Fireball By Laura J. Oliver

I am on time, but my dance class is missing. I run down the deep stairwell at the City Rec Center, past the rock-climbing wall, where the bored instructor in the ballcap sits student-less as usual and yell to him, “Next time! Really going to try it soon!” which is a well-intended promise, but when push comes to shove, I always eye that towering, two-story wall with its dangling ropes, and wonder if that’s how I want to die. 

I continue down the stairs, cheers from a basketball game surging over me in waves, and sure enough, the room where we danced last week is dark, the door closed, and I’m momentarily confused and disappointed. This is our second session of Latin Dancing and I went all out in preparation, meaning, as the instructor suggested, I wore a skirt this time and I’ve got a hair tie on my wrist in case the room heats up again.

The women in this class are strangers to me, although a couple seem to know each other. There were eight of us at the first class, and for the instructor’s sake, I have been praying that everyone came back tonight, because she can’t afford to lose students. Her name is Nancy, she’s about 28 years old, wears a ponytail and glasses, and is a professional choreographer who calls out instructions in a lilting Spanish accent. 

As I hit the last step, a woman from my class runs out of a nearby room and smiles at me—“We’re in here! I came to get you.” And I smile back; the tiniest kindnesses are ridiculous in their impact. 

I feel the beginnings of a tribe stir my heart.

So, we are in a smaller and better room where the mirrors are unobstructed. And everyone returned! A couple of other students are wearing skirts as well. We practice the dance we learned last week, Fireball, and then move on to the Mambo. Then back to Fireball because we have the mental retention of bricks. 

But the more we practice the more control we have and the freer we get, the less we concentrate on the instructor and begin inhabiting our own bodies, dancing for whoever we are dancing for. You. Memory. Imagination. 

Sometimes I think we dance because of the days we didn’t, and for the days to come when dancing will no longer be on the syllabus. We have been briefly given another moment in which to defy gravity and the limitations of time. I was born in a flame, everybody gonna know my name, the music imagines. And like adolescents, who still believe there is no one they can’t be, and nothing they can’t do, for the length of the dance, we imagine that, too.

As we learn the Mambo, which is essentially another word for “shake it,” I am fixated on Nancy as she breaks down new moves. Like how to swing your hips as you rotate in a circle, swinging out slooowww, then fast- fast, slooowww, fast- fast. 

This is much harder than it sounds. Rotating your hips without moving your torso starts with your feet. Watch a hula dancer sometime. All that mesmerizing rhythm and grace are being engineered elsewhere. That’s the trick, isn’t it? To hide the mechanics of grace?

 When I compliment the woman dancing next to me, she suggests I move like I’ve got a hula hoop around my waist. Elbows up to keep our frame.

This makes me think of the first dance I ever learned. One day my father brought a hula hoop home from work, a new toy, then set it aside and taught us the Twist. It’s a new dance, he said, demonstrating. Just move like you are drying your backside with either end of a bath towel while putting out a cigarette with the toe of each shoe. 

Well. He wasn’t wrong. 

Funny the things that stay with you. 

I participate in another class at the Rec Center called Cardio Dance. Like Nancy, Leandra, who teaches it, is a pro, a joy to watch, and a challenge to emulate. But Leandra goes through the moves slowly, lets you think you’ve gotten them, then does a bait and switch, whipping them out at triple speed. Or she changes direction! 

We are all facing one way and suddenly she spins around, and we are supposed to be going in the opposite direction, leaderless—or sometimes, in any direction, it’s a spontaneous free-for-all. Decorum breaks down, and we rollick like teams in the Puppy Bowl. You can’t help but laugh, dancing with the rules tossed out, responsible for your own moves. Wait! I’ve got moves?

Wait… I have to change direction?

Sometimes Leandra just shouts for joy over the music or laughingly yells, “Uh-oh!” Like someone’s in big trouble now, like her body just got away from her, and who knows what’s going to happen. Even she doesn’t know; she’s following wherever spirit leads her. 

I always laugh because “Uh-oh!” means, “Let go,” and the words break something open inside me. A container of some kind that keeps me in here and you out there. 

But in that moment, façades fall away, and spirit takes us higher.

Time is our partner, beloveds.

Dance like the roof’s on fire. 

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Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.