Dancing Days

This isn't the blog I had intended; the long review of our latest adventure. That has been temporarily postponed as life has caught up with me instead. This blog is instead to share with you one of my depressing moments of realisation of the undeniable fact of getting old.

Fast approaching my mid thirties and lucky enough to have had a full and varied social life, it has been easy for me to stick my head in the sand and whisper sweet words of denial about the ever increasing gap between how I see myself and how others see me. It feels like only last year that I spent six hours dancing on top of a wheely bin with some random stranger in Cream, or last week that I spent the countdown at New Year on podium at Ministry of Sound Bangkok. Sadly, or not, depending on who's looking at this, many years have past, and in all likelihood if I did these things now there would be unprecedented levels of embarrassment experienced on all sides. This weekend while away at a professional development conference in Lisbon, this depressing realisation slowly dawned on me while watching people dance at the last night gala dinner.

Throughout the night the dance floor could usually be separated into three parts...

The first group is those between roughly 20-30 who dance to every song, no matter how bad it is, and who truly believe they are Michael Jackson reincarnate. If you belong to this group then good on you, doesn't it feel great, enjoy it while it lasts, because believe it or not it doesn't. I should know, I clung onto this group for as long as I could. I shall refer to this group as the 'Jacksonites'. 

The next group who I’ll I call the 'Handbaggers' are a big group made up of two smaller parts; those who may never have had that love of dancing and have been unwillingly dragged into that great place of embarrassment they know as the dance floor; and those who used to belong to the Jacksonites until they hit 30 and suddenly found themselves strangely self conscious when they spun across the floor and felt like everybody turned to look at them. The Handbaggers are busy on the dance floor in many ways. Unlike the Jacksonites, who are just busy thinking 'this feels great' and letting their body do the work, the Handbaggers are busy either trying to maintain that even rhythmic side stepping move that blends right in with everyone else, or they're trying to relive their youth by throwing a few moves out there, which they then busily analyse in their heads as to whether they actually pulled it off without looking stupid. Finally this group is busy with occasional furtive glances at the Jacksonites with something akin to horror, “do they know what they look like?”, “look at all that sweat”. 

And then there is the last group, the Christopher Walken's amongst us. These are those brave people who manage to break the boundaries and effortlessly move between the other two groups. Often slightly older, they have managed to overcome any feeling of self-consciousness and as a result have found their mojo again. They whip it up on the dance floor and really don't care what they look like. Instead, not unlike the Jacksonites, they simply dance and enjoy the music.

So, where am I at...? Well I’ve sadly left the Jacksonites, but I’m not ready to join the Walken groovers; there is still way to much self analysis going on for that and I run when the music isn't in my favour. I have to sadly admit that the days of mindlessly dancing to anything and everything have passed. Soon I will give up any attempts of fancy footwork and become a master of the side to side step.

For those of you out there, you know who you are...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZM1fkHQP_Pw