Anyone Can Whistle

So, in my free time, I'm taking dance classes. Very fun. The guy I'm taking from can't be more than 5 feet tall (if that), and so I feel just huge when I dance with him. (No heels, that's for sure!) I'm pretty good at all the technical stuff, and pretty bad at all the sensual stuff. He keeps telling me "be sexy" and designing moves for me to be sexy. I feel ridiculous.

Today, he put his hands on my hips and tried to get me to move my hips. And, as crazy as I am, I tried to get my opposite hip to go with my foot. I am so controlled that I don't actually understand that hips are supposed to be natural, so I'm trying to raise my right hip up with my left foot forward and then he had me step in front of my right foot with my left foot and I'm like "I'm sorry--I can't make my hips do that" and he was like "That's because they don't work that way--your hip follows your foot. Stop thinking and just relax." Yeah. Relax, let go, let fly. Sure.
Part of it is cultural. Years of ballet taught me that the sign of a good dancer is keeping the hips perfectly still at all times, even when kicking high in the air. (I think I surprised my teacher, in a fun way, but kicking well above his head, demonstrating the difference between ballet and jazz kicks, both with perfectly still hips.) It is actually much harder to kick high without allowing one's hips to follow.

It is very odd. In many ways, I'm very good at ballroom. The woman's job is to obey the man, to read even the smallest signal that tells her what to do. Never to anticipate commands, but yet, to anticipate. And yet the other part, the part where I stop thinking and start feeling. I should prefer to go to a bar and dance with men who want to sleep with me. But I don't want to. I'm deeply uncomfortable dancing with a man who wants to sleep with me. (Actually, my teacher seems to hint he'd be happy to marry me, or at least take me out for the evening, but that I believe has more to do with a green card than anything else. But whenever I'm out of the country, I assume all non-American men that hit on me want a green card. And yet, I get hit on an awful lot. Not all those men can want a green card, right? I'm unsure enough in my own attractiveness, I just assume green card and walk away from them all.)

So here I am, trying to obey a man who is trying to teach me how to be sexy, when I don't feel it. I do the motions. Mostly correctly. But I don't feel it.

"It's all so simple. Relax. Let go. Let fly. So someone tell me why can't I?"