For all the girls who ever dreamed of dancing … which is most of the girls, really.
May 16, 1965.
I’m not that familiar with Peter Bogdanovich’s classic film “The Last Picture Show” or the novel on which it was based. But the title has all kinds of evocative resonance — the end of innocence, the end of creativity, the end of escape from the real world.
“The Last Dancing Class” — or even just “Last Dancing Class,” my grandpa’s phrase — carries some of the same feeling.
Dancing is a pretty decent metaphor for the way we try to navigate through daily life with some modicum of grace and poise. The “last dancing class,” then, represents the last lessons of grown-up life we learn before we strike out on our own and try to manage for ourselves in this crazy, complicated world.
(Or, if you accept Mick Jagger’s oft-quoted assertion that “all dancing is a replacement for sex,” the last dancing class metaphorically becomes a preparation for an entirely different rite of passage.)
Dancing classes have a certain historical resonance in the Blumenau family. My grandfather, the guy who kept the calendars, met my grandma at a dancing class in Springfield, Massachusetts, in the mid-1930s.
For them, the “last dancing class” might have been the time when they swapped phone numbers or agreed to keep seeing each other — setting into motion any number of things, including this blog.
No matter what the phrase “last dancing class” evokes for you, there is always a certain bittersweet power in those times when the people who teach you have nothing left to pass along.
You’ve been through the lessons and learned the rules, the skills, the steps and the transitions. It’s up to you to make something of your own out of them — something more than the people who taught you accomplished with the same raw materials.
But you’ve only got so much time to do so before the years catch up with you. Soon enough, you’re the one sitting in the chair, passing the steps on to another generation, secretly hoping they don’t leave you in the dust with the brilliance and imagination you struggled to find for yourself.
The dance goes on, but one by one, we step out of it. And we learn that the last dancing class meant more all along to the teacher than it did to the students.
******
In real life this week’s calendar entry means nothing so dramatic.
My aunt studied dancing for many years growing up. May 16, 1965, must have been the last of a series — perhaps the last lesson with a particular teacher, or the last of a particular style of classes. I do not imagine it was the last dance class she ever took, anywhere.
And anyway, in dancing and in life, it is not always what we learn from formal lessons that sustains and improves us. There are lessons about grace and rhythm and poise to be learned everywhere we go.
Shall we dance, then?
******
Circa 1958.
Hope Street 
Fred Astaire agrees with Jagger, albeit in much more black tie way, when he sings the lyrics to one of those 1930’s songs he performed: “What is dancing but making love set to music playing?”. Someone set me straight on what song this is…
Steve has noted before that Fred Astaire said any of the dancing scenes in his movies were actually representations of love making. Of course that isn’t what I was doing in my last dancing class of 1965! However, I enjoyed all the dancing metaphors in your piece. Steve hasn’t been able to place the quote from Rod yet, though we are both Fred & Ginger fans. The pic is of my charleston tap number – lol!
Thanks for reading.
I suppose I betray a certain lack of culture in crediting that sentiment to Mick Jagger instead of Fred Astaire. I need to brush off my top hat and tails.
All the more valid if Fred & Mick agree!
Turns out the song is “Come Dance With Me”, more closely associated with Frank Sinatra than Fred Astaire. I couldn’t tell definitively with Google searches whether Fred ever performed it; it apparently was done more than once by Sinatra as a tribute to Fred.
Here are the complete lyrics:
Hey there cutes, put on your dancin’ boots and come dance with me
Come dance with me, what an evening for some Terpsichore
Pretty face, I know a swingin’ place, come on dance with me
Romance with me on a crowded floor
And while the rhythm swings
What lovely things I’ll be sayin’
‘Cause what is dancing
Making love set to music, playin’
When the band begins to leave the stand and folks start to roam
As we walks home, cheek to cheek we’ll be
Come on, come on, come on, come on and dance with me
Hey there cutes, put on your basie boots and come dance with me
Come dance with me, what an evening for some Terpsichore
Pretty face, I know a swingin’ place, come on dance with me
Romance with me on a crowded floor
And while the rhythm swings
What cuckoo things I’ll be sayin’
For what is dancing
Making love set to music, playin’
When the band begins to leave the stand and folks start to roam
As we wing home, cheek to cheek we’ll be
Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on, come on
Come on and dance with me
[…] graceful, spiraling dance ending in forgotten […]