Some people don’t like to dance. I’m not one of these people; I happen to love to dance. My father, however, is one of the anti-happy feet people. In 21 years of aquaintanceship with the man, I have seen him perform one dance move: the monkey. (You know, that ‘60s dance tangentially related to both the pony and the mashed potatoes?) I’ve seen my dad do the monkey to appropriate songs (“Land of a Thousand Dances”), inappropriate songs (“Every Day is a Winding Road”) and bizarre songs (“Jeremy”). I didn’t go to the father-daughter dances in high school, and it was decided many years ago that at my wedding, instead of the traditional father-daughter waltz or father-daughter box step, my father and I would do a slow and poignant monkey to “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”
However, my genetic heritage is neither here nor there. The point is that I like to dance and have always scoffed at those who didn’t. “I don’t know how!” they wailed as I dragged them out onto the floor. “I’m tired, I don’t have hips and did I mention I’m straight? I’m not drunk enough yet!” they yelped as their feet scrabbled against the dance floor. “Next time, please, I promise, next time … please don’t make me dance!”
I always chalked this reluctance up to sheer laziness. I mean, dancing was a formal part of the curriculum in every school I ever attended before Georgetown: square dancing in elementary school, line dancing in junior high and social dance in high school. We learned the pattycake polka, the Virginia Reel, the Electric Slide, the grapevine, the box step and the Cha-cha. I know we definitely learned the tango at some point, but I forgot how to do it. So as far as I’m concerned it’s not a necessary dance.
I guess I thought that if a natural-born two-left-foot klutz like myself could effectively be trained to shake it?and to like it?then dancing is something that everyone can do, and it’s just a matter of puting your mind to it. If you can clap, if you can count one-two then you can dance, to anything. You just have to want to.
Oh, how wrong, wrong, wrong I was. My phone rang the other day and the voice on the other end sent my smug theories about dancing spiraling to hell: “Friends of SAS practice. Sunday. Be there.”
SAS, to the uninitiated, is the South Asian Society. The South Asian Society puts on a little production every year they call “Rangila.” “Rangila” is a celebration of South Asian culture in song, dance and costume. It’s always fun, and one of the highlights is the “Friends of SAS” dance, when the non-South Asian friends of SAS members band together and attempt to perform a bhangra, a traditional dance with a pounding beat that travels like a current over your skin and through your bones.
Of course, I’m assuming that it does, I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried to dance to the stuff. I’m afraid. It’s not my type of dancing. However, I promised my roommate sophomore year that I would be a friend of SAS our senior year, and the day of reckoning has arrived.
“It’s gonna be great, Jen”
“But, but … I don’t know how!”
Now this is all true. The bhangra is scary! I have no idea even where to begin to correctly dance this, and nothing in my training has prepared me to do it on a stage before an audience of my peers. I can’t even describe what it looks like.
“You know, it’s just a lot of arm shakin’, a lot of shoulder shakin’ … it’s just a high-energy, really fun dance. It’s very intuitive. You’ll get it right away.”
I feel as though I should apologize to my father. The idea of dancing the bhangra has thrown me into a cold sweat. I don’t know how; I won’t be drunk; I’m straight.
“Jen, I don’t want to hear it. Sunday. You promised. You’re gonna do it.”
And so Sunday I’ll show up in the practice room, knees knocking and cold sweat beading on my brow. I’ll look around and make a mental note of all the nearest exits. And I’ll think of my father, and I’ll think of all of the people I’ve ever dragged onto the floor. And I’ll wish, in some small way, that I hadn’t made fun of the monkey.
