School Dancing

I was taught to dance at my secondary School.  In the gymnasium.   It was during P.T. sessions, when it was too wet or too cold outside to go across to the fields.

The girls would form up on one side of the gym and the boys on the other.   We would be taught how to approach a girl and ask her politely for a dance.  Embarrassing as hell for we didn’t speak to girls in those days. .  Boys spoke to boys. Girls spoke to girls. 

 There would be an old gramophone in the corner with even older 78 records , controlled by the teacher.  Disc jockeys had not been invented at that time.   We would walk through the dances, skip through the dance and then dance.  

The “Dashing White Sergeant” is the one I remember best, although I think there was also the “Gay Gordon”  

Ah! The Dashing White Sergeant!  In groups of six, three boys and three girls, standing alternately, lightly holding hands, very straight back, head held high, slightly turned to the right, we would dance in a circle, first one way, then the other , separate into groups of three, still politely holding hands, quite high, above the shoulder, then the boy in the middle would take one of the girls and dance down the aisle formed by the others, dance back again, and the next pair would do the same followed by the next pair, then join hands again , walk or skip towards the other three and skip back again, then the other three skip towards you and back again, then we all dance towards each other, I think you would stamp your feet, retreat, clap your hands, and the teacher would shout OCH AYE!, then you’d form an elegant  with your chosen partner,  which the others would dance beneath to meet another team  from the next group,  and we all do it again only now we would all shout OCH AYE!.   Then we might practice asking the girls for a dance, excruciating stuff.

“Would you care to dance the Dashing White sergeant with me”   Blushing boy, blushing girl,  And off we’d go again, och ayeing round the Gymnasium. .

This all proved very useful in later years when we discovered the discotheque.  You must remember the discotheque.   I recall a German youth club in Monchen Gladbach, that was where I discovered the discotheque.   They scoffed at us English, the German boys.  And the girls, when we tried to do the Dashing White sergeant on the disco floor.   You could always tell a brit was on the discotheque floor,  they would be straight backed, head held high, slightly turned to the right, moving rather stiffly while all around them were gyrating Germans, bending knees, rotating bottoms, twisting bodies, flailing arms, eyes closed swinging to the beat.  But then they, unlike us, were not properly trained how  to dance.

We got over it in the end of course.   You would get fed up of being rejected by German girls when you politely asked if they would care to dance the Dashing white sergeant.  

“Moctchen Sie den Schell weissen Unterfeldwebel mit mir tanzen?

And we discovered the twist.   And the slow dance snog.   After that the Dashing White sergeant didn’t stand a chance.  Nor did the Gay Gordon, they probably ran off with each other.

But now, in my declining years I like to think those long hours in the school gymnasium will not be in vain.    It will not be long before the likes of me and my generation are all in the care homes.   I doubt there will be discotheques in the care homes.  But there might be the odd evening of the Dashing White Sergeant.    Our time will come again.  Och Aye!