New-Dance High

I have been social dancing now for at least four years. It’s become a major part of my life, including crazy commutes, late nights, and a lack of sleep. Out of those years, there is one particular one that is covered in a shimmery haze of wonderfulness. In the first year that I started social dancing, every night out was an adventure. I would grab my (newly-addicted) friends, primp, dress up every night, and get super excited for the local, once-a-month dance night.

After a few weeks, I started to know all the regulars. They became my friends. I was part of the in-crowd.  It wasn’t a crazy-high intimidating level of dancing, so I never felt out of place. I bought a pair of dance shoes I called my ‘club-shoes’ so that I wouldn’t cry if they got ruined. Eventually, I upped my amount of dancing from once a month to multiple times a week. It was perfect.

Then, after about a year, the magic began to fade. I’d tried congresses, I’d gone farther in search of dancing and been exposed to dancers who really inspired me. As I gained exposure to higher levels of dancers (which, subsequently, skyrocketed my own level of dancing more quickly), I started to find holes in the glamour of my first haven. I started to notice that people whom I’d danced with for a long time were becoming more predictable. The DJ had the same music rotation. Those club-goers that were taking up floor space were really cumbersome. The floor was sometimes sticky from spilled drinks. I didn’t feel like dressing up anymore. I traded party dresses and dance heels for jeans, t-shirts, and flats.

It wasn’t that I was no longer having fun – it was still really fun to go out and social dance… but I’d had a taste of more. Bigger venues, bigger variety of dancers and moves, and better floors. This was only the beginning. The longer I salsa danced, the less shiny new sparkly and more post-honeymoon relationship it felt. I still loved it, but going out dancing had become comfortable, not exciting.

Then, I started trying Zouk dancing. And West Coast Swing. And trying everything else I could… and I realized something: I could reclaim the new dance high. I got to go through that shiny, new phase not one but three times! Even better: I didn’t have to start out as a beginner unable to keep rhythm. Although I had to learn the new dance, I was absorbed by the other dancers and developed a greater variety of skills far more quickly than when I started salsa. That made these new dance highs even better than the first one!

As I became more involved with these dances, I danced salsa less frequently. I still did it, and still enjoyed it, but I was immersed in other dances for a while. I began to think maybe I didn’t like salsa as much as those dances. Then, I went back to a salsa night… and it was like having that first high all over again. I’d improved as a dancer, but salsa had changed while I had been elsewhere. New people, new music, new steps.

There’s a lesson in all of this. We lose so many dancers when their dance-high wears off, or when their skills feel like they’ve hit a plateau. So, if you’re feeling dance fatigued, why not recapture that new-dance high and try another style?