{"id":3828,"date":"2006-07-08T14:11:54","date_gmt":"2006-07-08T19:11:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2006\/07\/08\/dance-report-discretion-or-cowardice\/"},"modified":"2024-09-21T11:48:42","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T16:48:42","slug":"dance-report-discretion-or-cowardice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2006\/07\/08\/dance-report-discretion-or-cowardice\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance Report: Discretion&#8230;or Cowardice?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some of you have done an excellent job of feigning interest in our dancing adventures, and so I&#8217;m pleased to offer these observations from last night&#8217;s event.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;ve decided that the waltz is a worthless waste of time. For one thing, I&#8217;ve yet to hear a waltz that is really worth listening to on the dance floor, musically-speaking. Plus, everybody and their dog wants to waltz, meaning that it&#8217;s all elbows and big toes on the floor, with barely enough room to shuffle around. OK, that&#8217;s not the waltz&#8217;s fault, but I must hold someone or something responsible. [<em>Update &#8211; years later: Forget I ever wrote this; waltzes are wonderful.<\/em>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The band was amazing. It lived up to its name of &#8220;The Little Big Band,&#8221; as it had only two members, a man and a woman, but if there&#8217;s an instrument they couldn&#8217;t play, we didn&#8217;t miss it. She sang and played two keyboards simultaneously, one controlling loops and percussion and the other an electric piano. He also sang and played all the stringed instruments. I looked up at one point and he was simultaneously playing a violin and a harmonica.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>We totally spazzed out (a technical dance term, by the way) only once, when I inexplicably forgot how to foxtrot, which is akin to forgetting that breathing begins with an inhalation. <acronym title=\"My Lovely Bride\">MLB<\/acronym> slapped me back into consciousness and we stumbled back onto the dance floor from behind the column where we tried to disappear until we resumed some semblance of sanity. I&#8217;m pretty sure nobody noticed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Does anybody know the meaning of the word <em>payaso<\/em>? I&#8217;m pretty sure it&#8217;s a term of adulation, as I overheard two of the waiters use it in apparent reference to my footwork.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Remember <a title=\"From the Gazette archives\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2006\/07\/07\/tango-angst\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the amazing tango steps<\/a> we were intent on performing? We never got the chance. The first tango appeared right after we arrived, and we weren&#8217;t sufficiently warmed up (nor was the crowd of onlookers sufficiently inebriated). Then, the first tango turned out to be the last tango, although not in Paris <em>&lt;rimshot&gt;<\/em>. It was just as well. During one of the breaks, a couple did a tango exhibition and they were so amazing that I&#8217;m not sure anyone else in the room would have gotten out on the floor if another tango had been played.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>We <em>really<\/em> need some swing lessons. That&#8217;s next on the to-do list.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, it was a fun time, and we stayed almost until the very end. We also met and visited with some very nice folks. The Ballroom Dance Society is a great asset for west Texas and we enjoy our participation, even if we&#8217;re more like Fred and Wilma than Fred and Ginger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Discretion is the better part of valor. That&#8217;s my story and I&#8217;m sticking to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dancing-ballroom","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3828"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14293,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3828\/revisions\/14293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}