Solid Gold Dancer, Baby

A Dance-Nerd is Born!

Fall 1980
Second Grade
A teensy town in Northern Minnesota, pop. 333

From my bedroom, I hear the front door go ka-thump! I do a little jig.

At last! Free! My fifteen minutes of bliss.

And how will I spend it? Doy, dancing!

Mom is a teacher’s aide at the school, so she has to be there fifteen minutes before I do. She told me goodbye before she left, and I pretended I was still getting ready. Nope. I’ve been ready to leave for three minutes now. I’ve just been pacing in my room, waiting to hear that I’m alone.

The second I am, I rush out to the living room, throw my bag near the front door, and turn on the record already waiting in the player: The World’s Best Classical Music. My favorite song from Carmen blares through the speakers.

I am a Toreodore!

I don’t really know what that is, but this song makes me feel proud and tall. I march around the room—because the title tells me it’s a march, but even more because the music tells me to. I kick my legs high or fling my arms like I’m carrying swords. Every time those cymbals crash, I slash!

Until the moment when everything goes queenly and floaty.

I know exactly when it’s coming. I’ve listened to this song a hundred—no, gotta be a thousand times by now. Right on cue, I parade around like I’m wearing a very long dress with an even longer train. I pretend my hair is long, too, instead of my boy’s bowl-cut. Today I even have a tiara. Then the music changes back and I’m off! Marching and flinging and kicking again.

Toward the end, everything goes whirly like Dorothy’s house caught in the tornado. Tornado is close to Toreodore, so I spin super, super fast and then stop!

I stomp tah-DAH! And nod BOOM.

I turn to the big picture window, arms raised in triumph, ready to take my bow to my audience of five hundred—no, five thousand people who—

My heart leaps up into my throat and then takes off sprinting like it’s a hamster on a wheel inside my chest. It tries really hard to scram outta there, but that wheel just goes round and round and round. Not my mind. That’s gone as blank as a chalkboard that just got erased, because there really is an audience out there. Not just my play-pretend one.

It is an audience of one, and there couldn’t be anybody worse in the whole wide world.

Henry Anderson is out on the street in front of my house, watching me. He is Johnny’s oldest brother, the scariest of all the big kids. He smokes and drinks and swears and fights and throws spiders on me and wrecks our forts and pins Johnny to the bed and whales on him and—

And Henry points right at me, does a few of my dance moves like they’re the stupidest thing he’s ever seen, then doubles over laughing.

I want to crawl under the house, never to be seen again.

Racing into my bedroom, all I can do is shake. This time, all the flinging is me onto my bed, face down where I wish I could hide my blazing cheeks forever. I’m a thousand—no, a million times more embarrassed than when Becky made fart noises behind me on the first day of kindergarten and blamed it on me. After that, everybody called me Harty-Farty.

They still call me that.

There was also that super embarrassing day in first grade when I got caught making vroom-vroooom-reeeeer noises to go along with my handwriting exercises. I didn’t even know I was making them until Mr. Bridger growled, “Who’s making those noises?” He was looking right at me, and I just stared at him and shrugged. It’s the only time in my whole life I ever got my name put on the board and had to stand in the corner.

But that was only my favorite teacher growling, and all my classmates laughing, and it was only motorcycle vrooming.

Henry Anderson seeing me dance like a Toreodore and the Queen of England?!?!

That is a million—no a bazillion times worse! I can hardly breathe. I’m sure my cheeks will start my bed on fire any second, and that would be horrible. Besides, I can’t stay here forever. I have to get to school.

My head shoots up as I remember that. Is he still out there?

I dart down the hallway and poke my nose around the corner. Henry hasn’t come up to stare into the window, so very slowly, very carefully, I slink-crawl my best kitty-prowl under the piano bench, behind the railing, and over to the front door. I peek out from behind the curtains.

No Henry.

Whew!

