do the lindy hop!

I can't get enough of this dancing! You see this clip used a lot and it's one of the first things that comes up if you search YouTube for lindy hop. Don't you think that's pretty amazing since it was filmed in the early '40s, long before the digital age was even a twinkle in its grand-daddy's pixel?

I really want to be able to dance like this. I signed up for lindy hop classes a couple of years ago. In the first lesson (as well as getting a huge blood blister on the sole of my foot) the teacher couldn't stop laughing at me and said the oft-quoted words, "You're more like a crab than a dancer." She was right and, in my defence, there are some very crab-like moves in that clip. The next week, the lindy hop classes got cancelled and the fee refunded as still only three people had signed up. I don't have much luck when it comes to dance classes. The year before the crab-dancer incident, I went to boogie woogie classes. I loved the dancing, but I was the only person there without a partner. Sometimes I got to partner the dance teacher or she would make someone lend me their partner for a few minutes. Oh, the humiliation, especially the night I had made stovies (involving vigorous frying of onions) before the class and everyone kept saying they could smell soup. Usually, though, I had to dance with an imaginary partner and spin under my own arm. One day, an art student came to take some photos and I'm sure there is a folio/exhibition somewhere with photos of me (surrounded by happily dancing duos) dancing like a crab with one arm in the air, holding hands with my imaginary partner.