A dance recital, retro/vintage

Our little village has a thriving activities association for all ages in the community. For a number of years, I participated in their hiking club, a marvelous experience in discovering the mountains we see from our house. Loving dance and having no clue how to do anything, I also joined the jazz and salsa classes. Unfortunately, they were too advanced for me, and I quit both after I broke my foot falling in my living room! A few years ago, they started a country line-dance group, which I found amusing being in France, but we didn't get involved. Last year, it seemed like a perfect activity for the two of us to do together, and we've just completed our second season. This weekend was the end of the year spectacle for all the dance classes, including ours.

The Cowgirl Queen

For dress, we had to wear white tops and have cowboy hats.  We didn't have either.  (The boots will have to wait for another year.)  We managed to find decent hats to buy locally, and of course I intended to make our white tops. I had a particular idea in mind for myself, something I've wanted ever since Debra Winger wore something similar in Urban Cowboy. While I'm no longer the same age either of us were almost 35 years ago, I'm old enough to be outrageous enough to go for it now. I already had the perfect pattern, then I found the perfect fabric.

The Cowboy Doc

 
 
Doc Leo liked the same fabric and wanted his shirt from it, too. I looked over the ancient patterns I had, then I decided to go with the one from 1976 that had no separate collar stand, not wanting to take away from all the embroidery of the fabric. Since he hasn't bought any shirts for years, I have no idea what the current trend is in men's shirt styling, but we figured he could get away with being outrageous, too, in a country setting. I finally decided that the current mode involved much smaller collars, cuffs, and front plackets, but this pattern really seemed to fit the fabric. 

Such beautiful matching

How classy

I love the way the buttons really picked up the pattern of the embroidery, which I bothered to match up on the pocket.  I also bothered to put in the back detailing on my top since I was going to be facing my back to the audience as often as not.  You can check out more details if you care to on my pattern reviews of the shirt and the blouse.
 

Bringing the past into the present

It just so happens that Saturday Night Fever was on TV last night. Since I doubt we've seen it since it came out in 1977, we watched it again. Well, would you believe the first appearance John Travolta made was in a shirt whose styling was identical? I guess my pattern was pretty accurate for the times! Would you also believe that there was this whole disco routine happening on the dance floor that totally reflected our own country line dance? (I believe there actually is a connected history.) So he was totally 1977 American, I was totally 1980 American, and we were both totally admired by the thoroughly modern French.

Sometimes life can be kind of fun.

Cheesy Jewels

We are still in the debutante class; it takes several years to catch up enough to "the big guys."  For me, in addition to learning more new steps this year, I've gotten more confident in my abilities to go it alone without watching everybody else, something I never achieved in the other two dance forms I tried.

Both classes dressed the same.  The French all end up looking more American than we true Americans do, having spent almost 25 years trying to blend in with them!  Besides the required Americanism costume, I got myself some earrings and a necklace, something I've avoided like the plague over here.
 
Now I really blend in with the French!  I can look American!

Our class did two dances.  Here's a video of the first one called Two Boys, and then the video for Miney Moe.  My cameraman did a really nice job capturing us.  Both of us did better in practice than for the performance, and I made a super boo-boo right in front of everybody, but otherwise, I think we did okay, and everybody else, including the teacher, was really impressed.  

Howdy, folks, here we come

Yee Haw

Adios, adieu, au revoir, goodbye ...

If you care to see the same dances from a more centered but less close-up viewpoint, here is another version of the same performance, recorded by someone else.  And if you'd like to see what the advanced class did, you can see what a number of dancers can do besides help our beginner class .  That class also did another happy number, totally out of the country mode, which is really quite fun to watch.

This year, our teacher's partner has started a couple of other new dance classes, one of them being rock and roll.  Most of those students are either current country students or past ones who couldn't do both, so it's still all in the family.  You can take a peek at their version of being American, too.

Well deserved repose

All in all, it was a fun evening.  A big mix of dancing including little 3-4 year old ballerinas, teenage hip hop, adult zumba, rock and roll, and country.  Lots of variety among all the different age groups.  Small mountain communities certainly don't miss out on life by not living in a big city.  And our own teachers deserved the bouquets the village gave out to all the teachers.


Now for our combined dance classes end of the year party this coming weekend!