Learned how to do just a little bit of the Charleston last night, by which I mean that I know just enough to make myself look like I’m having an attack of the heebeejeebies, or I’m trying to stamp out a brush fire. I certainly don’t look like I’m dancing. But it could be a lot of fun.

The annual hangar dance will come a little early this year, weekend after next. Last year it took place at the end of July, but either because of a scheduling conflict, or because they don’t want the mosquitoes to eat us alive the way they did last year, it’s been moved up a couple weeks, so we asked our dance instructor with a little help getting ready.

While we were working on our sweetheart moves he showed us how to dance a little jig that looked really jazzy when he did it. We’ve got a little ways to go before we can make it look jazzy, but maybe if we drink enough beer next weekend we’ll be loose enough to try it in public.

The Cajun Strangers were playing at the Harmony Bar on Atwood Ave last night. My Darling B and I saw them once before at the same place and they were a lot of fun even though we quickly found out we didn’t know how to dance to their music. We ended up kind of jumping around or swing dancing, which worked just fine and didn’t seem to bother anybody, so we had a pretty good time.

This time around, we got there good and early so we would have plenty of time to grab a bite to eat, then take part in the cajun two-step dance lessons that were offered about an hour before the band started playing. It turned out to be deceptively easy: one-two-three and pause, then repeat. There were twirlies and other fun little zigs and zags you could add on, but one-two-three pause turned out to be just about all we could handle after only one lesson.

When the band kicked in we tried every way we could think of to make that dance step work, but somehow it eluded us. I kept steering B into other people and we fell out of step more times than I cared to count. And the cajun waltz was even worse. We could do the basic step just fine, but I couldn’t figure out how to fit the twirlies and other fun stuff into it, the whole reason for waltzing in the first place.

We ended up simply swing dancing to all the fast tunes and sort of jumping around to almost everything else. And we sat out quite a few of the tunes. Four long days spent digging up the garden under a hot sun had My Darling B well and truly worn out. She’s looking forward to spending a whole day sitting at a desk doing nothing more strenuous than shuffling papers.

I was too pooped to drivel last night after dance class. We waltzed from one end of the room to the other in the group lesson, and then we kept on waltzing around the room all the way through our private lesson. And we were working on dance steps for a Viennese waltz. The difference between waltzing Matilda and a Viennese waltz is like the difference between writing a letter with a pencil in all-caps, and writing just about anything in shorthand with a pen. Except that, because we were galloping around the room, we got a lot sweatier than a stenographer would.

Do stenographers exist any more? In this country, I mean. I’m sure there are still plenty of them in places where the google hasn’t taken over. Just wondering.

A Viennese waltz is like flying and, if humans had wings, I think they would realize that it would take almost as much energy to do either. Takes a lot of coordination, too, something I possess in very limited quantities, so I don’t burn it up to do just anything, but waltzing is special. We started waltzing many moons ago, more than a year now, but we didn’t start learning the steps for a Viennese waltz until a couple months ago, maybe the middle of the winter, and even though we thought we were pretty hot shit with our regular waltz steps (we’re not, we just think we’re pretty good), when our instructor taught us the first few basic steps we were just about all the way back to Square One, losing the count, running into walls, stepping on each other’s toes, and collapsing from exhaustion after just ten minutes or so.

This went on for weeks, and it seemed as though, just as we were getting the hang of it, our instructor would add or change a step that would short-circuit our brains and throw the whole sequence off, forcing us to virtually start from scratch. On a good night, we could almost make one full circuit of the room without spraining any part of our bodies, or each other’s bodies. But last night, for the first time, we were able to waltz all the way around the room, not once, but twice! I know! And just to make sure it wasn’t a fluke, we even did it again. We felt well chuffed.

And that was while our instructor was trying as best as he knew how to derail us, throwing in a couple of optional steps we could try, or reminding us to keep our frame solid. If you want to derail us, just shout out helpful technical tips, that’s the last thing we can think about while dancing. It’s like trying to walk and chew gum.

Helpful technical tip: You can build a perfect dance frame by giving your partner a hug, then, without shifting your stance, stand up straight and take dance position. Perfect frame. Every time. Wish he’d shown us that months ago.

Did a little foxtrotting last night, a dance that turns out to be almost entirely different from the foxtrot we learned when we started taking lessons about a year ago. Turns out there are two versions of the same dance, our teacher says, a “slow foxtrot,” the step we learned originally, and a just plain old vanilla foxtrot, a much livelier step.

The slow foxtrot is a slow step forward, another slow step forward, yet another slow step forward, and finally a quick side step with a little rise in the middle. You can throw a promenade or twirl in there if you like, but that’s icing on the cake. The basic step is a slow stroll across the dance floor.

The foxtrot is a lot more lighthearted and fun — and faster. Much faster. It’s pretty much constant movement around the dance floor, but I find it surprisingly easy to keep a clear idea in my head where we’re going and what we’re going to do next. I have a little trouble with that when dancing other steps. Actually, I have a LOT more trouble doing that. But foxtrot seems to come naturally.

My Darling B seems to like it quite a lot, too.

No dancing tonight – My Darling B’s feeling a little under the weather still. She came down with a freakishly nasty head cold last Friday night, spent pretty much all weekend in bed trying to sleep it off and was feeling well enough to try to tough it out through two days at work, but this afternoon her e-mail flashed across my screen: “We might have to skip dancing tonight. I think I’m having a relapse.” And she was still feeling relapse-ish by the time we got home, so we called our dance instructor and begged off tonight, promising to come in next week. Our tango’s going to suffer.