and all talking at once.

“Stop!” Jason yelled. “This is the theatre’s . . .” He looked enquiringly at me and my ID lanyard.

“The theatre general manager,” I said loudly in my best ex-teacher voice. “Use that room on the right.”

“You’re the woman in charge, then?” Jason asked.

I nodded.

“For my sins. Actually I love this annual dance show-down.”

The day began as it always did, trying to get each dance group on stage and rehearsed, their lighting and other tech needs noted and practised. The show would begin the same evening.

As usual, someone had got stuck on the winding road that leads to the theatre. We’re a rural area of Wales and the colleges have to trek in from considerable distances.

So we were lacking one troupe, but we had to crack on. First up were six athletic hip-hop dancers. They were good, and they had clearly worked hard.

I love watching any dancing, and in nearly 30 years of work I’ve seen the styles come and go. But the current fashion was so very tactile. The amount of flesh on show was equalled only by the amount of skin-to-skin contact that these dancers used.

I didn’t object. It was just that I felt a little sad that so little was left to the imagination in so many of the dances.

The hip-hop team finally dropped each other.

“OK?” the same tall, beautiful girl from earlier said.

She was panting and sweating, and still had her bare arms entwined with those of a muscular boy.

“Yup,” I said, and peered into the

darkness at the back of the auditorium. “Mike? Everything OK with that one?”

A faint shout of agreement came back from the lighting guy.

“Thanks,” I said to the group. “Can you send the next team in?”

As the girl slid out of the boy’s grasp, I smiled.

“We had to dance twelve inches apart,” I said, almost to myself.

“Sorry?” the boy said. “Did you say –”

“A foot,” I said. “Yes, really. In the town where I lived that was the rule at a dance.”

The group blinked at me. They looked utterly amazed as they filed off the stage.

The morning went on, as messy and fun as usual. I adore kids of that age – so full of promise, their minds as sharp as their moves.

The last coach finally arrived, and its passengers burst into the foyer even more enthusiastically than the ones before them, because they were late.

“Oh my goodness. Iestyn Lewis!”

My breath was knocked out of me as I saw him come in. It was definitely him, a figure from so long ago, waving a long arm to try to gather the students into some sort of order. He hadn’t heard me or seen me.

“Iestyn,” I breathed, and in that moment I was back at a party in the late Seventies with him, in the dying days of our stilted, foot-apart dances, the grown-ups standing round the walls.

I had known then that Iestyn and I had something; we both loved to dance and there was a spark between us. But soon after that he had moved away – his father’s job, I think.

“Jessica Jones!” He had reached where I stood and looked down at me.

Iestyn was always the tallest of the lads where I grew up.

“I had no idea you worked here,” he said.

“I had no idea you were a teacher!” I returned. “We haven’t set eyes on each other for years! Dance teacher?”

“Dance?” he said with a laugh. “Not me! History.”

Our eyes met, just for a second, and I was pretty sure that we were both remembering those heady days of the youth club and the dancing, and the number of inches between us.

“I teach on the other side of the county,” he said. “Too far to come here, or I’d have spotted you before, Jessica.”

He was dragged away by his group, and a much younger teacher came in with a straggler from Iestyn’s coach.

We chatted for a minute or so as the skinny boy waited, impatient to join his friends but unsure where to go.

“I’m an old friend of Iestyn’s. We used to dance together,” I told the young teacher. “It’s probably cheeky of me to ask, but did he ever marry?”

“I don’t believe so,” she replied.

“Me, neither,” I murmured.

“I know how invaluable he is to the college,” the teacher continued. “He’s one of those dedicated teachers – old-fashioned, I suppose you’d say, but who give so much.”

A few of the students had come out of the dressing room to find their straggler friend, and they stood nearby, waiting for a gap so they could grab him.

There is always an odd kind of limbo between the long day of rehearsal and the actual show. Everybody is tired but keyed up.

The tech guys had finally confirmed that they were happy with the stage changes for each group. The students went far too early to get dressed up for the performance, and came to sit out in the auditorium, soaking up the atmosphere while pretending to be bored.

When I say “dressed up”, I do, of course, mean the opposite. There were a few contemporary ballet pieces on the programme that were quite restrained, but in the main the pieces were highly tactile.

I knew that the style came from pop videos, in which the showing of flesh is the watchword.

I tried not to feel regret – I was running a theatre and I’d be an idiot to be prudish – but I couldn’t help recalling my own youth and the very different pleasures of dancing.

To make them laugh, and also because Iestyn was there, I got Mike to play over the PA Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”.

The kids hummed to it, but lounged in the front few rows.

“Come on, Jessica Jones.”

I heard the voice from behind me, and Iestyn walked out into the area in front of the orchestra pit.

“Dance with me,” he said.

“Well, I don’t know,” I said, but I knew I would.

Watching the students dance had made me long to do the same, and here in front of me was the lad who had made every hair on the back of my neck stand up, evening after evening, when I was seventeen.

“A foot apart!” one of the kids I’d spoken to earlier yelled. “Anybody got a ruler?”

“You don’t think we actually obeyed that all the time, do you?” Iestyn joked, looking round at them, a twinkle in his eye.

I was opposite him, and my body was already moving to the music, my feet moving back and forth, my arms going up into a curve.

He took my hand in his, and placed his other hand carefully on the small of my back.

The kids whooped, but only briefly, and then they watched. It’s a song that draws you in, that Marvin Gaye number. Its beat is slow, but not too slow for dancing, if you get it right.

Gradually, our old rhythms returned to us, and we danced.

I looked at Iestyn and felt the old longing, and the old electricity waiting in the wires.

He was as good looking as ever, with sharp cheekbones, a faint and tantalising smile, and upper arm muscles visible beneath the shirt.

His dark eyes narrowed when he concentrated. I remembered how they used to do that and I felt the attraction again.

We kept those twelve inches between us. I think both of us were proving to the kids, with all their glossy flesh and their barely there shorts, that we had it, too.

But then, after the second chorus, he pulled me to him suddenly.

I could hear a collective gasp from the students. I gasped, too, and my lips parted with the surprise of it: the contact, and the heat.

My head fell back and I felt a shock wave go through me, but my body continued to move in harmony with his.

“If you’ve stayed a foot apart,” he said quietly as we danced, his cheek so close to mine that I felt the fine stubble brush the air, “the touch is more electric.”

“That’s what I’ve always thought,” I replied with a smile.

A hundred and twenty students put on an amazing show that night, and I loved every minute of it. But the only dance that they talked about in the foyer afterwards was ours.

Last week Iestyn Lewis e-mailed me at my work address and suggested a coffee.

I think I’ll go. n

The morning went on, as messy and fun as usual