A beginner again.

I danced my first ever quickstep with an elderly man at an "old time" tea dance recently. The hold wasn’t the ballroom hold, as you see it taught and danced today, with the held back head, and the upper bodies away from one another. It was more or less the same hold as in tango dancing. If you’ve ever watched any films from the 30s you’ll notice during clips of social dancing that, again, it’s pretty much the same embrace as when we dance tango.

Everyone was very friendly, but I was a bit nervous just because everything was new. I wasn't following the man very well. "Just listen to the music." he said. "There, now, see, you've got it." It was such a simple thing to say.

I asked another man, “How did you learn these dances?” I’d say he was in his sixties or seventies.

- We were late learners. At 37, we started. 

- And how did you learn? 

- We went to dances. People there split us up, we danced with them. Now though, in the last few years, dance schools have started up and people are being taught the modern dances. It’s all different now. 

- What are the dances at this tea dance? Some of them are Scottish, aren’t they? 

-Country dances. And some modern - the quickstep, the foxtrot, the square tango. 

I went to another old time dance about three years ago, with a friend, where there was a similar mix of country and "modern" dances, and do you know, that's exactly what happened. We were welcomed, other dancers there split us up, and we learned from these people who could already dance. And then we tried it together.