Daily Post Writing Prompt: Let’s Dance

This Daily Post Writing Prompt (from February 27, 2014) couldn’t have come up randomly at a more appropriate time.

The alumni from the dance school I was attending until I graduated high school in 2001 were asked to come back and be recognized at their 20th anniversary show in June 2018. I can’t dance anymore because of injuries, but it is merely recognition.  Well then, sign me up!

In my earliest memories of dancing, I’m under my auntie Nancy’s dining room table, (which had been pushed off to the side of the room), watching my mom, dad, aunties, and uncles all dancing on the hardwood floor to a never-ending stack of 45 records, dropping one after the other. I remember foot-high stacks of 45s all around the record player. The song that I remember playing most? Twistin’ the Night Away by Sam Cooke. Every time I hear that song, I remember auntie’s spontaneous dance parties. What are your earliest and fondest memories of dance?

I started dancing 30 years ago, in the fall of 1987.  I was almost five years old, and while I have many memories going back that far, I don’t remember those early days of dance vividly.  However, I do remember attending classes, learning Ballet at a barre that was meant for bigger kids, and tumbling on one of those big multi-colored tumbling mats.  There was this one song, it was about fishes.  I remember some strange lyrics – “swim little fishy, swim if you can.” Because my brain processes nostalgia and song lyrics (and nostalgic song lyrics) better than it ever processed math and science during my school life.

There’s quite a few different versions, including this one:

Seriously, I had no idea the Andrews Sisters had anything to do with this song.

But it is more than likely, given it was a class for pre-schoolers, I probably danced to the KidSongs version:

Oh goodness, this HAS to be the version I know (sans Elmo)!

My musical memory is insane!

 

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