Glen Echo Park, Maryland

“Now it’s my turn!” he said as he dropped my hand and spun himself in circles on the dance floor.

That captures one of my favorite dance floor moments of all time.

To paint the picture, there is a place in Maryland called Glen Echo. They offer swing dance lessons on the weekend and if you go for the lesson usually you can get in for free.

On top of getting in for free, they have you switch dance partners frequently during the instruction, so you get to dance with a number of people who may now have more likelihood of asking you to dance more later – for one, the ice has already been broken, you know each others names and have already touched each other; and for another, people can get a feel for those who have some skill who they might not have known about before. This worked out well for me, as someone who can follow pretty well, but who rarely went with men and wanted to be able to dance.

Another great thing about this location is that there was lots of space, and usually lots of people. Plus, the age range was pretty wide, and the gender ratios were not usually that far apart.

So, I went with my roommate often enough that there were regulars that recognized us and would ask us to dance. And dancing with someone who can dance would open the door to dancing with more people.

Some of these men who could dance, and would ask me to dance with them, were between my fathers and my grandfathers age, and to put it plainly, were closer to my grandpa than my dad. And they were fun (as opposed to creepy).

As introduced above, one of these older men was particularly fond of spinning. He liked to spin the girl he was dancing with, and he frequently insisted she couldn’t have all the fun. It made me laugh every time!

There is something about dancing that I have always enjoyed. It makes me feel more graceful and beautiful than nearly anything else I can think of.