[[want to know how we got here? read part 1 first.]]
Techno music blared from the speakers, and my friend dragged me onto the floor, insisting that "everyone can dance." I scanned my mental Rolodex (it was the 90s; perhaps I scanned my mental Palm Pilot) for equivalent experiences and landed on the kids from the Peanuts cartoons and how they moved. I stuck out my arms straight, moved my feet up and down in one place, and swiveled my head from side to side. Very sexy. If you ever want to go five years without getting laid, I suggest you do the Snoopy Dance in an iconic New York City lesbian bar in the 1990s. I can guarantee it will work 100 percent.
Later, when I started my comedy career, I returned to my home state to perform at Lacrosse, Wisconsin Gay Pride. The drag queens there were both extremely tough (they made fun of one of the other queens for crying at the funeral of a friend who was killed in a hate crime) and highly maternal. When I was done performing, I sat on a bench in the Oktoberfest Grounds turned gay disco, waiting for my ride to the hotel as the beat of "Please Don't Stop the Music" throbbed through my brain and leaked into my spinal cord. I was almost in tears, wishing beyond all hope, "No, please do stop the music. Please do."
One of the tough/maternal queens grabbed my arm like she was marching me into an enforced time-out and maneuvered me onto the concrete slab that had become the dance floor.
"Everyone can dance," she said.
After twenty minutes of the impromptu nonconsensual lesson, she sighed. For five minutes.
"I guess it's not for everyone," she sighed "Usually I just tell people if they can listen to the drum, they can dance. But you.." Another long sigh, "...you were trying to dance to all the instruments."
A year later, I answered an audition notice for cabaret performers. I did a few minutes of my stand-up act for two industry folks in a small room. The In-Charge Dude looked up from his notes long enough to ask if I could "move." Being a relative newcomer to theater auditions, I didn't understand what was meant by that particular word. If you're unfamiliar, it's apparently another word for dance.
I nodded enthusiastically, "of course," and was ushered past a curtain and onto a stage full of thin, muscular people in leotards and leg warmers, all of them in various states of stretching. A scowling man with a clipboard, who I now know was a Very Famous New York Choreographer, occupied one of the empty hundreds of seats in the theater facing us. It was an audition scene straight out of the Chorus Line.
There was counting, the music started, and I had no other choice but to try to follow the movements the others were making. Within seconds, I had knocked over a male dancer who had the grave misfortune of dancing next to me. The Very Famous New York Choreographer yelled, "Stop, stop, stop," and then, "What on earth do you think you are doing?" as he threw his papers in the air.
I started to say, "Well, I thought I was dancing."'
But even before it came out of my mouth, I realized it was untrue.
Neither the Very Famous New York Choreographer nor I could reasonably contend that the behavior I had engaged in resembled anything akin to dancing. My flailing motions would have been perhaps helpful if the audition was for some reason happening on a deserted island and we needed help flagging down a rescue plane, but since that was not the case, he quickly banished me from the stage.
As I ran away, I thought, damn, I should have gotten him to sign an affidavit.
The next time someone approached me as I sat happily on the margins of a wedding or at a nightclub watching other people move their bodies rhythmically in time to music, I could show them the notarized copy.
"I have it from a professional," I'd explain, "I really, I promise you, can not dance."
PS New Yorkers, please don’t miss Second Helping: Two Dead Lovers, Dead Funny on 3.25.24 at Caveat NYC. This is the show Kelli took to Edinburgh and is produced by alt comedy royalty
Tickets here, more info including testimonials and all the fun press (BBC Religion & Culture!) here.
💃