Don’t drink and jive

Ho ho ho. I used that line tonight. It was met with a polite ‘ha’, but not a lot more. Ho hum, there’s plenty more where that came from.

Keeping with drinking and jiving, I managed to practice my new moves at a wedding over the weekend (congratulations Helen and Ed!). Refreshed by a few scoops, I decided that I was a dance commander and tried to lead CP in a few flat hand turn and bouncey hand combos. The most surprising thing occurred when I told my mate Dan that I was learning jive. Bracing myself for the ensuing mockery/funny look, I was amazed when he revealed that he’d done a jive class the previous year and then followed it up with a dash of salsa. He then called to Pete, also at our table, “Tom’s learning jive”, to which Pete responded, “Oh yeah, modern or traditional?” So take that, haters.

So, week 2 in the Jive house. I was there a few minutes earlier than last week, which meant that I had time to fit in some clumsy small talk before class. Turns out that the couple that I initially guessed were from North America are actually from Gothenburg. Unfortunately, they didn’t appear to be very interested when I said that I knew people in Halmstad and had visited Sweden twice, and the conversation ended far quicker than I thought it had any right to.

The class got underway with a recap of the bouncing hands that we began with last week. Easy. We again followed that with the raised hand turn and return and all was going well. Everyone seemed more relaxed than last week and I was feeling quite good about my jive moves. During the break the small talk improved and it turned out that there were lots of talking points within the group of 4 that I sat with: we are all involved in research of some description, 3 of used to live in Leeds, and 1 writes for ‘Psychologies’ magazines (it’s exceeding it’s expected sales figures).

After the break, a new move was introduced, which I’m going to refer to as ‘flat-hand turn with wrong hand catch’ (look it up in any jive manual). I’m going to write down the moves for my own benefit as much as anything else, as there quickly became more and more components to remember. From the top: flat-hand push turn, right hand catch, right arm turn, in, out, right flat-hand push turn, left hand catch and return. Blimey. That all seemed to come together pretty well. Unfortunately, it began to break down when we then added 4 bouncey hands and an over hand turn immediately after. And when Julie (teacher) stopped counting us in and told the men to decide when to come in with the music, my flimsy northern Lionel Blair façade began to creak alarmingly.

The class ended with a quick demonstration by Andy and Julie of what we are going to learn next week. Things are going to go up a level: close-holds and men spins. Ladies, your feet may have enjoyed two weeks of safety but next week it might be worth wearing toecaps.