What is it about TV shows like Dancing with the Stars and So You Think You Can Dance that make me nostalgic for ballerina days gone by? I took dance lessons for eight years growing up. I took a little bit of everything--tap, jazz, ballet, pointe ballet, even clogging. The only thing that I didn't take was ballroom dance. There was a good reason for that; I knew with my luck I'd get paired up with the class loser if I signed up for lessons. Even though I was probably further down the junior high school food chain than he was, the idea of doing the waltz or the fox trot with him was, to a twelve-year-old girl, a fate worse than death. I'm still shuddering thinking about his clammy, wart-laced palms.The last time I took something close to a real dance lesson was my freshman year in college when I took "Jazz Dance for Exercise" to fulfill one of my P.E. requirements. I remember being the only person in the class that had jazz shoes other than the teacher. Mine were well worn. Hers weren't. Based on the amount of floor work she had us do, I'm pretty sure I know the reason why. I think she did the majority of her dancing in five-inch, platform heels at Rachel's or the House of Babes. I half expected to show up to class one day and find a gym full of chairs and portable poles. Hey, at least she would have given me a backup career.
Now the only dancing I do is when I clean. I crank up my iPod tothe Fame, Footloose, or Flashdance soundtracks and do pirouettes across the kitchen floor, my kitchen sponge in one hand, a bottle of Dawn in the other. Sometime I make a bigger mess than the one I'm cleaning up, but what do you want me to do, wash, rinse, and dry the dishes the old-fashioned way? Boring.
After watching Dancing with the Stars last night, I'm almost tempted to go out and buy some new dance clothes to wear while I let Mr. Clean lead me across the dance room....uh, I mean kitchen. Back when I was taking lessons from the high school librarian, our clothes didn't get much more inventive than a black leotard and pink tights.
That's not me, by the way, but that is what my first leotard looked like. Now look at the type of dance apparel Capezio carries.
Jazz pants? We didn't have jazz pants. If we got cold in winter, we wore leg warmers. Dance shorts? Every now and then we could get away with wearing boxer or gym shorts over our leotard, but very rarely. We never got to wear dance school sanctioned shorts. Now look at these Capezio dance shoes.
They're like a cross between jazz shoes, sneakers, and ballet shoes. They even have Power Pointe technology, which I assume means that you can go up on pointe in them. Basically, they're all-in-one shoes. If Capezio had sold them back in the 80's, they could have saved my mom some serious money. If I got a pair now, imagine how many cool moves I could do in them while vacuuming. Kevin Bacon would have nothing on me, at least not until I tripped over the vacuum cleaner cord and did a swan dive onto the coffee table. As long as I landed in first through fifth positions and wore a new dance outfit, do you think I could still make it onto Mary What's Her Name's Hot Tamale Train? If not, maybe that guy that does the Oxy Wash commercials has a cold pepper caboose I could dance on.
