Yesterday I went to a mural festival, strangely enough I was there for the music and not the murals. However, when I arrived what was announced as a DJ set was simply a dude in a stage and nobody dancing.
I sat down on a ledge to wait for people to start dancing, but none would come. I danced sitting down. At a distance I saw two girls coming towards me, and sat on a bench like four meters in front of me.
They were... incredibly enticing to me. They were wearing black lululemon shorts with a matching crop top, their bodies decorated with numerous tattoos, some yogi-like and others trashy. One of the girls pulled out a cigarette from her purse and began smoking. This was strangely even more enticing to me, all of it whispered "yoga bad girls" to me and greatly excited my imagination.
They eyed me and said something to each other. Then they switched sides. I looked confidently at them. One of them held my gaze, we smiled at each other. I danced in place. She smiled back. She was beautiful, hazel eyes with a bit of asian fire in them.
I approached in the worst way possible: I asked them if they could look over my backpack while I danced. Then I went up to the stage, danced a while, and when I looked back hazel-eyes was alone, her friend had gone somewhere.
I sat down with her and asked how her day was going. From close up I could see she was probably in her mid-twenties, a face so beautiful it was mesmerizing. But conversation from her side came in monosylables. After a bit of back and forth I stopped asking questions and danced in place again. She did the same.
After two minutes of both dancing while sitting down I said "Well, I'm heading out now, have a great day". and she was "Oh? already, ok, bye!". At that point I understood I had tanked, I wasn't frustrated about it, but I wanted to understand why it had gone wrong so early. In fact, even if it hadn't tanked at this stage, it would have tanked later, so it was fine if it failed early.
My conclusion was that you need to be explicit with what you want out of a situation. I wanted to dance with them. I suspect they wanted the same, all I had to do was ask: "hey would you like to dance?" with a smile. A "no thanks" wouldn't have put me down, I would then go up and dance by myself. Straightforward and simple.
This is not a story about a failed hook-up but of a failed dance. What I'm learning here is how to dance, part of dancing is enticing a partner to dance. This exploration is not about hooking-up (though I won't complain if it happens!).
After the mural festival failure I went to Place des Artes to see a band called Brö. The music was good but not ideal for dancing, the singer however would bust out some good moves and I would copy them. There weren't many people and I think the singer noticed me because we would playfully lock eyes and bust the same sexy moves.
Later I attended another concert and ended the night with DJ Mara, whom I had already danced to at the nightclub (this time it was at the stage). Whereas dancing in a nightclub will attract dancing partners, this is not the case in concerts. Dancing with a stranger in concerts requires that you be close to a stranger to likes to dance with other people.
I can't believe how this has taken over my attention almost completely. I haven't gone to yoga or to the gym in order to conserve my energy for dancing. I'm dancing 4-5 hours a day, a lot of it low on my knees sweating kind of dancing. Everything between my hips and my waist is sore and yet the first thing I think when I wake up is "where am I going to dance tonight?". The answer for tonight, Monday, is unfortunately "you're not dancing tonight" because there's no dancing events today, they resume tomorrow. Instead, I'll work as much as I can so that I am free to dance this week.