We took Gavin for an evening walk yesterday at the nearby community centre. In a distance, we heard some hokkien song being played in the background but we didn’t pay much attention. Not until we climbed up to the 3rd level and looked down on a group of middle age aunties and uncles gyrating to the hokkien beat. Zuzu said it was line dance but I was like huh? Don’t line dancers sway to western or country music? Well, that was my impression at least, from performances I’ve seen in town, as well as in Disneyland.

Anyway, I don’t know much about line dancing. If I am not wrong, it’s a group of people dancing alike, in lines. I checked the web and this is what it says: Line dance is a formation dance where a group of people stand in a line or in lines, and they all execute the same dance moves. In a smaller group there may be only one line, but usually there are several parallel lines, one behind the other. A dance teacher, or more experienced dancer, will usually perform in the center of the first line. Inexperienced dancers are encouraged to take positions in the middle of the group to allow watching the person’s feet in front of them on all four walls.

So I suppose they can dance to any languages of music and what we saw yesterday was really a localised line dancing performance. Hmmm…..interesting. Well, the aunties and uncles certainly look like they were having an enjoyable time, regardless of the music choice. I won’t, for the life of me, ever line dance. First of all, I have no sense of community spirit. Second, I am a bad follower of dance steps even though I have a pretty good sense of rthym. Somehow, my arms and my legs can’t coordinate properly and I will come across as ultra clumsy. To borrow Xiao S’s words, it’s “tong shou, tong jiao”. I also know Zuzu will never even consider this sort of dance and I suspect it’s because he thinks it unmanly.

But Gavin obviously didn’t share his parents’ sentiments. He was excitedly trying to twirl and swirl to the hokkien beat. Never mind he didn’t understand a word of hokkien or executing any of the dance sequence. He was just moving to the music in his own tiny ways and he certainly looked very promising as a hokkien-line-dancer-wannabe!