I’m really excited to announce that I’ll be doing a fifth adventure this year! This autumn I’ll be learning to dance the tango with my non-dancing husband, coached by the brilliant Paula and Peter McAuley of Tango Northern Ireland.

I’ve always been a very enthusiastic dancer and had at one time (when I was 6) wanted to be a ballerina. I went along to ballet lessons but soon decided the gig was not for me. Here’s what stopped my dancing career in its tracks: we’d been doing this brilliant thing with skipping ropes (straight-forward-no-frills-actual-skipping), which I could actually do (unlike all the other things we were asked to do in the class), when the teacher announced that our ropes were tired and needed a rest. I looked at the other kids, my palms raised skywards and my head shaking in disbelief (well, I might not have actually done this bit). I knew there was no way that rope was an animate object, and ,therefore, there was no way it needed a rest. I then made the fatal error of pointing out the rope was not actually alive. That, dear reader, was the end of my dancing career 😉 .

In my early 30s the urge to dance re-emerged when I trained to be a fitness instructor.  Every Monday evening, after I’d run a hardcore circuit class (think Superstars), I’d channel my inner Christina Aguilera and segway into a (relatively clean) dirty dancing class. The classes were surprisingly popular, in spite of the very cheesy choreography, and everyone completely ‘went for it’.

I miss those classes and I miss the joy and freedom of dancing. When I was thinking about my #OldDogNewTricks adventures for 2019 tango came straight to mind (I’ve always wanted to have a go at it), but it took me until now to find a teacher! Big thanks to Sarah Jane Abbot (Johnston), choreographer for The Faerie Thorn stage production, who put me in contact with Peter McAuley 🙂 .

I’m completely thrilled to have found Paula and Peter. They’re going to help us develop choreography that works for both me (I’m definitely into all the leaping about 😉 ) and for my husband (who, at this stage, would prefer to just stand still and look very moody, which is a skill he has honed over the years 😉 ). We’ll be travelling down to Belfast in the autumn to join as many of the Friday night classes as we can, and we’ll have some intensive 1-1 sessions too. I think we should be ready for a final performance by the end of November/beginning of December.

To help me get into the dance mood, I’m going to undertake a mini dance adventure on 19 May. I’ve booked myself onto a ‘rock goddess burlesque’ dance workshop at the Crescent Arts Centre in Belfast with Soup DuJour,  one of the top performers in Ireland and a well respected producer throughout Europe.

Here’s Soup DuJour doing her thing 🙂

Right. I suppose I’d better go and limber up then 😉 . (Oh, and if you’re new to my blog, you can find more out about my #OldDogNewTricks project here.)

I am just going outside and may be some time.

JT 🙂