On this sunny day, I walked from my home in south London to Notting Hill. It took about 75 minutes and I plotted a lovely route through Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens. London is full of gorgeous parks, and these are two of the biggest and best.
At Notting Hill, I had dinner with Liezel and Judy. Liezel and Judy are friends from primary school. After 14 years of zero contact, through Facebook we discovered we were all in London. Today was a little reunion.
On my walk back from Notting Hill, I did something a little bit crazy, perhaps. As I said in my last post, I’ve been feeling frustrated at not being able to dance to my current favourite song. Actually, an even greater source of dance frustration is that I now live in a room/house without any space for dancing. I was very spoiled back home in Melbourne. We had a huge recreation room with a wooden floor downstairs. The room was even big enough for me to have private dance lessons with my Latin American dance teacher.
In Kensington Gardens, between the picnickers, soccer players, people doing yoga, and frisbee games, there was green space for me to dance. Dancing in a public park is something I’ve done before, so after a short hesitation, I walked over to a patch of warm sunshine and dropped my backpack.
I clicked ‘Górecki’ on my MP3 player and started spinning. I was happy — I had so much space! But, sadly, I was self-conscious. I also confirmed that I had no repertoire and could not last the six minutes of the song. Sigh.
After that track, I switched to my hip hop playlist and immediately had a larger bank of moves! I loosened up and started really to enjoy myself.
Halfway through the first hip hop track, a man and woman wandered into my grassy patch and smiled at me. I paused, uncertain. They shook their heads, gave me thumbs up and continued walking by.
I danced this way for about 10 minutes. I don’t know how silly I looked, this girl doing hip hop on the grass of Kensington Gardens to music no one else could hear.
In the end, I enjoyed it a lot because that grassy patch was the only space that I’ve had access to for a long time. However, self-consciousness limited my pleasure. I wish I had some private space somewhere to dance.
You’re making stuff up, Joan! No-one is so admirably free spirited.
That is so superb! Let me make a little confession here. I CANNOT dance to save my life. I know what they all say. Anyone can dance. I’m just too self-conscious. I intend learning someday though. It can’t be that difficult even for me, can it?? Lol.
It’s so amazing that you had the guts to dance all by yourself, between all of those people. Hats off to you, girl! Way to go! Don’t feel stupid. I can list a zillion people (myself, included!) who would do anything to experience even a fragment to the freedom you felt then. Enjoy yourself!
Oh, I’m embarrassed now. I wasn’t trying to be gutsy!
I was actually telling myself off for being such a wuss. It was, in fact, thanks to the people doing yoga that I convinced myself to dance the way I wanted. I reasoned that yoga was not too different to dancing…
Oh, no it isn’t! Not different at all 🙂
You shouldn’t let what anyone else has to say, stop you. Have fun!