I attended a dance competition that I did *NOT* compete in. However, several of the folks I've been taking lessons with did participate, so I went to support the team.

There's a thing with comprehension. If you don't understand the rules, be it chess, ballet or football, you can watch, but it's nothing but meaningless movement.

As you start to understand, you see what's going on, and once you're really good, you see why they're doing it.

I've done enough ice skating that I can watch olympic skaters and say, "Yeah, they just flubbed the triple and took a double. Their foot wasn't balanced right for the launch."

But looking at dance was just a bunch of colors flowing around the stage.

Now, I've reached the stage in my dancing comprehension where I can recognize the basic moves and say "that's a salsa" and even some tricky moves, and fit them into my understanding of the basics. I'm not up to understanding the really tricky stuff yet.

Gene Kelly's job is safe.

The session I watched was largely Latin dances - Salsa, Samba, Tango, etc.

I grew up with Herb Alpert and every copycat group putting any song that couldn't escape to a latin rhythm, so it was fun playing "Name That Tune" when it had a new rhythm and tempo.

The competition was on May the 4'th - Star Wars Day. So, of course they included the Star War's theme as a dance tune. To a Latin Rhythm.

Then they played "Never gonna give you up." I never suspected the competition would be a giant RickRoll.

The dance studio where I've been taking lessons had a pot-luck pic-nic. It was fun to talk with folks that I otherwise only dance with. We normally just gaze into each others eyes and gently whisper "one two andthreeandfour".

One of the ladies I've taken a bunch of classes with is into anthropology and ancient clothing styles. She agreed to do some research for Bard & Sigurd's travels into Byzantium and Persia, which is cool. She found out stuff about the clothing styles that I hadn't found in my rather cursory research.

The only dancing we did at the picnic was "The Corona Cha-Cha." This is a dance they developed during the Covid lockdown. You do the basic cha-cha steps while holding onto the opposite sides of a 6 foot pole.

It was an invention of necessity in 2020, and now it's a tradition.