That doesn’t mean he’s not hiding behind somebody’s house or that he won’t lie in wait on the next block. I hope Gilbert hasn’t told him that I sneak to and from the school through the woods to avoid being shark-circled by my classmates. Well, at least I’m safe for a minute. I grab my bag, knowing I’m going to have to run in order to make it in time for the bell.

Tomorrow and forever after that, I will close the curtains whenever I dance, because I can never take the chance that any of the laughing, pointing neighborhood kids will catch me at it again.

Because not even big, scary Henry Anderson will ever stop me doing what I love most in the whole world!

Are you ready for the Nerd-Out?

Because this DanceStory Section is not only my dance history, it’s the history of the dancing and music that made me.

We start in the early 70s—can you dig it?

I have always been a dancer.

The addiction began with my mother’s piano playing, my parents’ guitar strumming, and their records of groovy tunes and classical music. Besides March of the Toreodors, I had my special list of dancey songs. Whenever they came on, I could NOT sit still. Not if you paid me in pizza or mac-n-cheese. Not if you bribed me with ice cream. Not if you threatened me—okay, there were a few threats that would have worked but I still would have been dancing IN mah head, and you couldn’t have stopped me.

In case you don’t know them, allow me to introduce you. Skim and skip at will. Or heck, take the full geek-out to the bottom of the rabbit hole with me:

And of course:

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Then, like…dude. The 80s hit.

Of course, the 70s really just bled into the earliest years of the 80s, just like the end of the decade had more in common with the early 90s than it did with what is stereotypically thought of as the iconic “80s vibe.”

Take that new music show we were treated to in 1980. This pop hit series had something that American Bandstand and Soul Train lacked: an in-house, pro dance crew that choreographed solos, duets, and group extravaganzas to the songs of the week. According to the show’s wiki, it was described in the New York Times as:

“the pop music show that is its own parody…[enacting] mini-dramas…of covetousness, lust, and aerobic toning—routines that typically have minimal connection with the songs that back them up.”

No wonder I loved it!

I mean, really…I was pretty much there for the dancing. Since many of the day’s popular tunes didn’t blow my hair back, and I had a really difficult time even as a kid with interpreting lyrics if I couldn’t read them, it was all about the lyrca, the lifts, and leg-warmers for me. Often, I would find myself drumming fingernails on my thighs as I waited for the guest stars to give way to what I had waited all week to see: the Solid Gold Dancers, baby!

The first time I ever caught sight of them on our beast of a TV with the push-knob button and the big, clunky dial, I found my new idols.

Soon thereafter, I would have been equally happy as one of the Fame Dancers…

Or Alex the Flashdancer.

Okay, technically I didn’t want to be Alex, in spite of her name which she made so much cooler than I did. I only wanted to be Alex on the dance floor because she did things off the dance floor that shocked and scared me, especially to her boyfriend.

But Alex-Dancing? I soooo wanted to be her! And all her friends! All at the same time, forever and ever, amen!

If I couldn’t be any of them, I at least wanted to be my cousin Jill’s mini-me.

That dream became reality whenever we visited or vacationed with the family of my dad’s brother. Jill has been a dancer since she was three. She still is, and the dancers she turns out *ba-dum-tss* are champions, including her daughters.

Jill is the one who first transformed all my exuberance and my way-too-much, way-too-huge energy into a dance form that anybody else might enjoy watching besides my tickled, chuckling, eye-rolling parents.

We had no dance in my rural hometown, and it wasn’t possible for me to travel to the “big city” of Duluth for lessons, so during holidays and family visits Jill taught me the dances she had learned for competition. She dressed me up in her costumes, and we presented little shows for our family.

Of course, in the middle of all this…drumroll…it happened.

The Middle School Obsession

It was the spring of 1982. No bleep, there I was, sitting in the movie theater when a new obsession struck. You remember about me and obsessions, right?

“We call those ‘special interests.’”

