Allegra and I had been practicing our West Coast Swing dance to Coldplay's song Magic for months. She loves to dance, and I am always eager to learn something new. Sophia, our amazing dance instructor, taught us the moves and helped us understand what it means to lead and what it means to follow. She explained how, while we each had individual roles, great dance makes a duo a single entity. Progress was slow to start, but over time, we got good enough, then good, and finally pretty good. I learned how to listen to the count without counting and how to share the beat without moving my lips. She showed us how to listen to the "two count" -- the second beat, which, in this song, was the snare drum. The second beat and I were one. We practiced the dance five times the day before our public debut and knew we were ready. Then, on New Year's Eve, the night of our wedding, we got up to dance our first dance. The music began, we felt the rhythm, and something was wrong. The bass overwhelmed the snare drum, so we could not hear the second beat. Our metronome, our lifeline, the sound we had depended on, was gone. We looked at each other with looks of bewilderment and did the only thing we could think of -- we began.
Week 24.02 The Dance Is Not The Dance
Week 24.02 The Dance Is Not The Dance
Week 24.02 The Dance Is Not The Dance
Allegra and I had been practicing our West Coast Swing dance to Coldplay's song Magic for months. She loves to dance, and I am always eager to learn something new. Sophia, our amazing dance instructor, taught us the moves and helped us understand what it means to lead and what it means to follow. She explained how, while we each had individual roles, great dance makes a duo a single entity. Progress was slow to start, but over time, we got good enough, then good, and finally pretty good. I learned how to listen to the count without counting and how to share the beat without moving my lips. She showed us how to listen to the "two count" -- the second beat, which, in this song, was the snare drum. The second beat and I were one. We practiced the dance five times the day before our public debut and knew we were ready. Then, on New Year's Eve, the night of our wedding, we got up to dance our first dance. The music began, we felt the rhythm, and something was wrong. The bass overwhelmed the snare drum, so we could not hear the second beat. Our metronome, our lifeline, the sound we had depended on, was gone. We looked at each other with looks of bewilderment and did the only thing we could think of -- we began.