ONE
"To dance is to be out of yourself, larger, more powerful, more beautiful. This is power, it is glory on earth and it is yours for the taking." Agnes de Mille
Men's cologne. It wafts down the studio steps and settles there in a cloying fog ready to engulf anyone brave enough to enter. Soft focus photographs of dancers line the stairwell. I stare at the first one, a woman wearing a sea-green, two-piece number laden with diamantes, her dark hair slicked back. Her face is man-eating leer under Barbarella eyelashes. This really isn't the female model I want to emulate and, for an instant, I'm tempted to run. But the prospect of grocery shopping, or researching the least expensive repair place for my car - the next activities on my 'to do' list - stop me. Harry Connick Jr's voice croons upstairs and a gentle thrill ripples through my gut that no grocery store or panel shop could match. Forget Barbarella; the instructor I spoke with on the phone insisted I could dance for the sake of dancing. No expectations. No pressure. Nothing outside my comfort zone.
Still, as the music, chatter and laughter intensify with every step, I feel myself disintegrating into an eighteen-year-old entering a college fraternity party for the first time. Except back then I was flanked by girlfriends. But there's no one and nothing here to cover my awkwardness. No alcove to hide in, no counter or large potted plant full of plastic cups leaking cheap beer to linger behind. I'm here and there's no way I can hide it. I hover by a poster of a young man in a black bolero jacket, his arm arched in flamenco pose with Strictly Ballroom scrawled across the top. Then I swear I hear my name, the splinter of 'Mad -', but no one seems to have noticed I'm there.
A tap on my shoulder. I swing around.
'Madeleine?'
A scar, wide and freshly shaved, cuts across the jawbone. He's short, not much taller than me, with sandy-coloured hair gelled up in front. His gut is edging over his belt. I stick out my hand to shake his.
'Yes. David?'
He seems surprised at my handshake offer and hesitates before taking it. 'You found us okay?' Rough hands.
'Yeah, I'd already driven by.'
Truth is, four days earlier I was practically marooned outside. Desperately lost and more than a little bit late for an appointment with our new GP in our newly designated home of Melbourne, I had swung the car over to the side of the road and yanked my thirteen-year-old son, Josh, out of the passenger seat in time for him to retch on the sidewalk. Behind him, I wrapped my arm around his stomach and stroked his hair off his face. He heaved, then heaved some more, deep and empty. Then he started to cry.
'My ear hurts so much!'
'It's okay, honey. Really, it is.' I drew a Kleenex from the stash in my coat pocket and attempted to mop the spittle from his mouth and jeans. For a couple of seconds he let me do it before jerking away.
'Stop it, Mom.' He grabbed the tissue from my hand.
I thumbed the GP's phone number on my mobile only to be told by a voice recording that the office was closed. Josh would have to go to an emergency room, to an unknown hospital in yet another unknown location. Cars charged by, the reds and whites of their lights reflecting off the rain-wet streets. Some of them honked at us, the noise all sharp irritation that we were blocking a lane. So many people, yet no one I knew to reach out for.
Pull yourself together, Maddy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
I sucked in my breath then, steered Josh back to the car and began searching through the cumbersome book of Melbourne maps for the nearest hospital. It was then that I spotted the dance studio. Peering through the windshield for a street name, I saw the sign for 'Body Rhythms'. In fluorescent blue, it flashed through blackened wetness above the shop fronts across the road. Couples, their arms raised in partner hold, rose and swayed in the warm wash of yellow light behind a glass panel. Laughing, a woman released her partner's arms. The man, all cheeky grin, said something and she giggled again as he spread his hand over her shoulder blade and drew her back in position. The music must have stopped because the group suddenly changed partners. Some shyly, some grinning, they each entered another's physical space to dance again.
And, for the first time in a long while, I was touched by the possibility of joy.
Now, standing here and facing David, I think I must have been imagining that whole 'joy' thing. After all, anything would look appealing next to your son puking on the sidewalk. David gestures towards two wooden chairs beside the dance floor. He's holding a pen and a clipboard. 'You said on the phone that you've danced before. Was that in America?'
