Gaudy Patter

Twenty and thirty-somethings swirled about with a smattering of middle-aged and oldsters (all male) who were clearly in their element. Very few wallflowers, save the small group I arrived with.

There was instruction before the dancing began, but I didn't see many beginners on the floor. The dancers fell into two main classes: those who made it look easy, and others who made it look hard.

The former would maintain eye contact as they spun, flung and glided on a cushion of air just above the floor. They smiled with the joy of movement and a confidence that their hips, feet, hands and assorted parts would move just as expected, just as they'd practiced.

The other group, the Onetwothrees, had faces rigid in concentration, a few actually frowning as they went through their paces. I saw more than few Onetwothrees start to jitterbug freely, shutting off the metronome in their heads -- just before they caught themselves and came back down to earth with a missed step. Don't think -- dance, I whispered mentally.

As we sat and chatted while watching the terpsichorean display, I settled on a few favorites like the black guy in his twenties with Chuck Berry's hair, or the gent in his 60s who never once sat down -- or danced with a woman older than 25.

A very short man in his fifties danced with a series of young women. He couldn't have been more than 5'2, but damn the cliches -- he was a giant on the dance floor. Watching him cut a rug with one leggy young thing after another wasn't incongruous, it was affirming.

I was surprised to observe that partner dancing is so much more intimate than fruging, voguing or doing the Running Man. If you're not paying rapt attention to your partner -- if you're not fully engaged -- it shows.

As the band blared their final song and the singer mopped his brow, I leaned into my SO and asked if she'd ever considered taking a swing or ballroom dance class.

"I've thought about it," she said, her green eyes peering at me over her glasses.