Dancing for Spaghetti

After a hard day's work yesterday, I schlepped home and was just putting my feet up when the phone rang at it's usual ear-meltingly loud volume. It was my friend June, the boss of this fashion/model thing, inviting me to her place for spaghetti. A call out of the blue like started my Spidey senses tingling (as they do at times like that). Did she want to drop me from the lineup completely due to my completely mediocre last couple of rehearsals? Did she want to push me into being the last dancer? Or did she just want a young, naive toyboy? My mind was (like, literally) awash with the possibilities. Eventually, I just put it down to being overly-paranoid and hailed a cab, expecting a hearty meal of spag bol. It turns out, after all, that my hunch was right. Before digging into probably some of the only vaguely-authentic spaghetti in China, I had to go through a couple of hours of more rehearsals. I only realise now how stiff and unnatural I was before last night. Once again, my routine was altered, making it the fourth time in four rehearsals, although by this time it wasn't really a shock to the system. After doing my stuff and meeting a few new people we dug into the (very good) spaghetti and talked about June's new book, the show, China in general and some things which I probably shouldn't repeat for fear of being deported. On the plus side, Now I know never to use a spoon when eating spaghetti, not even for twirling. Having an etiquette doyenne as a friend is a lot more useful than I thought it'd be. This was all followed by cherry pie, tea and more rehearsal. And guess what? My routine was changed for the fifth time, albeit to a lot easier and more natural style. Before it was very slow and sexy, but dancing slowly to Thriller is a real challenge for me. It's almost as if I have to ignore the primary beat and listen for something else which I can only hear half the time. And, though I never really noticed it at the time, (deliberately) dancing out of rhythm is incredibly mentally taxing, making my moves too tense and upping the stress even more. At least now I'm doing something more like what I did on the dancefloors of Dunedin and Downtown (I was going to write Auckland, but it's not quite so alliterative...) I'd never pulled off fast dancing like this in front of spectators before (not counting dance clubs of course), but they seemed pretty impressed and told me to go with it. I've always been a bit self-conscious about my dancing -- people either love it or hate it. Truth be told, I've been quite bored of the whole dance club scene for a while now, so it's nice to have a new outlet to dance. I'm really glad I went, and I'm also a little relieved it's over. I've been trying to network frenetically with all this going on, even more so in the past few days due to...stuff. I don't really know how much I should write -- a lot of the stuff I want to type wouldn't seem so great if certain people knew my intentions. My god, that sounds so more dramatic than it really is. Also, there's a lot that's up in the air at the mo, and if I blog it then...it's tough to explain...it seems more true, more real. When things are more definite I'll spill the beans. 'Til then I'll keep it quiet for fear of getting my hopes up -- I always find it's better to stick to a policy of being pre-emptively disappointed. At least that way if it all turns to jelly then I don't get too upset, and if it works out then I'm on top of the world.