Oh. Goodie. I’m glad you like your term. Me? I call them my passions and obsessions, and we need to discuss the elephant in the room regarding the one that has mutated, spawned, and overtaken my dance world. (Things spawn and mutate a lot around here. Wut? It’s a lab.)

From my intro to the Hyperfixator’s Haven Section

When Autism Brain meets ADHD energizer-bunny thrusters, this is just what happens. It has happened multiple times throughout my half-century on this planet—obviously, since I’ve devoted an entire Substack Section to the special interest combo (Dance & History) that was so deep and abiding that I got college degrees in it and built a career around it.

Back to 1982 in that movie theater: it was official. The Annie Years had begun. Soundtrack, sheet music, full color Broadway book, VHS, costumes, non-stop dancing and singing —my mom said I had “Annie on the brain.”

Truth.

And if it was on my brain, it needed to be on the brains of everybody around me because…well…why wouldn’t it need to be? 😝 We did not remotely understand this phenomenon at that time, so there were many individuals who (rightfully) felt the need to throw the towel in—because yes, it is often easier than puttin’ up a fight against Hyperfixation Mode. Others wanted to jab me with a safety pin, put up fisticuffs on my chin, or get a moment’s peace by powering down hyper-bunny with a Mickey Finn.

Nobody ever did, though.

C’mon, I was ten.

Before we knew it, I was eleven and I had acquired a group of enthusiastic performers who let me drag them down my energizer-bunny hole and serve them my Mad Hatter tea. For several months, I taught them a lip-synced dance to my new favoritest-of-all-favorite songs for a school talent show.

In order to make costumes, we rifled through my dad’s ripped, paint-stained work clothes, and we scrubbed our knuckles raw on the basement floor. I played that soundtrack so obsessively that my mom finally had to hide the vinyl.

But I would not be thwarted! I could sing those songs in my sleep—and I did!

Oh, how I dreamed of running away from my nerdy reject-life in my rural hometown that just didn’t understand me. Someday I, like an Annie-flavored Princess Leia, would inspire a rebellion of the oppressed and outcast through my songs, my dances, and my woefully straight, cowlicked, dun-brown hair!

And my big 80’s glasses.

And yes, especially my braces and headgear.

Which I had to wear all night and even all darn day.

Ahem.

✊ On to the dance rebellion! ✊

Because I am an INFP and my hair has been hot pink more than once—RAWR! As such, I feel a little called out by this cartoon:

From Reddit: hunting for the cartoonist. Seriously? You didn’t credit this gem? Anybody know whose this is???

Yeahhhhh…these kinds of things happen with me around. Okay, fine, these kinds of things started happening once I got contacts, confidence, better hair, no braces, and a clue.

Okay-okay, fine. Sort of a clue.

Remember the dancer mutiny I led during Temptation of Belly Dance? I also built a whole career around telling other black sheep dancers, “Yes you can! Don’t ever let them tell you that you have to do it their way—RAWR!”

But as a kid? Even though I truly had been born to twinkle my toes, and even though I was natural performer, an instinctual director and teacher, and an eternal ham, when it came to dealing with people offstage, I was a social catastrophe. Come to think of it, I probably would have done much better with a squadron of robots. Thus I fell woefully short of becoming a Rebellion Leader.

So I became a Dastardly Infiltrator instead.

MUAhahahaha…

© 2020 Hartebeast

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UP NEXT - The Rebel Reject Infiltrates the Base:

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You can find all the DanceStories HERE.

You can find the rest of my rabbit-hole obsessions that need to be corralled into a Section that you can mute at anytime HERE.

If you’re looking for all my art & nature stuff, that’s HERE.

And the Elements System stuff is HERE.

Seriously, you can opt into or out of any one of these Sections by visiting the Substack website on the desktop view and adjusting your settings in Subscriptions. I will take no offense. It’s pretty ridiculous around here. But for those who share my obsessions, geeking out with you is what makes it so fun. Woo-woo!