Old People

A friend and I decided we didn't want to go into a gym for our exercise. We wanted something more fun, like modern dance. So I found us the Street Dance Academy at Spadina and Queen.

I phoned the dance studio before going in. Yes, they said, even around 50, we are not too old to do their dances. True, most of their students are university students and working adults, but some of their students, though none as old as the two of us, have even given birth and they still come to class.

So my friend and I thought, What the heck, let's give it a go and see what happens. Tonight, we showed up for a class called Street Ballet.

The instructor was a pretty young woman and a good dancer, obviously classically trained in ballet. There were ten of us in class. Except for my friend and me, all the students were in their 20's. Half were men, which is unusual. Men don't usually take dance classes. Not that the students were particularly graceful or coordinated dancers. It was just that my friend and I were particularly bad.

Physically, there was a huge difference between us and the others. I mean huge. We had visible, round, blubbery middles and chests. The others had none. There were moves we just couldn't do because of our knee pains. The others mimicked all of the instructor's moves. There were step sequences that didn't register with us. The others followed through. I did every move with one hand on a wall. Everyone else could balance on their own. At one point, I took a long time to get off the floor for fear of snapping a bone. Everyone else was up and moving. My friend fell. No one else did.

Every time I looked in the wall mirror, I said to myself, There are the dancers and the two old people.

At the end of the class, my friend and I rolled out of the studio and collapsed laughing into a couch. We decided that because physically there is more of us to turn, it just takes us longer to turn than the others. And the other thing is, if we could actually do some of the moves, we would have less trouble doing several of those moves in sequence.

You'd think after an experience like that, we'd learned our lesson and keep to people our own age. But nope. We are going back on Monday for a class called Reggae Fusion.