Andrew Kay: Let’s Dance

The body is weak but the spirit is willing

Oh how I love to dance. I love to simply let rip on a dance floor and feel the music flow through my body. Of course these days it takes some pretty full on arrangements and orchestrations to reach my tubby, late middle aged extremities – and even if it does get there the restrictions of being un-exercised and gout-ridden have taken their toll.
Once upon a time I would be first up, well that’s not entirely true, once upon a time before that once upon I time that I had leapt to I would hover nervously at the edges of parties and school discos, terrified of setting foot anywhere near a dance floor.
The once upon a time that I mean came a little later when I had left school and headed off to Chelsea School of Art.
That summer I went to Guernsey in the Channel Islands to work in a hotel for the season. I was a waiter, commis chef and barman and life had never seemed so good. I learnt how to do silver service, pour wine, make egg mayonnaise, spend money and drink – oh how we drank. Well this was Guernsey and a single whisky was about 28p, can you imagine.
Of course that was all relative as my weekly wage was £16. Still, after years of £1 pocket money and terrible saturday job pay (19p an hour) it was a prince’s ransom.

Back then the licensing laws prevented you from opening a bar in Guernsey on Sundays so it was a dry day, except if you knew where to go – and we knew.
At the end of my shift, around 9pm, I would shed my drip dry white short, elasticated dickie and Stayprest black trousers and don my civvies. Then a few of us would make the track over to Ronnie Ronalde’s Hotel where we would take advantage of his special license in the Viennese Ballroom. I know, hardly the place to look for a fashionable 18 year old – but we could drink!
It was the early ‘70s and we should have all been in a trendy club but here we were, waltzing around this extraordinarily chintzy place to the cool vibes of a three piece band, guitar, organ and drums. I will never forget that drummer, it’s hard to describe how he did it but if you spot me in the street then ask and I will demonstrate, I really do not mind.

The residents of Mr Ronalde’s hotel were, should we say stately. I mean even today I would be in the lower age bracket in the room. There was though something really charming about this room of elderly guests swaying in time to the band and gliding clockwise around the ornate room.
The experience did have its dangers though. I could at that time perform an adequate waltz thanks to the efforts of mum, but I was certainly not good enough to deal with the requests of some of the game old ladies who would ask us to dance. Once out on the floor they would expect far more than my mediocre three beat shuffle, oh no, they wanted to dip and reverse and sooooo much more. I did a lot of excusing myself and dashing off to the loos to escape.
The other danger was the lit cigarette. It was a pretty standard accessory for the ladies to dance with a fag in their hand or in the corner of their mouth. As they swished around, incendiary device in hand, they would often catch you on the arm or the cheek even and we often returned to our garden shed home with burns. Yes I lived in a shed!
Later that summer I started at art school. Chelsea was the very height of fashionable and to be fashionable then meant doing fashionable stuff – and that included dancing. Chelsea had great parties, I was at one of the early Sex Pistols gigs there and we had themed balls too, a fabulous Glen Miller style band once to which I wore a sailors outfit and danced with my friend Joy. Joy was wearing a powder blue period strapless gown borrowed from her mother and very pretty it was too. I was a pretty decent dancer by this point and I spun her around and around, throwing her out at arm’s length then drawing her back in close. We cut quite a figure on that dance floor that night. That is until I rather over enthusiastically spun her away and then back. Joy moved with elegance but sadly the dress did not and failed to return at the same speed. Of course this meant that the cups were displaced and sent off centre revealing Joy’s rather fabulous upper half in a manner that we had not intended. I drew her quickly into my chest but it was too late and we got a rather unexpected round of applause before she could adjust her apparel and her dignity.

As I head towards 60 I marvel at the music of my days, the dances that we danced. We jived and jitterbugged through the seventies American nostalgia boom, swayed to Roxy Music and posed to the weird warblings of the new romantics. I did a bit of pogoing too but not much as it was hard to make it look good whilst avoiding being spat on. Then came disco and wild nights where we never left the dance floor – how those clubs made any money at the bar I will never know as we danced until we were ready to drop.
By the time I hit my forties though the music left me cold, I couldn’t get to grips with heavy club sounds, pulsing beats that went on for hours on end. Dancing then became an occasional joy, reserved for weddings and parties in people my ages homes.
I recently went to a lovely wedding party and had a very jolly time – but I sat out the dancing until very near to the end when my good friend Carla literally dragged me onto the dance floor. How I regretted having sat it out until that point. I loved it and very soon gave in to the beat of the wedding band and threw myself into things. I didn’t get burned, the music was familiar and the bar had done more than enough to remove my inhibitions. Thank you Adam and Helen for a great night out and Carla for making me dance. The next day my feet ached like billyo but my heart was light as a cloud.