TAPPING INTO NEW HABITS
I have been trying to improve my character for almost all my adult life, and I think I’ve come as far as I can go. I am not saying perfection has been reached – far from it – but the thrill of legislating each New Year’s Eve for how noble I must be; listing all the things I shouldn’t eat or wear or feel; how much I should achieve and how quickly… It was beginning to wear a bit thin. If it were another person asking this of me, I might take legal action – a period of hard sulking would ensue at the very least. Would the world crack open if we decided we might be good enough as we are? It seems unlikely.
So I’ve decided to think of all the things that make me smile and shoehorn as many as I can into my days. Maybe I want regular lemon meringue eclairs in my life, to spend more time with my best friend, or make more trips to the flower market. To this end, I have already started tap dancing again, something I loved when I was little. It’s been a long time since I heard a sentence better than ‘You will learn and experiment with classic American steps including paddle-and-rolls, flaps, riffs and ripples.’
I went to my first lesson as a grown-up in an adult education centre near Covent Garden. I wore a flowery dress – I couldn’t see the fun in gym clothes. I found 26 women and two men limbering up in a mirror-lined room. I practised a few steps in a corner, nervously.
Dancing as a child gave me so much strength, physically and emotionally. It’s pretty much impossible to worry when you’re mastering the step ball-change pick-up toe-hop. After ten minutes of doing it again, I felt that gorgeous, familiar sensation of looseness in my ankles.
Soon, I was trying to think with my feet – an odd idea, but if you tend to overanalyse in life, switching off your head now and then is essential. As the lesson progressed, I told myself it didn’t matter how well I danced, so long as I enjoyed it. When it got difficult, I allowed myself to do some of the steps approximately; if I made the right sounds and waved my palms jauntily, where was the harm? I was happy to muddle through. The feelings of elation I remembered from childhood soon came flooding back, my cheeks and arms and even my ears in the dance-studio mirrors radish-pink with joy. Susie is a contributing editor at ELLE