So I think I can dance?

Last Saturday we’re invited to attend a party at Murrysville area; good food, good company and good dancing.  We’re the only new comers for a congenial group.  The gracious hostess and her physician husband are well known elegant dancers of professional caliber, just like the couple shown on the cover of this British Medical Journal (BMJ)—see photo.  They opened their hearts and arms to welcome us to their home and their friends.

Their house, nay, mansion, has a spacious dancing studio that allows electric slide or macarena dance for thirty some people without feeling too close for comfort.  The hostess is a terrific dance instructor; she even gave us (Katy and me) individual lesson—she must have found the daunting task most challenging.  A very sympathetic Pitt professor pulled us away from the group, teaching us a few trick steps so that we can get by with all sorts of music and rhythm, in other words, 學了這幾步, 就可以混下去了, so he claimed.

We dropped out, or more precisely kicked out, of a dancing studio at Monroeville some years ago.  We took the private lesson once a week; feeling confident after a month we wanted to continue, but the frustrated dance instructor politely said, “I think you’re too busy,” and that was the end of the education of my dancing; my dream of getting on Dancing with the Star evaporated; at stake was his reputation.  It turned out our hostess also has the same dance instructor.

The dance lesson we had last Saturday rekindled our interest; after coming home, we 發奮圖強, unfortunately we have forgotten the electric slide and macarena steps that we’re supposed to practice.

Thanks to the hostess’ instruction, for a short while I think I can dance? It is just an illusion, then I realize 我沒有跳舞的細胞.  Through no fault of my own, my genes and neurons (nerve cells) are to blame.  I even have scientific report to back me up.  The article (“So You Think You Can Dance?: PET Scans Reveal Your Brain’s Inner Choreography”) was in the June 16 2008 issue of Scientific American.  The link allows you to read the first two paragraphs only. This is the neuro science of the dance; this is how I keep my neuro science up-to-date.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-neuroscience-of-dance

 

Lincoln in 1861

I am not alone in lacking the “dancing neurons”; Abe Lincoln was also a victim.  When Abe and Mary first met in a party in Springfield, Illinois, Abe went to Mary asking for a dance saying he wanted to dance with her “in the worst way” (the way I dance) and he did.

  

On the Inauguration Ball (rightly called Union Ball) on March 4 1861 Mary was whirling in the arms of Stephen Douglas (then a U.S. senator); Lincoln’s heavy heart was far away in the Fort Sumter, South Carolina. The Confederate gun fired on Fort Sumter on 4/12/1861 marked the beginning of the Civil War.