Dance: Tendu

The Church of Christ not only did not approve of dancing. It strictly prohibited it. Our church even tried every year to schedule a sort of counter-prom party on prom night, with food and games and so on. Year after year it was a miserable failure. But at least they were trying to offer an alternative to high school kids.

Junior high kids got nothing. There were plenty of parties to go to, but school parties were always dance-oriented, as indeed were most private parties. Some people, meaning some of the few Church of Christ girls, went to the parties and stood around and talked anyway. Junior high guys who are allowed to dance don’t necessarily want to, and those of us in the Church of Christ who were afraid to dance had the great excuse: I’m not allowed to dance.

So, no dancing, no dating. It was such a small school that even going to sports events was not much of an option. During the events themselves, the people you would want to be with were on the field or cheerleading or sequestered in the band section. Afterwards – there was the inevitable forbidden dance.

So my social life was not too impressive. I had friends. I sat at the “right” table in the cafeteria at lunch, hung out with the right kids during breaks. But official social life: zilch. 

Huntsville High School’s big annual event back in the day was a musical extravaganza called the Spring Festival. We elected a court, which we did not do for Homecoming like everyone else. Only a handful of people were able to ascend to those heights, but everyone who could, wanted to be involved in some way. Most who had any ability were performers, singers and dancers, others built sets, sold tickets, acted as ushers and so on. As they say at the Oscars, it was an honor just to be a lackey.

I had never been involved in the Festival, partly because I had worked nights at a drive-in theater snack bar when I was a freshman and sophomore. But my junior year, I was asked to be part of a dance number. When first asked, I was told it would probably be an all-guy thing. The songs and dances tended to be taken from older Broadway musicals. So I expected it would be something like a previous year’s “There is Nothing Like a Dame.” Of course, the Huntsville High School version's guys looked nothing like the men in the movie, although they did a creditable job with the song.

Because, however, I was letting my hair, which had always been buzz cut before, grow out, I was put into the Mod group. We danced to something Ameri-Brit -- I don’t even recall what, but I think it was something by the Monkees -- dressed in Mod shirts, bell bottom pants and so on. For me, this was perfect. Instead of learning a useless folk dance or stylized choreography, I learned a number of dance steps that were actually in vogue at parties. By the time the event was over, I knew how to dance.

Which meant I could date in the normal way and go to school events. This also meant breaking with the church’s strict prohibition against dancing. My parents (meaning my mother) had been willing to let me dance in the Festival because it was a school activity and was performance. I guess she thought I could not seduce or be seduced onstage in front of a live audience.

            

I expected some resistance when I announced that I was going to a school dance, but I don’t recall getting any. I think my parents were coming to terms with the reality of teenage life and figured they were getting off pretty lightly if all I did was attend heavily chaperoned school parties.

              

I don’t recall the first school dance I attended. I know that it must have been soon after the Spring Festival, because by the time Prom came around a couple of months later, I was an old hat at dances and was going steady with my best friend’s sister.

I loved to dance and was pretty good at it. Most of the guys were hampered by their ideas of masculinity. Real men don’t dance, they just shuffle back and forth and try to avoid the dance floor completely when there is a fast dance. The only real dancing they wanted was the slow kind where they could try to hug their dates tight, tight, tight until one of the chaperons came around and forced them to step a few inches apart. No one actually carried around a telephone directory to measure the distance between partners, but the idea was the same.

I enjoyed slow dancing, but I also enjoyed fast dancing. In those pre-Footloose days, I prophetically became a huskier Kevin Bacon, inventing as I went along. I hated exercise of any kind. But I would burn up the calories on the dance floor for hours at a time. Which made me very date-able material.

  
To be continued ...