'Yes.' I don't know what to do with my hands. I cross my legs and use them to grip my knee. 'A long time ago.'
'What brings you to Australia?'
'My husband's job.'
I hate saying it. Hate it. It sounds like I'm some kind of kept woman, someone who exists solely for the benefit of her mate and the children she's spawned with him. The rest of the time I'm obviously floating on a cushy raft buoyed by my husband's money.
'Did you dance any medals?'
These sound important. Very official. The fact that I've never heard of them before in my life must mean I have a huge gap in my training. 'Medals?'
'Bronze, Silver, Gold - exams. I think the system is international. I thought it was international.'
He's sitting, legs slightly apart, leaning his elbows on his knees. Out on the floor, a woman about my age is following her instructor's lead through a rumba. She's chattering as much as she's dancing, her steps loosely marked. But another woman, younger, is at the far side of the studio. Her body is taut, her legs all long toned muscle in her short black skirt and fishnets, her steps precise in two and half inch shoes as she winds and spins through choreography with her partner. And, despite myself, I can't help measuring what I was against her. Then I wish I hadn't because I'm sure I was never that good, even when I was seventeen, strong, fit, and danced every day after school at Lucinda's.
Shit. This was a bad idea.
I feel David watching me, waiting for me to speak. 'Sorry,' I say. 'Yes, I took tests. I don't remember anything about medals, though.'
David follows my gaze to the young dancer. 'That's Felicia. She's been dancing for years. She's off to San Francisco to dance in a pro-am comp with her instructor, Gavin.' He nods at her partner, who is standing in front of the mirror showing her different options for styling her arms. For a dancer, he's surprisingly stocky. Like a ball of muscle, he exudes strength and the confidence of entitlement. Chest hair curls around the worn neck of his navy blue tank top.
'How old is she?'
'Twenty-two, I think. No wait. Twenty-one.'
Panic must be all over my face because David starts speaking to me quickly. 'I've known dancers as young as six and as old as eighty-five.' His smile for me is sympathetic and I find some comfort in the possibility that he's seen my kind of dancing insecurity before. 'I don't think about the age of my students. It's just all about the dancing.'
He's watching me curiously now. I press a lock of hair behind my ear then remember my grey roots will show more that way. I've had my hair coloured once since moving here, at a hairdresser's within walking distance of my house. But they went too brassy, transforming my hair to a shade of cherry wood. Now it's just too red, hanging frizzed out and shapeless around my shoulders, grey roots sprouting.
I nod towards Felicia. 'Well, she really is amazing.'
'Not bad.' He stands and reaches out for my hand. 'Shall we?'
No we shan't. I'm suddenly a birthday party donkey. Someone has found my tail and nailed it, along with my backside, to the chair. Pulsing Latin music swells, and the room fills with Felicia's spins and the other woman's chummy banter with her instructor. 'No, wait.'
He looks at me, our held hands suspended between us.
I'm blustering. 'If you think she's just "not bad", you're going to think I'm a disaster area.'
David drops his chin to his chest and laughs. When he looks back up at me, he's obviously struggling to stay serious. 'I doubt it.' With that, his grip tightens and he yanks me out of my chair and takes me in his arms.
Compact muscle, the whiff of cigarette on cotton. He's holding my right hand in dance position, waiting for me to commit my left hand to his body. His shoulders are lower, his back broader, than Geordie's. I lay the fingers of my left hand on his arm, over his bicep.
'Do you know the box rumba?' he asks.
I'm wishing I'd brushed my teeth one more time before I left the house. 'Vaguely.'
He draws back and holds my upper arms and tells me to do the same with his. 'Back right, side left, forward left, side right. Like a box.'
I get the step pattern quickly but my movement feels disjointed, as though my hips and legs have atrophied from disuse. He leads me through a slow three-step side spin. I get that, too, but the emphasis of my rhythm is wrong. I'm walking, not dancing, stiff and rusty like the Tin Man from The Wizard of Oz.
'Listen to the beat,' David coaxes. 'Slow, quick, quick, slow. Hold that slow step. Lean into it just a bit longer. Hear it?'
