English Country-Dancing in Greenwich Village
A snowy Tuesday night, and I'm sitting on a bench in the gym of a Greenwich Village church basement, watching a couple waltz, sans music, across a basketball court. From the folding chair at my side, Stewart, a slight, kind man with his hair cropped close to his skull, talks about dance lessons and stares at me with unnerving sincerity. He speaks softly, breathlessly, and I almost lose his voice in the cavernous dance room. Everything's orange and red and yellow?the brick walls, the polished floors, the glare of lights reflected off wood. We're waiting for Metropolitan-Duane Church's weekly English country dance to begin, and Stewart tells me what to expect?friendly people, good music, emotionally relevant dances.
"These dances express a lot of human emotions," he says in his soft, self-conscious voice.
The couple waltzes by us, the woman twirling under the arm of a man with ponytailed white hair and a confident, unsmiling face. Stewart says country dancing removes certain boundaries from human interaction, and allows a degree of intimacy to develop between dance partners. He says the friendly atmosphere ensures everyone's comfort. The couple on the floor separates and moves to the edge of the gym. The woman approaches Stewart's chair and grabs her bag from under his legs.
"I'm not being fresh," she assures him, flashing a smile.
By 7, the fringes of the gym are filled with middle-aged dancers, slipping out of their coats and into thin leather shoes. Men stand in half-circles, shifting their weight, a thin watering of perspiration already developing on their foreheads. They're short, and their stomachs strain their button-down shirts. A woman with a carefully painted face and ankle-length skirt breezes by my bench, leaving a trail of heavy perfume. Everyone waits, skin tinted by fluorescent lights. When the caller?an older woman flipping through note cards and counting under her breath?takes the microphone, we move toward the center of the gym. A man my height and my father's age slips a hot, dry hand over my elbow and leads me to the front.
Couples line up Jane Austen-style in groups of four or six, facing their partners, women on one side, men on the other. I stand next to a woman with pearl earrings and thin lips who smells like Oil of Olay. When the pianist and violinist onstage begin the first song, dancers move in the choreographed steps that the music implies?crescendo means parade, legato means spin, staccato means skip. Men squeeze my hand or push my shoulder to guide me in the right direction.
"Turn left, Carolyn..." one says. "No, other left."
As a beginner, I'm incredibly conspicuous, not only to the men I dance with, but to all the couples in my group. With the exception of the final waltz, there are no two-person dances, only three- or four-couple dances, which means three or four couples' worth of people to watch me try and fail to weave a figure eight across the floor.
"Welcome. It's great to have new people," a woman whispers to me.
The self-consciousness of men with small voices and women who smell like wrinkle cream disappears on the dance floor. The painted-faced, ankle-length skirts move with professional briskness, chins jut up, lipsticked mouths pucker silently when I forgot my steps. Women flow around me with tolerant elegance, mouthing the next steps or waving me in the right direction. The men slide confidently across the basketball court. I watch them weave in and out of moving couples in backward figure eights and half-figure eights.
They make it look easy. It isn't. At the end of the evening, after the final waltz, everyone retires to the coatroom and the edges of the gym. They change shoes. Shirts have turned dark with spots of perspiration. A man adjusts his hearing aid. Women tie scarves over their mouths and head for the door and the snow.