I realized this week that I make certain assumptions about social dancing that may not make sense to people who don’t do it often (or at all): I assume that it is a generically social action that it’s just as generically social as dinner conversation, and I assume that because this is the case, it’s not something that should induce stage fright (not like singing karaoke might, just as a totally and completely random example).

Some people are amazing conversationalists, others aren’t. Most dinners involve many small conversations, some with people you know and like, others with people you don’t know at all, and some with people you don’t actually like but put up with for the sake of a congenial dinner. Most conversations include at least a couple of missed cues, most of which aren’t important enough to notice, some of which are hilarious, and only a few of which are actually embarrassing (though most of them may feel embarrassing at the time). There’s give and take, lulls and crescendos, excitement, boredom, grace, awkwardness….

In fact, laid out this way I guess that, for me, the only real difference between the two forms of socializing is that dancing is better exercise.

I forget that most of my formally trained dancer friends got stage fright before performances while I never did. I forget that my palms would sweat before piano performances while another student carried on as if it were the most natural thing in the world to press music out of the keyboard. And I hadn’t yet experienced the utter shock of realizing that I can barely even stand up while holding a microphone while others held it as easily as they’d hold a spoon.