Friday, February 4, 2011

I am the Lord of the Dance, said She.


My husband and I have a dirty little secret: we can't dance. "HUH?", you say. "But aren't you Malaysian Dance Champions?" Well, yes actually, we are and therein lies the problem. That title has brought such high expectations of us, we feel compelled to live up to the honor. Truth be told, it was a drunken night of dance floor gyrations in Southeast Asia that resulted in the undeserved title, and I need to come clean about that false victory...

We had gone to visit our master franchisee in Kuala Lumpur and it just happened to be during Chinese New Year. They pulled out all the stops for us, including hiring dragon dancers to perform for us, exotic lunches at the KL's finest restaurants, with the trip culminating in a wonderful dinner/dance on our last night there. Our hosts had no idea that Mike and I don't dance, can't dance, hate to dance, so you can imagine my surprise, shock, and horror when they told us that a Dance Contest was going to be the featured "entertainment" at this gala. I almost choked on my Blowfish Soup when I heard, but relaxed somewhat when Mike said that we probably weren't expected to dance, only be judges.

We arrived at the dinner and were delighted to find a nicely lit dance floor, a huge disco ball, and as the honored guests, seats at the head table. The Malaysian people are so gracious, even those who couldn't speak English made an effort to welcome us warmly. The evening was off to a great start until the Emcee told us that as the honored guests from "Amelica", WE would be starting off the dance contest. Perhaps they sensed our reluctance because from that point on, our wine glasses were never empty. As soon as our glasses got half empty, they were miraculously filled again, and toast upon toast was made so we were forced to drink. We toasted to the Chinese New Year. We toasted the franchisee and his employees. We toasted the Petrona Towers and the Strait of Malacca. We even toasted Elvis and the disco ball. I understand now that they were merely supply us with liquid courage for when WE became the entertainment.

By the time the dessert was served, we were ready to boogie. The Emcee announced the beginning of the dance contest. "And NOW, from the Unites States of Amelica, help me welcome our honored guests to the dance floor -- Mike and Sue CASS-I-D-D-YYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!" The applause was thunderous and as we rose to our feet, somewhat unsteadily I will admit, we OWNED that dance floor. I'm not sure if we started off swaying to the music, or swaying from the booze, but how can your feet stay still when the Beegees are wailing "Stayin' Alive." We were so into it. Mike's fists were going in tiny little circles at first, and then he shifted into John Travolta-esque fingers pointing intermittently at the ceiling and the floor. I think I looked like I was doing a modified "limbo", I don't know, but our arms and legs were flailing uncontrollably, and the crowd was going wild. The louder they cheered, the stupider our dance moves became. We did not move to the beat of the Beegees, but to the beat of whatever was in our rythmically challenged brains.

We must have made quite an impression because the next thing you know, people got up from their tables and joined us on the dance floor, mimicking our strange moves. They must have thought that our strange gyrations were the latest dance moves from Amelica and they were going to learn this new style, from the Lords of the Dance! As the music ended, we'd felt pretty good about our performance, because copious amounts of alcohol does that for you.

The rest of the contest was terrific, and the other contestants were fun to watch because they could actually dance. You can't imagine our suprise and disbelief when the trophies were handled out, that WE HAD WON! I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that Mike owned the franchise system. We had some mad dance skills, clearly. We were presented with a 5 foot tall gift basket of dried seaweed, kelp flavored Pringles, dried and salted sardines, and other gastronomical delights.

The next morning we woke up with hangovers and a title: Malyasian Dance Champions. We've tried to live up to the title ever since, but nothing has ever topped that Cinderella Moment for us. We try to live up the "Dance, dance, wherever you may be..." philosophy. The last dancing we did was at a recent Quinceanera, but we were sober and the only Gringos on the dance floor. The mexican people are very gracious and nobody laughed at our attempts to dance to the latin beat of Banda music. I said all that to say this: That is why we are taking dance lessons. We have a reputation to uphold here, fercryin'outloud. We have to represent. I'll post the videos on youtube. Should you need a good laugh....