So I Think I Can Understand Dance

I have a secret to tell you.  I don't understand dance.  I wasn't aware of this until a few years ago.  I figured I understood.  People move around.  They enjoy it.  It's their way of enjoying the music.  It's their way of getting exercise.  I get all of those things.

Apparently it's also some sort of a secret language.

My wife watches a show called So You Think You Can Dance.  I play on my computer while she watches, and I glance over at the TV every once in a while.  I can appreciate how fun it is to watch them do difficult maneuvers.  I also really enjoy the synchronized movement.

But, I realized that there was a whole new level that I was missing on one particular dance a few seasons ago that was supposedly about cancer.  After the dance, the judges were crying, Robyn was crying, and I was wondering what everyone was crying about.  I found myself wondering how a person would watch the dance and even guess that it was about cancer.

Fast forward a few years to this past Friday.  We got tickets to the So You Think You Can Dance concert in SLC.  The people who are on the show each season go on tour after the season is over, and they put on a show that has numbers from the show as well as numbers unique to the tour.

When I first got there and realized that 80% of the audience were female, and 60% of the females were teenagers, I was a little skeptical that a non-teenage male would enjoy it, but I figured if nothing else I could amuse myself by watching the teenagers around us taking hundreds of thousands of selfies as they waited for the show to start.

We went with Robyn's sister and her husband.  Robyn made sure to let me know that she needed to sit next to Megan so she could talk to somebody who gets it.

Luckily, Robyn has 2 sides, so I was permitted to sit on her other side.

I decided it would be important to do my best to sound like I get it.  Megan gave me an excellent suggestion.  Every dance is about life.  I totally said intelligent stuff like, "I really like how that piece represented life."  "Didn't you feel like that number reflected the trials we face in life?"  "That number really spoke to me.  It was so true to real life."

All of those brilliant things totally had Robyn fooled.  She totally thought I got it.

But, I have a secret.  I didn't get it.  At least until there was one number where all the dancers wore either black or white clothing and they had hats that looked like different chess pieces.  The black and white dancers were doing a dance battle of sorts.  I turned to Robyn, "I totally get this one!  It's chess!  Also, it represents life."  She was way impressed with that analysis.

In between some of the dances they had little vignettes that taught dance moves.  My favorite was when we learned how to do Bollywood.

Robyn is demonstrating the hand movement from our Bollywood lesson.  I am opening my mouth for an inexplicable reason.

Surprisingly enough, I really enjoyed it, despite note being a teenage girl and despite not understanding the secret language..  I may not have understood it quite to the level that I convinced everyone I did with my excellent acting, but it was an enjoyable evening, and I would go again.  It's like I'm sort sort of a dance connoisseur.