I’ve been dancing for a couple of years now. I used to spend my spare time teaching people how to fly gliders at the RAF Gliding Centre now based at RAF Halton. Gliding was fun, social and surprisingly energetic. There is a certain satisfacion of using a small amount of energy to launch a glider and then through native wit and intelligence extending that flight to tens of nimutes or indeed several hours. There is even a fitness component. When gliders did not land accurately: which they usually don’t when be flown by ‘ab-initio‘ students learning under instruction. (‘Ab-initio’ literally means from the start, there’s a quite a bit of multilingual stuff in aviation: ‘aileron’ is apparently French for little wing). As I was saying: when gliders do not land accurately (as opposed to safely which they overwhelmingly do), there is a fair amount of manhandling. This is often aided by some sort of tractor retrieve vehicle. It still means jumping in and out of the glider, turning it around and walking back to the launch point. This could be half a mile across the airfield. It provideds a fair amount of low level exercise. If there is a list of 100 things to do before you die, a flight in a glider will surprise you. Very few people say it turned out how they thought. It is typically far more peaceful. The views far more splendid, fascinating and exhilarating than people expect. This is even true when gliding is even compared to the view and experience of a small powered aeroplane.
When you do anything, if you do it for an extended period of time, it needs to be varied enough to present new aspects. In gliding this can range from flying high above the French Alps as opposed to the UK. It can be flying further than before or to and from different locations. It can be gliding in different designs (from the ealiest type of Primary glider to the much more modern ASW27B). It can also mean flying with different people. Because gliders fly in simpatico with the weather and conditions change from minute to minute each flight is inherently different to the last.
For various reasons after 20 years of enjoyment and many memorable occasions, the thoughts of which still give rise to smiles, I hung up my instuctors rating and started looking for a fresh pastime. I tried a couple of types of dancing, and modern jive was the one that clicked. This was possibly because initially the footwork was not too important. Most likely it was because several very pretty young ladies were prepared to put up with my stumbling attempts and even smiled! Still if young ladies were not prepared to put up with guys making complete fools of themselves, the human race would have died out long ago. Curiously, dancing with ladies in steletto heels occasionally gives rise to being stabbed in the chins by same heals. It has been statistically far more dangerous than flying without the aide of an engine. This is still true when compared to teaching somone that you know can't fly (yet) or just is learning to fly!
In dancing, there are different partners, different songs, different moves and different movement. It’s indoors, so weather does not change. Dancing is a contact sport. So there are inherant dangers apart from stilletos! There is always the challenge of dancing more smoothly and interpreting the music in a more empathic way. When I started a few years ago the classes at Henley on Thames were given by a couple called Simon and Nicole. There was always an element of humour in their teaching. Simon was (at times?) quite chauvinist, it was all clearly tongue in cheek and good natured. Unfortunately they left the franchise running Ceroc at Henley. The replacements and their subsequent replacements did not do as well. Henley closed for the foreseeable future last week. There was one major thing going against Henley: the hall is quite echoic. Half way down the hall the beat becomes quite indistinct. The beat, you understand, is quite important for dancing! There was a solution: more speakers placed down the hall. This worked for a couple of weeks. However the guys setting them up didn’t do it properly so it went back to being difficult to follow the music in about half the hall.
I was also lucky at Henley: not only with Simon and Nicole but also because the "taxi dancers" who took what I refered to as the remedial lesson (they refered to it a the repeat beginners class) were charming, appoachable and clearly inerested in helping people to learn to dance.
Simon and Nicole disappeared from my radar for a while, but recently I heard they were doing a classes in Woodley near Reading. I went along a few weeks ago. It was a lovely atmosphere. The class was intense but in an enjoyably challenging way. They are dancers who clearly care about dancing. Personally I do get the feeling that with a larger franchise such as Ceroc Thames Valley that profit plays a very significant part. It is a business and as a dancer your primary value is the fee on the door. In contrast, with Simon and Nicole the dancing and enjoyment of dancing comes first second and third. If you like modern Jive, have a few years experience, feel you are doing the same moves in the same soulless way and think that there could be more to it: you will very likely enjoy one of Simon and Nicole’s classes smooth Jive classes tremendously.
Be prepared to feel like you are starting to learn to dance all over again: I do! Let’s face it though: it was fun the first time around, and I believe you may find this is more satisfying. Parking is easy and free. If you Google or Bing the post code: RG5 4JB the arrow will be a little misleading:
