One day when walking around Ximending shopping area in Taipei, Carrie and I stopped to watch a dance competition. Can you tell the age of the dancers?
After teaching my four and five year old students many dance moves throughout the year, I’m not exactly surprised at the quality of these highly choreographed dances. If you go to a club in Taipei, both guys and girls love dancing, but it’s interesting to watch their impromptu dance moves. For the most part, they don’t get very creative, except when reciting a move or sequence previously practiced. This has its benefits. For example, on an extremely crowded dance floor, a foot inside an open-toed sandal isn’t as vulnerable to being impaled by a high heal or squashed by a boot. You can count on 97% of Taiwanese dancers to bob up and down in a controlled manner, and the 3% who like to go all out, stay on the fringe for more space and an audience of bystanders. Me? Let’s just say I don’t fit into either of those categories; I’m all over the dance floor and sometimes on stage. If I’ve surprised anyone by admitting that, you must not know me very well. I’ll take this opportunity to thank my mother for dancing with me in the rain. I know Erika was always worried the neighbors would see us from their second story windows, but I secretly never cared.
People Do Things in Taiwan 