dance | Tiara in Transit

Belu spent the next 2 samba lessons concentrating on my stiff hips.

Belu, counting out the basic step – ‘123, 123, 123, Hips Hips Hips, I want to see more hips..MORE!’

It was like my hip joints were fused together and had no mobility or muscle strength. I started wondering if 30 was too old to start learning the samba (?)

Then on the third day I let my posture slacken out of exhaustion with my arse sticking out and, low and behold, my hips started swinging to the beat and in time with the steps.

T to Belu, stunned with swinging hips – ‘look, my hips are moving, they’re MOVING! Hip hip hip hip… ‘

Belu had performed a samba miracle on me, and I was not an easy student – tired, hungover, and stiff most of the time with a serious lack of arm, hip, feet, left and right coordination. It wasn’t a simple task for her – She’s just a brilliant dance teacher!

I was very happy with this hip swinging breakthrough.

Belu, relieved – ‘Good. Tomorrow, we work on the arms.’

Samba’s first shocking lesson – rhythm, co-ordination, where are you?!

The first night K and I ventured out into Palermo, we followed the drum beats to a Brazilian bar called Foyness. In Foyness there was an amazing live band playing with a female lead singer who was absolutely gorgeous! Her voice was incredible and the hypnotic shakes of her hips and rhythmic movements of her arms held me captivated. I fell in love… With her dancing!

In the following week, I found a dance school- Bailer – in Palermo and tried to describe what I had seen without the use of re-enactment. The helpful staff at Bailer informed me that what I needed to learn was the Samba. As the group classes fell at an inconvenient time, and I had limited time in Buenos Aires, I booked myself in for some private lessons.

Thank f#cking Christ. Because what happened in that first private lesson should never be exposed to the public. It was hideous. The movements felt so foreign, so alien to my body. My hips, feet and arms felt like they belonged to different creatures – a duck, hippo and goat, each with their own interpretation of beat and direction. I was so far removed from words like graceful, and sexy, and dangerously too close to descriptions like abominable, with all sorts of wrongs happening simultaneously. No one should ever be forced to see themselves like this, I resembled the snakes on Medusa’s head – the more I watch myself attempt to Samba the stronger the urge to be stone still.

My instructor, the beautifully fit and talented Belu explained that the Samba steps are very very difficult. But that the movement was ‘just like walking’. Hmm, 30 years of ‘walking’ did NOT prepare me for this moment…

Funnily enough, I’ve used that line myself a couple of years ago when I was annoyingly frustrated at Mark for not getting the basic Salsa step ‘Mark, it’s just like walking! What’s WRONG with you!’

He never did get that dance. And after the first Samba session I was pretty doubtful that I would ever get this dance, and whether something this unattractive and improper could possibly evolve into something presentable in time for Carnival in Rio.