SLOW, SLOW, QUICKQUICK…
Mary Killen’s not-so-routine romance
Googlebox star Mary Killen despairs that nobody dances together any more. In her inimitable style, she reveals what attracted her to her husband, Giles, and implores us all to seize our other halves and get out there...
It seems so recently that dancing was an established part of life – dancing with a partner, that is. We all knew the body chemistry that ensued was the one surefire way to establish whether or not you actually fancied someone. Why on earth have we let that vital tool of human strategy fall into desuetude?
The fact that partnered dancing is now an endangered activity hit home during the breakfast postmortem of a goddaughter’s 21st birthday party. ‘Yeah, we danced until about six,’ gurgled one of the young women at the table.
‘And were many romantic matches made?’ I asked. The young woman looked at me blankly. ‘In my day,’ I explained, ‘the whole point of a dance was that you partnered different men and then, once you were in their arms, smelling them and feeling the strength and timbre of their grip, you might suddenly realise you found them attractive. You wouldn’t have known that before you took to the dance floor.
‘Conversely, the most handsome man in the room might twirl you about and you’d realise... actually, I don’t fancy him after all.’
The women were enthralled by the idea. ‘We just dance opposite someone,’ they moaned, ‘or in a random group. No one our age knows how to do dancing with a partner, and none of us got with any boys last night.’
I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing – 150 young people, seven hours of dancing and no matches made?
I caught the tail end of partnered dancing while visiting Victorian hotels in Northern Ireland in the Seventies before I moved to London, where very few people
even knew how to jive. But my generation still knows how to move around a room in a waltz because we picked it up from our parents.
My husband, Giles, always has to be coaxed into it. But having passed grade seven piano and cello by the age of 12, he is more than adept at both partnered and stand-alone dancing because he is musical. Indeed, it was on the dance floor that I first became acquainted with his rhythmic prowess – most unexpected in the (then) Milky Bar Kid lookalike I’d previously dismissed as unfanciable because he was too wholesome for my (then) tastes in men.
Forget internet dating or Tinder, the sure way to detect compatibility is pinioned against someone else’s body – only vertically, rather than horizontally. I remember from my youth that, with your lips only inches apart, it takes just the most subtle of physical hints to indicate that you would not repel a full overture. And if the other person doesn’t respond, you can pretend it never happened.
Flirtatious dancing is best carried out in public. We’ve all heard about the Strictly Come Dancing curse, when the contestants spend eight hours a day together behind closed doors honing their partnership skills and the inevitable invariably results. Who can blame them for being confused by the ecstasy of moving in exquisite tandem with a dance partner, who might not – like a ski instructor no longer in Wengen but in Surbiton – make the transition to real life.
Strictly also illustrates the transforming qualities of dance – as Ed Balls demonstrated when he went from political bruiser to people’s champion by showing he didn’t mind making a fool of himself.
Dance halls seem to be a thing of the past, but classes are widely available in cities and a male colleague who went to them to try to meet a girlfriend claims men outnumber women in salsa and Ceroc classes. Surely these would be the first places for a newly single man or woman of any age to look for a new partner? The exercise would be beneficial and enjoyable, and to learn at the same speed as others of your own level would reduce humiliation.
Barn dancing, line dancing, Scottish dancing, whatever opportunities present themselves to us at whatever stage in life, I say seize them. Not just for the fun and the exercise, but to remind us why we thought our partners compatible in the first place.
Like a ski instructor no longer in Wengen but in Surbiton, a dance partner might not make the transition to real life