Lace and Rubies

A friend of mine has a dance studio. He has a group session he calls CLAW. It stands for Cardio Latin Aerobic Workout. I told him he should call it LACE. Latin Aerobic Cardio Experiences. Just a difference between two letters and two words. Claw sounds to me like a restaurant that specializes in crabs. Here in Baltimore, Maryland, we are known for our excellent crab cakes.

Words are powerful and words can start wars, can begin love times and words can hurt, hinder, help and heal. I am a conservator of words and that means I take words and encourage everyone to ballroom dance. This has happened long before Dancing With The Stars became a television hit. I have been writing dance articles in dance magazines and on websites and blogs for twenty-one years now.

My theme is always to inspire and delight everyone to go out and learn to ballroom dance in some capacity. You can make your own dance magic by taking a group lesson with others for a less expensive cost or take a private lesson between you, your partner and your professional teacher. Either way, you will learn, maybe at a different pace but you will still learn and be the richer for it.

Ballroom dance has been known to help folks mentally be happier, it is good for your health and your heart. People who ballroom dance have happiness in their lives because they are in a social atmosphere with others and they use their minds to learn the steps, routines and movements. As you age, you must keep up your mental activities and stimulate your brain. Even if you go to a social dance and sit and perhaps dance only a few dances, you still have accomplished a victory.

Victories to me at my now age of seventy-seven encompass going to a studio dance and just arriving there. Elbert Hubbard said ” victory is a matter of staying power.”

Power you will obtain because you will work your feet, arms, head, mind, soul, legs and heart.

So I urge anyone who has ever had the ambition to go out and learn to ballroom dance, go and enjoy yourself. It is not what is done on DWTS television show. That is hype and non-reality for the average person. That is portraying ballroom dance in an unreal manner. Every day people do not take lessons for seven hours a day for seven days a week. The human body was not meant for those hard and unnecessary workouts.

The average person will learn at approximately one hour a week of education and maybe three hours of actually going to a social dance and trying to execute what they have absorbed in the class.

This is the way you learn in an intelligent manner, in a healthful manner and in a happy manner.

So Lace can be for you as Learning At Caring Experiences. Lace will be a happy experience and you will be so exhilarated for hours after you have taken a lesson, whether group or private. You will look forward to the next time and the rest of your days will be exciting and full of anticipation of what is to come.

We have been dancing for thirty-four years with a time out of two years when we were involved in an auto accident of a man texting and hitting us and our car hard. He damaged our bodies and our car, but not our spirit. All along, when we were recuperating from this horrific accident, I knew that someday we would be back to our (my) beloved dancing. Dancing is a force in my seventy-seven year old mind and body and along with family; dancing rates high up on my wonderful list of activities I love. I heard a saying on my favorite soap opera (they certainly have writers that come up with tender thoughts) that when you miss someone, that means you love them or loved them. That is so true about any hobby or event that we have in a former time. So dancing was misse, because I love it and what it does for my ego, my mind and my body.

There is a line I heard that said “there are things that are above rubies.” This meaning that there are things in life that are more valuable than real jewels. I love jewelry and a ruby and a diamond and the many other jewels are symbols of great happenings in our life. A diamond is given for an engagement ring between a young man and a young woman. A ruby can be given for an anniversary, Valentine’s Day or Christmas. A stone can be given to celebrate the birth of a child, a grandchild, an anniversary or even for a mom’s day present. Any other stone can be used the same way.

I have two friends and each one is a manager of a local jewelry store. The majority of their clients/customers are in the happy mode when entering the store. Sometimes, they are not happy about the price of the article they want to purchase. However, after making the purchase, a transformation usually occurs. If the bride to be is there, she is elated about her coming new ring, if a man is purchasing it for Christmas/Chanukah, birthday or mother’s day, he is feeling quite overcome with not only the payment charged to his credit card; he is surely proud he could make it, buy it and soon to give it. Dancing is like buying a new jewel. You will sparkle, you will anticipate, you will be happy, you will be content and most of all you will be entering a new world, new to you and very exciting.

On dancing shows, the participants stand before the judges and get praised rarely, they get chastised often and a lot of the time are put down. In real life, when one chooses to go to a competition to compete with his professional partner, they come out, they dance and then they sit down and wait for the next event called a heat. They do not stand before judges who no longer dance themselves and hear criticism of how they are doing and sometimes big putdowns as the judges did to Chaz Bono with one commenting on his rotund body by saying he looked like a penguin. Penguins do not dance, do not try to learn to dance and do not stay to hear an old time judge call him that. Real competitions, no judge admonishes your dancing abilities to your face. Awards are issued for your competency at that moment in that dance and no hysterical crying or tears appear. If you are happy you won, you smile victoriously, if you lose, you still smile because you are a good sport who had the courage to be in an event called a competition. Either way, win or lose, you still are a winner because you had the spirit to dance, to compete and to be there. That is the way dance competitions run and are successful.

So become a dancer, regardless of your now age, and know that you are above a ruby and that lace is not only a piece of material to cover a piece of furniture or to be worn as a blouse, it is this:

Loving (L)

Activity (A)

Constantly (C)

Every moment (E)

Believe in Lace and you will be above a ruby.