Dancesport

Last weekend, my friends and I went down to Baltimore to check out the US National Dancesport Championships. If you've never heard of this event, it's because ballroom and latin dance isn't as popular here as say...college basketball. Nonetheless, it was loads of fun for two days, with bright colors and footwork weaving in and out for hours on end.

At the Friday day session, we saw some senior dancers (people over 35 who dance for fun). I managed to snap some decent pictures because they were moving at approximately 1/100th the speed of the amateur dancers that we saw later. Still, I would be quite happy to have their modest skills.

One of the more disturbing aspects of competitive dancing is watching kids (under 13) dance the rumba. Kiddie porn, anyone? While dancing is a great type of exercise, it does involve quite a bit of back and forth seduction, which looks awkward when performed by little kids wearing scandalous costumes that I wouldn't even wear. Did I mention that these little kids self-tan and the girls apply about five layers of make-up to their faces? Still, it's fascinating to see how technically savvy these children are at dancing. Some of the girls especially move with the maturity of women more than twice their age. Dancing is a show, and it's sometimes hard to watch young people (as well as some adults) because they can't decide what bright and inappropriate expressions to plaster onto their frozen faces.

On Friday evening, Yiyan and I went to watch the amateur Latin dance championships. The guys and gals were smoking hot. I would take up dance just to have a set of legs like those that were flying in abundance that night. The dancers were all extremely talented, with an acute sense of rhythm running through their bodies (I guess that's the point of dancing). Latin dance is a lot of fun to watch and reminds me a lot of hot sex while standing up or two Porsches going at it. My personal favorite is the paso doble, where the males vigorously pound their heels onto the floor (the ladies do too), puff out their chests, alternate between snarling and frowning, and do everything short of beating their chests. It looks painful, but well worth the effort. The men have to be incredibly arrogant to dance well, especially in testosterone-driven Latin dances.

My second favorite is the samba, which is a fun dance that's both light and heavy at the same time. One of the two hundred youtube clips that I regularly visit informs me that the story originates in Brazil, where two strangers meet at carnival and get it on. The cha cha cha is fun as well, though very difficult and danced primarily on straight legs (youtube again). And no one can resist the fun-loving kicks and tricks of the jive (which isn't a latin dance?). My least favorite dance is the rumba, which is the slowest and fits uneasily with the other dances. It's especially disturbing when brother-sister couples do a very intimate while excellent rumba (I guess it would have been better if I left the family tree out). Latin just has that oomph and a beat that makes me want to jump up and shake my uncoordinated limbs and nonexistent hips.

The ballroom dances are more boring to watch, despite their higher difficulty level relative to latin. Posture and subtlety are much more important in ballroom, and the mistakes are amplified. Also, the big ruffled dresses in lurid colors reminded me of tea parties and the teacup ride at theme parks, especially when five couples twirl in sync. Other evocative images: sherbet, Disney, and Tropicana. My problem is that I think two of the dances, waltz and foxtrot, are deathly boring. The Viennese waltz is at least cute as the ultimate teacup dance, and the whiplash tango and quickstep are both fun to watch. Colliding couples provide some tension to the otherwise cultured menu of European based dances. After watching this for five hours straight, my eyes felt incredibly saturated...and I went home dreaming of becoming a hot latin dancer (no self-tanning required!).