'I think I do.'
Raising his arm, he leads me in a small walk around him. I follow, chanting the 'slow, quick, quick, slow' mantra under my breath.
'Too easy,' he says, and stops. He steps away from me, arms crossed. 'How about a cha-cha?'
'Sure.'
I startle when he takes me by the hand to lead me to the stereo system. As a wife, I believe I should repossess my fingers, deliberately keep my grip loose. Eight-year-olds hold my hand. My sons. My husband. Before then, boyfriends held my hand, or men who had some kind of interest. The last man who held my hand tried to slip his other up my skirt. When was that? Ten years ago? Fifteen? Back in the days when I had a career, a nanny, a wardrobe full of tailored skirts and high heels and some semblance of a figure to go with them. For a fleeting second I wonder if David is running some kind of gigolo service on the side. It's legal in Australia after all. Just the other day I drove by a billboard that said, 'Sex. No champagne or flowers required.'
But David is holding my hand naturally, his reach so casual as to suggest habit. Looking around the studio, I see the other instructors in constant contact with their students, clasping fingers, grasping a wrist. Touch so frequent that it's meaningless. And really, why would his touch have been intended otherwise with me?
Did you know...
Christine is passionate about dancing and in 2007 reached the Latin American semi-finals?
Dancing Backwards in High Heels is available through bookstores across Australia, or online from these retailers:
or buy an autographed copy through Paypal.
You can find more pictures from Christine's Dancesport days below.
Christine competing at the Tattersall's 2007 Australian Dancesport Championships.
Photograph courtesy of DANCESPORT photo.
ORIGINAL AUSTRALIAN PAPERBACK
'Written with panache and flair, this charming story captures that loss of identity that can come with marriage and children. Madeleine is 42 and, despite loving her family very much, she feels so isolated that she has to do something about it. That "something" turns into dance classes. The joy of music and dance transforms her, although as Madeleine discovers, the bump and grind of Latin can take you into dangerous territory …'
Australian Women's Weekly (April 2008)
'Dancing Backwards in High Heels is an exploration of one woman's search for identity against the backdrop of being forty-something, a full time mother and wife, and living in a new country. It also examines the issues of family and marital relationships, and the impact of infidelity, both real and contemplated. Madeleine is a likeable first person narrator and the problems she is faced with are familiar for many women, and believable. An insightful exploration of one woman's complicated life.'
Aussiereviews.com
'Oh no, not another novel about How I Found Ballroom Dancing and Then Found Myself. But wait, there's more. Darcas's plot has a few twists that make the story of 41-year-old Madeleine Hutchinson unique. This yummy mummy is an expat from Chicago, who loves her hunky-but-obtuse American businessman husband and cute sons. But dancing proves a much-needed escape from an alien culture (even the Melbourne Cup brings its traumas). You'll be guessing to the end, and come to care about Madeleine in the process.'
Mx Newspaper - Pick of the Week
'Dancing Backwards in High Heels is an insightful exploration of one woman's journey of being a wife, mother and resident in a new country [while] struggling with her identity.'
The Weekly Times
'Madeleine is in a rut, but that changes once she starts Latin American dancing lessons. A beautifully written novel about a woman finding herself again.'
New Idea - Must-reads
'I suspect that dance studios throughout Australia have scores of lithe and vibrant middle-aged Maddys, but I'm willing to bet that the long-lashed, 25-year-old Hugh with no attachments is something of a rarity. American Maddy, new to Australia, fumes at how hard it is to get a repairperson to care. Her husband's not a bad bloke, but a washing-machine crisis is strictly women's business. (The scenes of domestic strife hit bullseye after bullseye.) One day Maddy signs up to learn the rumba. In her novel about what happens when the body becomes young again, Christine Darcas brilliantly evokes the invasive thrills of Latin dancing. By page 100 your feet will be tapping.'
Australian Country Style
Christine competing at the Tattersall's 2007 Australian Dancesport Championships with Peter Bowen.
'Competition photographs courtesy of DANCESPORT photo'.
Gold Star Latin exam with instructor Adam Blakey.
