By Natasha Collishaw
Many Ottawa residents who pass through the downtown core probably consider taking a dance class. Fluorescent-coloured posters inviting you to shimmy into belly dancing or slide into tango decorate virtually every signpost on the north end of Bank Street.
It seems so easy. For a small time commitment – sometimes only four hours – maybe you too will become one of those beaming, sequin-clad dancers on the posters. They seem far removed from the cluster of glum transit-users who gaze wistfully at the posters in between staring at their watches or glaring at the misleading bus schedule.
The $10 classes seem like a small price to pay for an escape from the day-to-day reality. But will you actually learn how to dance?
Most of the advertisements can be traced back to one dance school, Dance studios.ca on Chapel Street. They offer many varieties of dance instruction from six-week courses in specific dances like flamenco to a one-time, four-hour, “salsa crash course.”
Last winter, I took a course entitled “Latin dance only” with a friend of mine. Each week we learned a different type of Latin dance – salsa, merengue, cha-cha, tango, and rumba.
To say we actually learned any of the dances is misleading. What we did learn is how to step on each other’s feet, bump into other couples who were equally confused, and to step-touch to the beat in a desperate bid to look like we knew what we were doing.
We spent much of our time trying to out-wave the other dance couples frantically competing for the attention of the instructor.
That is not to say that the people who offer these courses are unscrupulous; they are only attempting to meet a large, but unrealistic demand – the well-documented desire for pleasure without commitment. This is what all the drop-in yoga classes around Centretown are about. Or a “person-centred” six-week philosophy course at the Arts Court that claims philosophy brings happiness.
That may be true, but it is unclear whether happiness will be found by sitting through a series of seminars on the topic.
But there is an uglier side to this cultural phenomenon. A new generation of young people is turning away from serious relationships in favour of hook-ups, journalist Laura Sessions Stepp explains in her recent book Unhooked. Hook-ups are romantic encounters that occur outside of the context of a relationship, requiring no commitment. The effect of these encounters over a prolonged period of time can include emotional problems, and increased risks of unwanted pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, Stepp says.
It is this same lust for easy thrills that prompts Ottawa residents to flock to dance crash courses. These people want to learn how to dance without committing the time and effort, while people who seek to hook up want all the benefits of intimacy without putting energy into maintaining a relationship.
In the end, both groups end up getting stepped on and used by others.
Catering to our society’s desire for instant gratification may be good business. The husband and wife team on Chapel Street attract enough customers to have dance classes all day every day of the week, despite the challenges of their out-of-the-way basement location.
The real issue is what the popularity of these courses say about our culture. A crash course by its nature requires you to learn something quickly, only to forget it later.
Many realize after taking courses like these that if you want to learn an art form properly, it requires dedication and effort. But should this not be obvious? It is possible that our culture’s love of the “quick” and the “easy” is blinding us to reality.
For most people it takes at least six months of practice a couple of times a week to salsa dance well, estimates Greg Shawulsky, the owner of Dance studios.ca,. He compares learning to dance to learning a language, requiring effort and constant practice, in class, at home and in a nightclub or party environment.
“But of course, everyone wants to learn it as quickly as possible,” Shawulsky says.
“How long it will take a person to learn how to dance is always the million dollar question.”