The close up activity of dancing still a long way off
3 months into the ‘new year’ and the country remains firmly in the grip of Covid-19 restrictions. Since the pandemic started (March 2020), we’ve heard a lot about ‘essential workers’ and ‘essential services’. When compared to life and death scenarios, recreational activity is well down the pecking order, and I suppose, understandably so. And, at the same time, there’s the mental health argument about the importance of ‘simple pleasures’.
One such simple pleasure for a great many people is dancing, or more specifically, what’s better known as ‘social dancing’. Those few hours on a Friday or Saturday night, represented ‘celebration time’, when cares and worries were set aside. Dances brought out singletons, couples, friends, work colleagues and so many in between. Ironically enough, pre-Covid, the dance scene was in great shape, with the region’s venues playing host to bumper crowds on a regular basis.
THE BUSINESS SIDE OF DANCING
Pre-Covid, dancing was also a serious business that benefitted owners of venues, bands and musicians, promoters, drinks companies, taxi operators, etc. All that, and the associated revenue is gone for now and it seems, the immediate future.
THE SOCIAL SIDE OF DANCING
In the absence of any scientific proof, it’s still safe to assume dancing benefits body and mind - 3 hours plus on a dance floor must surely be on a par with a conventional gym-centred work out.
Regarding the mind, the likes of Big Tom and his ‘Four Country Roads’, always gave people a sense of mental direction and left them feeling good about themselves.
DANCING - SPANNING THE GENERATIONS
While the older generation frequently adopt a nostalgic approach to the past, it’s still undisputable, they’re better schooled in the art of convential dancing - this is very evident at social events such as weddings, when mature couples gracefully ease around a ballroom, while their offspring and those many years their junior, engage in what can be best described as a combination of zig-zagging and foot shuffling. An unimpressed veteran dancer, who prided himself on his foxtrot skills, once said that they (younger dancers) looked like new born calves attempting to stand!
ROOM FOR EVERYONE
At full tilt, social dancing has a myriad of characters, the aforementioned ‘veteran dancer’ (this individual, for all his dancing craft is usually single, country dwelling and comfortably well off); ‘laser man’ (laser man, will have a dancefloor scanned within seconds and a list of ‘targets’ identified; ‘ leaning tower man’ (again, a male with some balance and stability issues); ‘devoted couples’ (who are generally very good dancers, but never look like they’re really enjoying themselves); ‘ the two friends’ (always women, who have the fallback plan of dancing with each other, in the absence of suitable partners); Duracell bunnies (members of the fairer sex, possessing endless stamina, who out of generosity will accommodate even the likes of ‘laser man’ and ‘leaning tower man’. And so on, and so on...
LOTS OF STEPS BEFORE DANCING RESUMES
It will be many months, not many weeks, before dedicated waltzers get to sweep their partners around the floor. Those of a pessimistic mindset argue that ‘things will never be the same’.
That’s a bit too downbeat; dancers and dancing has been around for a long time - one of our most ancient rituals, it has overcome plagues and pestilence, given time, it will also overcome Covid- 19 and its many variants.