Soon enough, the leaders all rotate, and now I am dancing with a deeply earnest young man with sandy blond hair whose eyebrows are knitted together in fierce concentration as he tries desperately not to step on my foot. And then he does so. And then he does so again.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“It’s fine!” I say brightly.
I genuinely don’t mind; I recognize him as the fiancé of the Rihanna-loving bride. I spent the last few minutes listening to her giving him an earful, so I’m rooting for him to sort out his toe-stepping problems before he works his way around the circle and back to her. I notice his bride-to-be giving me a vaguely insulting once-over, like she is assessing whether I’m a devious homewrecker, and then I watch her mentally dismiss me, which is somehow even more insulting.
After a moment, we both start counting out loud to ourselves. It’s a relief to be dancing with someone who is as clueless as I am.
“I think I’m getting it!” the young man says with a smile and then steps on my foot again.
“Okay. Time to rotate!” comes Ollie’s voice.
Now I’m dancing with a young man who keeps looking longingly at his fiancée over his shoulder. They are the John Legend couple, and he can’t seem to believe that they’ve been separated for six whole minutes already. He looks like his heart can’t take it anymore, and I keep apologizing for minor errors when I’m really apologizing for being part of his one-man version ofBrigadoon. Will he ever be back in her arms again? Or will fate, and a few other dance partners, toss them upon separate paths for eternity?
Ollie tells us to switch again, and now I am dancing with a very assertive woman who is clearly an experienced dancer already, although perhaps not in West Coast Swing.
“You’re a great leader,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” she says. “I date women, and I didn’t really see the point of learning the follower position.”
“Why does there have to be a leader and follower?” I ask.
“Is this your first dance class?”
I shrug. “I mean, I took hip-hop in college. And a pole-dancing class at the insistence of my college boyfriend.”
She snorts.
“Oh I know. I stayed with that guy for two years,” I continue. “Two incredibly stupid years. My early twenties were serial monogamy with idiots.”
She laughs. “So, the way the leader-follower thing was explained to me is that the dance turns into chaos if nobody is making the decisions. But it’s not like one person just tells the other what to do. It’s more like the leader introduces the topic of conversation, and the follower gets to respond. Like the leader says, ‘What if you do this turn?’ and the follower says, ‘How about like this?’”
“So it’s a conversation where the man introduces all the topics? Sounds like dates I’ve been on.”
“You could learn leader,” she replies with a shrug.
“I think I’ll focus on learning not to trip over myself before I start making any decisions for someone else.”
“I’m Jody, by the way,” she says.
“Laura.”
“Nice to meet you,” she says. “Always a pleasure to dance with someone who’s not destined to quit as soon as she’s back from her honeymoon in St. Barts.”
We have moved on from the sugar push to the left-side pass, and she confidently guides me around her, giving me a few pointers on my foot position. A sugar push, I was a little disappointed to discover, is just a simple step that keeps your partner not too far away from you. The left-side pass involves switching position with your partner, and it is the first one that makes it look like you are doing something fancy.
“Why West Coast Swing?” she asks after we try another pass. “You saw a dance on TikTok, right?”
I am about to lie and say that I caught a video of some viral dance and fell in love with it, but I decide to be honest. “I have a crush on the instructor,” I reply.
She glances over and shrugs. “Well, looks like you’ll be dancing with him soon.”
I glance over and see that Ollie has been stepping in and out of the rotation at a certain point in the circle, dancing with various followers as he demonstrates certain moves. I’m next.
“Okay, time to rotate,” he calls.
He smiles when he notices me standing right in front of him.
