The Lancashire 'Cuddle'

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In Lancashire, sixty year old farmers don their best shirts on a Tuesday night and head out to salsa, while teenage girls cake their faces with make-up and wait for instructions on how to body pop. Lara investigates. First up: Salsa.

The Time: Autumn. 7.15p.m. Just about time to get home from work, turn around, pick up your dancing shoes and go to:

The Scene: A sports club hall, somewhere in the north of England. Wooden floors have been mopped clean of last night’s spilt beers. Across the long bar at one side of the hall, metal shutters are opening up. Disco lights and tall speakers sit heavily on a stage. In the main space we find:

The Hero: The dance teacher. His sixtieth birthday party was a night to remember but he’s turned out to party every night. The beard is well-trimmed, the black and white brogues well-polished and his smile welcomes each new and returning dancer that enters the room. His wife sits at the door taking £5.50 from:

The Cast: The youngest is about 18. She wears tight jeans and scuffed trainers. The oldest is pushing seventy and wears a smart blue shirt, tucked in, belted slacks and metal-framed glasses. Inbetween are the newly weds (he’s dancing so she’ll let him watch the football on t.v.), the about to wed (practising for their wedding dance), the looking for a date (the old farmer who’s wife’s died), the recently divorced (he couldn’t dance anyway), the coming with her mates (it’s more fun than the gym) and those like me, who just love to dance. Later on we’ll meet:

The Chorus: They turn up when the boring bits are over and the floor is full, the Latin vibes are pumping and they can swing into the centre spinning on their suede-soled shoes and push their hips like a gearstick around a girl’s soft-swishing skirt. They don’t dance with beginners but they make the beginners want to learn to dance like that. Not quite one of them yet, but almost is:

Patrick Swayze (R.I.P.): His pert little buttocks sit neatly in tight jeans. His brightly-coloured shirts are like a peacock’s backside. This male approaches the mating dance like the tournament it ought to be. Each turn is done with precision, each new movement carefully memorised, practised in his sleep. He doesn’t like it if his dance partner gets it wrong. It makes him look bad. When he smiles he doesn’t move his eyes.

‘Next up we’re gunna do the cock archer,’ says the younger male dance teacher, the one with the gold chain and the thick Lancashire accent. I snigger. He looks at me and then at the female dance teacer.

‘It is called the cockarcher, innit?’ he asks her. She nods. ‘Aye, the cuc-acca.’

‘Right then, we’ll do four basics, two cross body turns, two cuddles, two basics and two cockarchers.’

I suspect that the ‘cuddle’ is a salsa move not found much in Cuba, indeed, not found much outside of Lancashire. It involves the woman turning so that she has her back to the man and he can ‘cuddle’ her from behind. If he likes. There is nothing raunchy or sleazy about a cuddle though and any cuddle you might get here is the sort you could give to your grandmother.

Later as I leave the beginners group behind and ascend to the dizzy heights of the intermediates, more physical contact is recommended by means of ‘the wiggle’. If performed in a non-Lancashire fashion, the wiggle might be compared to grinding. The woman faces the man and has the opportunity to rub herself across his front. Only in Lancashire when I practised the routine that included ‘the wiggle’ with Paul (forty, large, bald and perspiring but very patient and very friendly) the sultry movement morphed into one reminiscent of windscreen wipers, ticking rigidly from side to side. Paul is just one of several kind, older and experienced dancers that I have met at my salsa class, who bravely try to tame my own wild dancing style into something less likely to do injury to others. I have two new friends, both in their sixties, who have taught me other non-Latin sounding moves such as the ‘Half-Titanic’ and ‘Magic Hands.’ Last week one of them complimented me on my choice of floral dress and thereafter invited me to dance with a cheeky nod, saying, ‘Cum on then, Daisy.’

I love dancing in Lancashire. Each week when it finishes, I walk into the carpark in my flimsy salsa dress, oblivious to the cold as I am hot and euphoric from the dancing and filled with a joy for life. At about 9.30p.m each Tuesday night, a hundred or so people gather for what is nick-named ‘The Bachata Barn Dance’, so-called because it is danced in a circle, with the men staying in one place in an inner circle while the women on the outer circle move from man to man. The first time I danced it I started off with a Greek man who told me that the dance was called ‘The Ciabatta’. Who knows, maybe it is in Greece.

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3527 Comments

hahah like the ciabatta touch at the end . Very funny.. Love to read about your escapades. Hope we meet up again one day . Till then "I hope you dance" :)

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This page contains a single entry by Lara published on October 18, 2009 8:48 AM.

Late Night Rambutan is the next entry in this blog.

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