Once upon a time, I was a dancer. Salsa, mainly. I taught, performed, even choreographed. I was working 40-50 hours a week as a lawyer, and dancing up to 20.

I’m on the left.  There’s definitely stuff I would improve about my performance, but I never got the chance.  It was my first and last time performing that routine, and I left the country a week later.  Months of training, and this video is all I’ve got to show for it.

They were crazy times.  I actually think you can eat whatever you like as a dancer, you are just constantly hungry and the six-hour training sessions just burn it all off.  The problem is there’s no time to eat.  I remember I often had chocolate milk at training.  Lots of nuts, muesli bars, hot cross buns were a particular favourite.  If I ever made it home I would stir-fry some vegetables.

I didn’t dance again for months after I moved here.  Finally I found a really good teacher and started going to classes.  Everyone else was as obsessed as I had been back then.  I could see that if I wanted to take my dancing any further, I had to go back to 20 hours a week, and that just wasn’t me any more.  I miss teaching though.

Sometimes I go to swing dance classes at the 100 Club on a Monday night.  They have a lesson then a live band.  It doesn’t matter if I don’t go for months, I still see the same faces there every time.  But it’s always a different band.

Time to get back into it I think.  If I say it on the blog, I have to do it.