By Peggy Pollard, Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing www.PeggyDance.weebly.com
An army of 2,000 happy social dancers -- this is what our world needs most in the New Year. From our Market St. dance hall to the sea life of the Monterey Bay, from the Amazon to Shanghai, dancing joins our world in a celebration of joy like nothing else. As our dancing year now draws to a close, let us review our past 12 months of happy progress. In 2021 our Santa Cruz Waltz & Swing made small but valiant growth, launching more people in quantum leaps up to higher happiness in their lives. Our 2021 footsteps -- stomping, bouncing, gliding, tapping, cha-cha-cha-ing, echo in Market St. Dance Hall, and in our memories. January -- Still in pandemic lockdown, Mike and I began our second COVID year of SCW&S partnering through the zoom glass. We fiddled with camera angles, sound level, for our weekly Wednesday evening and Sunday sunrise dances. A few local and international guests joined from Ethiopia, England, New York. A professor in from Shanghai China asked me to teach him the Polka step, so he could teach his students. February –Inspired by the amazing sea life of our Monterey Bay, our lessons learned from one sea creature per week, observing from their squiggly personalities, ways of movement we could imitate in our dancing. First, the playful sea otter, rolling and wiggling in perpetual motion added frolicking movement to our Swing dancing. Next, was the clam. Though anchored in one spot, clams can open and close their hinged shell. Likewise, swing partners hinge into open and closed positions. We went on to study the movements of the squid, the starfish, sea lions, jellyfish, octopus, and majestic grey whale. So much we learned from each! May -- After a year of careful COVID quarantining, we gladly took the miraculous gift of vaccinations. Thanks to a global army of medical researchers, we are now super-powered against those evil germs. July-- In-person dances re-start! Giggling, we shyly rediscover the delights of pressing flesh palms together. For those of us who kept practicing during our 1.5 years Shelter at Home, our partnering skills quickly return. New dancers joined in this fall, learning Waltz & Swing thrills with us. December – Huzzah! More dance venues re-open. Severino’s, Cubberley’s Ballroom, Friday Night Waltz -- my social dancing mother ship, a whirling group of genteel waltzers trained by Stanford University’s renowned Social Dance teacher, Dr. Richard Powers, himself. At FNW’s Christmas Dance I helped check forehead temperatures and vaccination records for more than 200 guests. I noticed most had lost much dancing fitness and I secretly gloated that, thanks to my continued dance practice, I was in better dance shape than many of that younger university crowd. If you are one of those COVID dance dropouts, don’t worry. By all means, DO jump back in to dance, after being FULLY VACCINATED, (ahem). You will be warmly welcomed back, along with the 90% of other dance delinquents, to stumble through it together and catch back up again quickly. But, for those few of us who kept it up, yeah, that feels sweet. Then, in a delightful finish to my dancing year, a new friend from Brazil joined our final dance. After our Waltz, Swing and Polka lesson; she taught us a Brazilian Samba, then an indigenous Amazon tribal dance from her area. Awesome! Now time to give thanks. We dancers have so much to be grateful for: “Thank you for reminding my family to dance on Thanksgiving. It’s become a tradition. We don’t Turkey Trot, but we sure dance big time between dinner and pumpkin pie. This year it was raining. 14 of us put on the rain gear, went out on the deck and danced.” -- Katherine Beiers, past mayor of Santa Cruz. Mike is thankful this year for ”all the golfing and dancing that I do. I’m dancing 6 to 7 days a week, sometimes twice a day. Whenever I’m dancing, I turn into a better version of me.” I myself am grateful for -- - my assistant Mike, a treasure, indefatigably positive even when we goof up steps, harmonious and friendly who enjoys welcoming new dancers and continually learns new skills. - every dancer who bravely walked through our dance class door, taking that hardest step of all... showing up. - my own progress in developing our dance program...trying many things, learning from our many mistakes with a forgiving audience. Now that we’ve chronicled this crazy, 2021 Quarantine Year of partner dancing, Here’s my dance predictions for the new year. I predict that, armed with vaccinations, our social dance army will continue growing in numbers, health and happiness as a primal outlet of creativity and joy in our lives. So let’s sing what we look forward to: In our twelve months of 2022 my partners dance with me: - 12 Viennese Waltz Spins - 11 Redowa leaping - 10 Cupid Shuffles - nine Oslo Waltz Mixers - eight Crazy Swing Moves - seven Tokyo Polkas - six Chaos Mixers - FIVE – GREY – WHALE - TANGOS - four Turning Boxes - three Cowboy Cha-Chas - two NightClub 2-Steps - and “Jerusalema” under a pear tree So there you have our New Year gift of dance to you. From every corner of our planet, undersea creatures of Monterey Bay, to Amazon jungle tribes, to Shanghai university halls, dancing connects our spirits in in a kinetic celebration of life, our gift to the world. Jump into the joy with us in 2022.
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FOOT Notes from Teacher PeggyAuthorPeggy Pollard has been teaching social/ballroom dance in Santa Cruz since 2010. Archives
September 2022
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