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Thursday, October 18, 2018

Dancing.......

I love dancing. I am not the best dancer but I manage my steps well. I can follow beats and I have rhythm.
When I was young, I saw my sisters Imelda and Jeannette dancing the boogie and the chacha at home. I loved seeing them danced and swayed with the music. There was a six to seven year age gap between us. And even though nobody really taught me how, yet by just looking at them performed and practiced at home, I was able to distinguished between the two different feet movements of the dances and learned their basic steps not for long. When I reached teenage, the Latin dances became obsolete. The popular ones at parties during my high school days were the twist, jerks, boogaloo etc. No holding of hands. Haha. And although my strict father forbade me and my sister Helen to go to dance parties because he thought it was some kind of a decadent influence, yet we secretly danced our nights away. Infact when were studying at college in Manila, each time we came home for Christmas and/or summer vacations, we were popular invitees for parties. Our contemporaries in Cotabato City were eager to look at our latest fashions and dance steps. When it comes to dancing, I was most eager to oblige. Hahaha.
When my mother died in 1971, I came home to Cotabato to finish my college education. For want
of something to do, I enrolled and took Hawaiian and Tahitian dancing lessons under Mrs. Carmen Hoffer. Carmen Hoffer was a good teacher. Thanks to her, to this day I can still do a graceful Hawaiian or a mean Tahitian dance number. Then I got married at the age of 22 and folded up up my grass shirt and became domesticated. During the 70s disco era, I missed dancing so much. My husband Lucas wasn’t into it but sometimes together with him, upon invitation of my sister Jeannette, we would tow with my brothers Wilson and Willie to Disco 201 at Imperial Hotel, owned and operated by the Yu Family (in-laws of my sister Jeannette), free of charge with special reserved seats and treatment yet. My husband was game. He would freely danced with me on the crowded dance floor under the rotating disco ball with the blinking psychedelic lights, and the blaring sound  surround music that could shatter anybody’s eardrums. But it was fun.
One Masonic event, during the founding anniversary of the lodge, Brother Eduardo Rabago and some old timers began dancing the cha cha and the boogie. because I was so intrigued, my husband brought me to Ed Rabago and told him to dance with me. This was my first time to dance with a partner and I told him that I hadn’t really danced the boogie yet. His advised was for me to just hold on to his right hand and follow his guide. This I did so, and wallah, did I dance well? It was so much fun! From then on, I began to prefer Latin and/or ballroom dancing because of their graceful coordinationing movements.
My husband knowing well that I loved to dance, took free cha cha dance lessons every Saturday night at home with Mr. Pete Capocao, a friend (God rest his soul). It took my husband a year just to learn how to move forward and backward and another year to be able to turn around. Hahaha. But now, hurrah! Even though my husband Lucas is not a sauve dancer; still we manage to enjoy together as a couple on any dance floor and yes, we continue to do so to this day. Hehehe.


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