Saturday, January 31, 2009

FAYE DOES LINE DANCING!!

Since I can’t play Pickleball with a bad hip, I’ve taken up line dancing. Here at Peace River, we have line dancing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning. At Torrey Oaks, about 10 miles up the road, the same teacher, Jenny, has classes every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon. Whenever possible, I go to all of the classes. One thing we do in these classes is repeat, repeat, repeat!! I can now do the Electric Slide to anything from The Electric Boogie to Elvira to The Funeral March!!!

As you can see, I’m the only one here who knows how to do “Alley Cat”!! HA HA Actually, you know me -- I was posing for the camera and everyone else went on with the dance!!


I think this is SO FUNNY!!! You Seasonal Campers at TT Chesapeake Bay will appreciate this. Especially you, Brad, because you know how hard I worked to learn those line dances last summer!!

[For background information, Brad is a Seasonal Camper at Chesapeake Bay who has lots of awesome audio equipment. He frequently set up his equipment on Friday nights and played music just for fun and for his friends. We all gathered at the cement pad (once a Pickleball Court) near the horseshoe pits and danced to Brad’s music. The following dance is one we did three, four, five times every Friday evening all summer long!!]

On with the story. Our teacher, Jenny, is a little “flakey” at times, but she is funny. Last Thursday at Torrey Oaks, she told us that Ron, who plays musical instruments and provides music at their dances on Saturday night, asked her what she knew about the Stupid Shuffle – someone had asked him if he could play it sometime. Stupid Shuffle? No, she had not heard of it! But when she was looking through some of her papers later, she came across the name “Cupid Shuffle” that someone had asked her about. She went on line and got the dance steps. So, she said:

“We are going to learn the Cupid Shuffle! And after reading the steps, I agree. This really should be the Stupid Shuffle!! I have never seen anything so stupid! All you do is Hully Gully to the Right [Step right, slide left, repeat], then Hully Gully to the Left [Step left, slide right, repeat]. Then you do four Heel Stands [Right heel forward, then stand; repeat with left, and right, and left]. Then you have to make one-quarter turn to the left using EIGHT counts!! How in the world do you use eight counts to turn just one-quarter turn?? I thought about marching little steps, but that doesn’t work. Maybe you do it like this (and she demonstrated some kind of funny foot movements as she turned). Now isn’t that the most stupid thing you’ve ever seen??”

We tried walking through her directions. Finally, she stopped. “Does anyone know who this Cupid is anyway??” No one answered. I spoke up – “He’s a Rapper!” A RAPPER?? “Yes, I said. “And the song goes like this:”

I rhythmically chanted (uh, rapped) and demonstrated the dance: THERE IS A NEW DANCE AND IT GOES LIKE THIS -- TO THE RIGHT, TO THE RIGHT, TO THE RIGHT, TO THE RIGHT. TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT. NOW KICK, NOW KICK, NOW KICK, NOW KICK. NOW WALKING BY YOURSELF, WALKING BY YOURSELF [as I made tiny little baby steps, using eight counts to turn one-quarter turn to the left] and began again -- TO THE RIGHT, TO THE RIGHT, TO THE RIGHT, TO THE RIGHT. TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT, TO THE LEFT. NOW KICK, NOW KICK. . .

Everybody laughed. “Oh, that’s so cute!! Oh, That’s such fun!! I really like that!!”

And so, we (THEY) learned the Cupid Shuffle!!

Thank you Chesapeake Bay campers for teaching me how!! I still have not conquered “Boot Scooting Boogie”! But, JoAnn, I can now Waltz Across Texas!!!

Saturday night, we joined our good friends, Cis and Joe (front left) at Torrey Oaks for pot luck dinner and a little entertainment and, of course, line dancing!



Here we are doing the Electric Slide (again)!

1 comment:

Betty Graffis said...

That is just about the funniest thing I've read in a long time. Joe says it sounds like your still having fun and that's what counts. I've always wanted to line dance but was uncomfortable going to a class by myself, but after reading your story just now, the next time I'm somewhere where there is line dancing, I'M GOING TO GO LEARN!!!! By the way, we leave for CA the 23rd of next month for six weeks. Joe is so anxious to hit the pickleball courts and then will be volunteer ushering again at Indian Wells Tennis Gardens March 12-23rd. Keep having fun Faye!!!!
~Betty