The Devil’s Chain

 

I’m standing still and everything around me is in confusion.

“Don’t stand still,” the caller implores.

I look for hands to hold, to make the lady’s chain. There are none.

Someone grabs me, it’s an unknown woman, “I’m your man,” she says. She spins and releases me, but I’m now going the wrong way.

“The woman should be on your right!” the  caller’s exasperated voice yells.

I’m unravelling the complicated weave of the dance. Everything has become chaotic. We stop to reform and wait for the beat to reach a beginning again.

I try once more. It goes half right, but there is one part I can’t recall, I’m suppose to peel away in a half-eight or something, and then do something dozy with the man, who is it the woman-man, and then step to the left, or was it the right?

On the next dance a woman elbows me sharply in the chest and I wince. I think she was trying to show me the right way to go, but  it might have been deliberate.

I’m trying to be light-footed, to twirl on toes. I greet the ones I walk towards with a smile.

“Don’t smile,” the caller snaps.

I realise that the others don’t.

They are simply mechanical parts in the machine of the dance. With tight thin lips they shunt forwards and backwards.

The expert real men occasionally grab me tightly and march me firmly into position, before releasing me to my twirling fate elsewhere.

“Keep the woman on your right,” the caller snaps.

I puzzle over rights and lefts. First we are couple number two and then we couple number one. Now we are couple number three and improper!

The brief rehearsal hasn’t been enough. I’ve forgotten the next bit as I’m grabbed. Was it three steps then a half-turn? Do I go forwards or back?

By the end of the evening there are none that want us to join their set. and I can’t blame them. I am disturbing the free flow harmony. But some do join us eventually.

“Don’t dance it. Walk it!”

I realise this is what the others are doing, with flat footed accuracy.

There are more women to men, so many of the women are having to double up as men. I don’t know who is a man and who is a woman anymore. The men-women also get confused and remember the woman’s steps and not the man’s

The men have none of this confusion. They have never been asked to dance a woman’s part. They have no idea how difficult this can be. How alien and confusing.

“Right hand, left hand,” the caller bellows.

There is an interval and the floor clears.

We sit. I’m hot and sweating, but feeling quite please with how it’s going. I got some of the steps right.

My friend and I were in an animated conversation, When the caller comes a calling.

I look up.

He’s not  happy.

“We’re not that bad are we? my friend asks.

“Well, yes, you are,” he says.

My friend is mortified, and I feel upset as it is her birthday and I’d said I’d accompany her, as she wanted to dance.

“He’s just watching us,” she said.

I’m embarrassed.

When the next dance is announced we gamely stand up again.

“Oh, I’m going to go through that again,” the caller says wearily during the next walk through. “You two change places.”

Everyone stands still to watch.

“We’ll go through that again.”

He dictates the moves, but I’m struggling to remember the earlier steps.

The music begins, and I am whirled into position. Some dragged me here. Some drag me there. I’m cajoled by some and yanked into position by the exasperated male experts. But there are some delights. A half-blind man cheers whenever I repeatedly find his waiting arms.

“Here she is again,” he laughs, and I’m delighted by his sense of fun as he promenades me back to my partner.

At the end of the dance, the caller jokes, “I’ve been watching the newcomers and calling for them, I knew they were behind. I didn’t realise they were four beats behind the rest.”

He gets a laugh, but it is embarrassing. He is watching my every mis-step.

I am delighted when a real man takes my friend away to dance. Glad that she is given respite from my errors and clumsiness.

Right at the very end this same man reappears again He kindly walks with me in the dance. Shadowing me so that with this one I can not go wrong.

I am grateful. I think the dance was called ‘The Devil’s Chain’. First I’m on the inside and then I’m on the outside. He indicates the next person I am to dance with. These men grab me with a fierceness worthy of the devil himself. I am touched by this help. Then when I look for him he is ahead of me seated on a chair and smiling to see that I’m doing the dance properly.

I’m happy and rosy-red when the folk dance evening finishes.

It was fun.

But the next day, I fret that perhaps I  ruined it for the tight lipped, flat footed, elbowing dancing experts who had probably wanted a lovely evening of intricate woven dancing and there I was unravelling it all.

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