» I’ve taken up West African dancing

In my defense, Beginner West African Dance Class was Carly’s idea. I did agree instantly, practice imaginary dance moves in the shower, and asked everyone I know if they had a batik print sarong. One could say I went willingly.

From the Alvin Ailey Dance Extensions webite:
A high-spirited, high-powered rhythmic dance experience that combine body, mind, and spirit in an energetic union of the music and dance of the people of West Africa. Accompanied by live drummers, this electrifying class loosens up the body and exposes you to a part of West African culture. Sarong recommended, but not required.

The Alvin Ailey American Dance Center is a place of dance legends. It’s housed in a massive new, 8-story complex on the West Side just south of Lincoln Center. Alvin Ailey Dancers look like this:

I haven’t danced in what rounds up to a decade and am neither black nor muscular. Carly has muscle and very long legs, but is practically see-through. This is not exactly our scene even though Carly is sporting a colorful head scarf and I’m really tan right now. Luckily we’re both severely lacking in shame.

Class is held in a massive rectangle of a studio with ballet bars on three walls and a floor to ceiling mirror on the fourth. The ceilings are 20 ft. high. The lighting is jarring. In the corner is a piano and eight massive African drums. For the next hour and a half (yes, one and a half hours) we are at the mercy of a man in the below pants (but in neon green), before a group of who-knows-what kind of people doing things intended to fully loosen our bodies and connect us with the African culture all under tragic lighting in front of a giant mirror. Yes, we paid for this class.

As we stretch and talk and try to figure out how to tie my Canal Street-purchased sarong, a cross-section of Manhattan trickles in. It’s like someone picked up one entire car of the F or N or 6 train at 5pm and re-routed it to this room. There’s a 50-year-old woman dressed for Halloween (long, flowy witch-like dress, black-and-white striped leggings). Three to five hippies in various combinations of earth toned, work-out clothes and actual scarves from Africa. A collection of ballerina-seeming girls (and boy) who maybe came from class on another floor. Someone’s grandmother in a a checkered top. A tattooed and be-speckled probably-Lesbian. One or two people who look like they are really from West Africa and came here to actually dance in the harvest season owing to a general lack of dirt fields and drum circles elsewhere in Manhattan. A lanky gay guy in designer sweatpants. And a single, straight, short, Jewish dude who absolutely graduated from Brandeis in 1999 with a degree in computer engineering. So we fit in because there’s nothing to fit in to.

Maquette – our instructor – is from Senegal (Carly did some research). He speaks a version of English that we can vaguely understand, but most of what comes out of his mouth is scat-like drum sounds that he uses to describe the movement. “We gone to boap da ba ba and den bip bip bip da bip bip”. He is about 5’5, 100% muscle, and moves like chimpanzee in a cheetah’s body. And he’s wearing the previously described pants.

We start out with basic dance warm up moves. Rolls of the head. Stretches of the arms. Some breathing. An annoying about of crunches. He has vibrant, African drums and singing playing in the background. I am loving life. It’s all so reminiscent of my childhood of dance classes, but now I’m all cultural and into world dance and took the subway here and have boobs (sort of).

Getting a feel for the moves is the next step. Maque (that’s what I’m calling him in my head) is taking us through the basics and adding in arms and head movement. “You bap de done done and den bippity bipp bipp with de head.” I’m evaluating my styles against the actual African students and the one Jewish dude. So far, I’m on team Jew.

Exertion level: 4 Sweat level: 0

Now we put all the basic moves together into a routine. Two bip da bip bips and then a dad a dad a dad a clap. He’s running us through the steps over and over and over again and then meshing them together. It’s hard, but we’re working through. I now assess myself somewhere between the ballerinas and the witch.

Exertion: 6 Sweat: 2

The moves are hard to describe in writing and, no, there is no YouTube of our class. There’s the pick up the grain and push it up to heaven move. Then we have the squat and walk side-to-side while pounding chest and moving head left to right – the tribal strut. There’s also this graceful like prayer hands side-to-side thing, a lunge and thrust of the head with raised arms ditty, and finally my favorite, the flapping knees bent with arms circles that travels left and right – the African Mashed Potato. Somewhere in there there’s also a jump, but I never quite got it.

We do this routine 900 times. Exertion: 10 Sweat: 12.

Then it comes time to do it as the West Africans do. Traveling. Across the floor. In sets of three. While everyone watches.

Drums are pounding. Drum men are yipping and shouting and adding their own riffs and solos into the mix. Above the booming is the slapping sound of our now-destroyed feet pounding out every move. All members of the class have completely let go to the point of adding their own moves in and dancing the dance even after the music stops. We’re clapping for each other, cheering on the drummers, and traveling across that floor like it’s soul train after a night of tequila shots.

If the tourism board of Africa set up shop outside the door to this studio they’d have booked no less than 15 trips to Senegal. I am in a state of literally believing that crops will grow somewhere because of my 90 minutes of passion-filled movement. Carly looks three to five shades darker to me. We are hooked. “We’re coming back every week,” she says, as we prance out of the Alvin Ailey Dance Center like we just came from Advanced Jazz Theory.

“You know,” I say in the cab as we rush to shower off before Thursday night trivia, “I’m now a high-risk candidate for performing those moves in public after a few drinks.”

“Oh, you’re not high risk, “Carly says, moving her now-loose hips around in the seat to Rhianna on the radio, “it’s inevitable.”