Putting on My Dancing Shoes

I’ve done a surprising amount of dancing since I’ve been here. Since dancing is such a huge part of my life back home I thought I’d highlight some of these experiences in South Africa. Way back during our first two weeks here we went to a church one night and had a dinner cooked by some of Corvell’s family members. A couple of them sang for us, we played a game, and Corvell’s nephew Jesse taught us some dancing. Jesse’s mom owns a dance studio and he knows a lot of traditional South African dances and also more modern dancing. He taught us a style of dancing called gumboot dancing which involves a lot of stomping, hopping, and smacking your hand against the bottom of your shoe. A lot of the moves are syncopated so it’s difficult to stay on the beat with the dancing. We were all laughing at ourselves the whole time as we kept getting our feet twisted up. After that they put on some popular music and our group just started dancing around on our own. When they played Shakira’s new song “Waka Waka” we got really excited and started singing at the top of our lungs. This song was written as the 2010 World Cup theme song and it’s extremely popular in South Africa right now. Not surprisingly it’s also become a bit of a theme song for our study abroad group as well. Seeing our excitement, Jesse decided to teach us some of Shakira’s choreography for the song. We were tired and sweaty from all the dancing that night but everyone agreed that it was some of the most fun we’ve had in a long time.

I hardly ever go clubbing back home, but I’ve been taking out clubbing three times here already. Since the women I live with are still in their 20s, they still enjoy going out every once in a while. A couple weeks ago they took me and a few other girls from my study abroad group out to a club in Cape Town called Tiger Tiger. This was what they call an “English” club, meaning it plays music in English, although it’s basically a normal type of club like we’d find in the U.S. Being in a place like that I almost forgot I was in another country since it was so similar to something I’d find back home. However, people tend to get dressed up a lot more when they go out here than they do in the U.S. You can still wear jeans there though and not feel completely out of place. You just can’t wear tennis shoes. A week later I went back to the same place with my entire study abroad group. You can imagine what a group of loud, boisterous American college students would be like here compared to the South Africans who are a little more conservative. That aside, it was fun to have the chance to let loose with my friends and celebrate how much we’ve been enjoying South Africa.

My hosts also took me to an Afrikaner dance club called Opskop, which was a very different experience. Here I was exposed to an Afrikaans style of dancing called “langarm,” which is a type of partner dancing that is like a very informal waltz. At this place, when Afrikaans music is played this is how people dance, but occasionally they play English music and everyone dances like I’m used to in the U.S. For the Afrikaans dances, girls are expected to wait off to the side until a guy comes to ask them to dance and during the dance itself the guy leads the girls through the different moves. Sunet, Rika, and Janci (my hosts) explained to me that every guy has his own style and the dance will be slightly different depending on who a girl dances with. Most people seem to come to these clubs as large groups of guys and girls, which is what we did. The single guys will usually make a point to ask every girl in their group for at least one dance to make sure everyone gets a turn for a few dances. I got a chance to dance a few times with Sunet, Rika, and Janci’s guy friends on the night they took me. It was a different experience and something I had never done before, but I liked it. The gracious and chivalrous behavior that guys are expected to display at this club seemed unusual and old-fashioned to me since this environment is very rare in the U.S. I felt a little bit like I was in the middle of one of the dances described in a Jane Austen book, where guys invite girls to dance with them and girls sit around and talk about how guys dance afterwards. Hahaha. I kind of wish we did this kind of dancing back in the U.S. It was fun to have nice guys glide and twirl me around the dance floor. Lucky for me, I had dance and music training so I was able to pick up the steps pretty quickly and not embarrass myself by tripping over my feet too often.