~ IWSG: Just Between You and I ~

It’s time for another group posting of the Insecure Writer’s Support Group! Time to release our fears to the world or offer encouragement to those who are feeling neurotic. If you’d like to join us, click on the tab above and sign up. We post on the first Wednesday of every month. Every month, the organizers announce a question that members can answer in their IWSG Day post. Remember, the question is optional!!! Let’s rock the neurotic writing world!
Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and the hashtag is #IWSG.

June 5 question – In this constantly evolving industry, what kind of offering/service do you think the IWSG should consider offering to members?
Instead of this question, I’ll recycle a question posed to us by the IWSG in the June 2020 Newsletter…
June 3 question – Writers have secrets! What are one or two of yours, something readers would never know from your work?

Okay. One thing readers might find surprising about me is that I danced Salsa and was a partner for my husband in teaching Salsa and Rueda classes for ten years. Another person from another life. Many eras ago. My older sister started it. About thirty years ago, she started taking Ceroc classes after work, then moved on to Salsa lessons in the city. She looked to be having the time of her life! One night, my sister invited my niece (who was boarding at my house) and me to try her dance classes. This was the lull in between children, (there’s a twenty-year age difference between my eldest and middle son), hence I was as carefree as my 23-year-old niece. We started attending dance classes every Friday night, joining my sister and her friends in Salsa classes and dancing the light fantastic afterward.

I remember it so well. The venue was one of those towering Victorian buildings with many floors. We reached the studio by climbing a narrow staircase up eight levels, to an old-style mirrored dance studio with worn wooden floors. After class, a large crowd of us would thunder down the stairs, descending on the clubs that played Latin music and dancing into the wee hours. It was such a happy time. As we learned Salsa, we also picked up the basic rudiments of Ceroc, Cha-Cha, Bachata, Lambada, Tango, and Rumba. Once our teacher started teaching a Rueda class – the group style of dancing – we attended that class, too, and, afterward danced at Latin nightclubs in large circles of twelve or more. It was terrific fun.
I met my second husband through the classes. A friend of my older sister, he was the relief dance teacher and a member of our teacher’s elite demonstration team. I helped him teach Salsa and Rueda night classes for the following decade.

Social dancing is the best way to hone your steps at the beginner stage. An active social life is a must for a dance teacher – you need to encourage your students to go out and practice the steps, by regularly dancing in public. Just as with our teacher when we were learning, when we started teaching our classes, we had to go out in the evenings and dance with our students at the Latin venues to help them learn. Marriage and children however signalled the end of that lifestyle for me. I stopped teaching Latin dance when my third son was born. That was 2005. I also quit the nights out social dancing because I was too tired to go. I have never returned to the dance floor. Now, as then, I prioritize a good night’s sleep, although I wouldn’t say no to a spin on the old boards given half a chance.
What about you? What secret would no one ever guess about you?

Talk to you later.
Keep Writing!
Yvette Carol
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Hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon. ~ EDWARD LEAR