TOD
At age five my mother decided tap-dancing lessons were needed, so once a week we went to Philly for group lessons. I remember having to perform in a Dance School recital in a tux with bowler hat and cane imitating Ted Somebody-or-other.. I still remember the echo of those horrid directions:
Brush, back, stamp; brush back stamp, brush, back, kick!
And, so was born my ignominious career as The Reluctant Dancer.
Grade school years were filled with local Square Dances – I was a klutz, but could remember complex routines.
I took a Junior High class in Folk Dancing (which got me out of P.E.) – my Polka specialty held me in good stead for years. My Mother also taught me to Charleston and Black-Bottom.
High School years meant formal Ballroom Dance lessons at the Women’s Club. We did the classics, waltz, fox trot, polka, but in a nod the current rage we also learned to Cha-Cha (slow, slow, quick, quick, quick) – to maintain terpsichorean rigor we also had to learn Mambo and Rumba.
College years at Annapolis were amusing because I was one of the few guys who could lead the ladies in the specialty dances. (With The King and I movie still playing and the show on perpetual tour – my show-off polka was often on display.
After graduation I got snagged by a little theater group in Key West, Florida, to play in Pajama Game (another damn polka!!!) – a casting decision dictated not by “how ell can you” but “will you”. (The hours trying to learn a Steam Heat specialty number were grim).
Graduate School got me caught in being cast as Mordred in Camelot. Out Morgan LeFey fashioned herself quite the dancing star and the director “called in a favor” and had a professional choreographer work with us.. To complicate my rehearsal schedule, the director (Cole Weston, son of Photographer Edward Weston) asked his wife Maggie (an erstwhile cabaret singer from South Africa) to do “something” about my disastrous attempts at singing (I did have the “Seven Deadly Sins” solo!).
Of course my real fame to fancy footwork came years later at a weekend gathering of gay motorcycle clubs .at a mountain resort. For an afternoon’s entertainment, the host club had set up various competitive events around a large swimming pool. One event was “Walking on Water” Running lengthwise down the entire pool was a floating string of 4x8 plywood panels loosely linked by ropes. The competition was to see who could walk across the water in the best time. A bunch of guys lined up for the competition, but one after another they all ending up loosing their balance on the ever-shifting panels and taking a header into the pool. It was then that your humble big-mouthed correspondent yelled out “What a bunch of wusses – I could walk across that water, and I could do it in high-heels”
Open mouth and insert high-heeled foot!!!
Needless to say, said shoes, with four inch spiked heels, magically appeared and the dare was on. Standing at the pools edge, I wondered how far Miss Goody Two shoes would make it. Well. she wouldn’t! There was only one hope – How would Ethel Merman get to the other side? So with strident determination and firmly planted toes, I brusquely strutted my stuff. – and made it all the way across!!!!
der Brucer
