The Dancing Queens

I’ve already warned everyone around me, (which my girlfriends are greatly anticipating) that when this thing passes and my leg is back to its tip top form, I’m definitely going dancing. I dare anyone to tell me otherwise. I have done my fair share this year thus far and had a lot more nights out planned, prior to my accident.  So I will sit and wait patiently, silently plodding all the places I will hit once I’m back. In this family we love to dance.

Somewhere in my parents’ 70’s paraphernalia storage there is 16mm footage of me doing the robot and many other dance skits. My parents would have elaborate disco dance parties in their basement in the 70’s. (Much like everyone else?) I discovered they were weekend basement disco ravers. The adults were busting it to the Slush, the Hustle, the Robot and couples/group disco dancing; Dance Fever style. Most of us kids were (supposedly) nestled in bed with our pj’s on, listening to the music blaring from the basement. There was no way I was going to lay in bed and let them have all the fun. I would sneak down the steps, one by one until I blended into the brown panelling walls at the bottom of the stairs. I danced, slushed, and hustled with the best of them. At the tender age of 7, I was a disco dancing prodigy.

At any opportunity through my adolescence and adulthood I was dancing at clubs, sometimes 5 to 6 nights a week. On stage or off stage I would sweat it out from the moment I walked in until the music shut down.  In the 80’s it was dancing to all things Mod, from Depeche Mode to The Cult to mosh pit slam dancing. In the 90’s it was pure Grunge and the amazing House with its deep techno beats and all night raves.  With clubs like the Boom Boom Room, The Night Gallery and Catch22 I never skipped a beat.

Fast forward to the here and now, I am Phylishia Rashad to my younger sister’s Debbie Allen. Or better yet she’s Spink and I’m Forcible. My sister is a choreographer and owns her own dance school.  I’m more a pony version of Riverdance to her Fosse Fosse Fosse. She is a trained dancer, I am her trainee; constantly. We’ve spent many times hysterically laughing at the dance studio until we couldn’t laugh anymore; stitches at our sides at her attempts to choreograph a fluid number for me. We end up imitating hoochie dancers at nightclubs, falling over again with laughter.

Fondly I do remember though, years ago as I’d be getting ready for a night out; in my room with Nine Inch Nails blasting on my ‘ghetto blaster’(gay!)  and us screaming into hair brushes (our faux microphones), my sister the observer/protégé taking it all in. She would dance alongside me. We are the Dancing Queens.

So sweet sister, will you teach me how to dance again?