INTRODUCTION

Do you believe in jinxes?  Well, I sure do.  When it comes to performing at dance, I feel like I have a curse following me around... and I only half-kidding.   It isn't that I danced poorly or failed to prepare properly.  Only the first mishap could be attributed to poor dance skills, but as you will see, it was an incredible stroke of bad luck that did me in. 

After my first breakdown, what haunted me is that things kept going wrong.  Weird things, stupid things, things I had little control over. I had terrible luck at performing.

If I didn't know any better, I would swear that Al Capp character Joe Btfsplk with his dark cloud follows me around on the dance floor.  If I did stupid things like forget my routines or fail to practice sufficiently, then I would only have myself to blame.  That wasn't the case.  The things that happened to me always felt 'supernatural'.  It was the utter craziness of the mistakes that made me feel so superstitious.  To be honest, my early experiences were so frustrating and so weird that after the final humiliation in 1987, I just stopped performing.  No more.  That's it.  I've had enough.  I quit.

My mishaps ranged from heart-stopping dangerous freak accidents to humiliating mistakes right out of slapstick.  Although my antics surely have been amusing to others, every problem has cut me to the core.  Just because I am paranoid doesn't mean I am crazy.  Maybe I have a reason to be crazy.  You will just have to read the complete story to understand. 

Then let's see if you agree with me.

The Disco Era - 1973-1980

The Saturday Night Fever-inspired Disco Era lends itself nicely to plenty of jokes, but it sure was fun while it lasted.  For most of the Seventies, an entire nation danced to the music of Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and the Bee Gees. 

Partner Dancing in America actually got its start during the Charleston Era of the Roaring Twenties.  The Charleston was originally danced apart, but people found a way to Charleston in each arms.  That energy created the Lindy Hop which in turn gave rise to Swing Dancing during the Big Band Era of the Thirties and Forties.

After the war, people needed a little peace and quiet.  Not surprisingly, lullabies and ballads became the popular music for the next ten years.  However performers like Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, and Elvis Presley got the nation partner dancing again with the Jitterbug and the Sock Hop Era of the Fifties.

However, thanks to the Twist and the Watusi, Partner Dancing took a mysterious hiatus through the Sixties and the most of the Seventies.  It didn't help that the psychedelic music of the late Sixties - think Inna Gadda Da Vida - didn't exactly fit most people's idea of compelling dance music.

The major legacy of the 1977 movie Saturday Night Fever is that it got America Partner Dancing again.