Anyone who knows me well, knows that I’m no stranger to the world of dance. I grew up in the break dancing era and I am comfortably at home on a dance floor. I’ve taken ballroom dance at college. I’ve competed in a USA DanceSport Cha Cha competition. I can country dance. I’ve been to every UVSC College of Dance expo in the last four years. I have season tickets to Salt Lake City’s Odyssey Dance Theatre performances, including the ever popular Halloween Thriller show (coming up October 19-28, 2006 at Kingsbury Hall). It’s not uncommon to find me some weekend on the floor of an SLC dance club (like the Vortex) showing off my mad skills. It’s no secret that I have rhythm.

Lest you misunderstand, I’m not a dancer, I just know how to dance. I’m reminded of the words of Lord Chesterfield, in a letter to his son, “And though I would not have you a dancer, yet, when you do dance, I would have you dance well, as I would have you do everything you do well.”

As an aficionado, I’ve obviously watched the recent movies, “Shall We Dance“, “Save the Last Dance”, “Take the Lead“, “Bring it On”, “Bring it On Again” as well as the latest in this lineup of films, “Step Up”, which I saw with my friend Jennifer a short time ago.

Unfortunately, unlike its predecessors Shall We Dance and Take the Lead, I found Step Up to be a movie I don’t recommend. Specifically, I thought the dancing was mechanical and contrived and the plot horribly predictable.

Let’s return briefly to Susan Sarandon in Jennifer Lopez’s Shall We Dance. Susan (Beverly), waxes philosophical in a restaurant with her hired detective as she thinks about relationships. She says,

“We need a witness to our lives. There’s a billion people on the planet… I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you’re promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things… all of it, all of the time, every day. You’re saying ‘Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness’.”

If a marriage is all about witnessing another’s life, I must be married to my blog, or perhaps more accurately, to each of my blog readers. What an odd thought!

And with that random introduction, it’s now time to talk about today’s topic, yoga.

Last night, Holly, my friend who happens to be a yoga instructor, was teaching yoga at a local Gold’s Gym. I showed up, grabbed a mat and followed along. As I see it, yoga largely involves contorting your body into impossible positions, “with your next breath, go ahead and bring up one foot and place it over your head. Now wrap your left arm backwards around your body grabbing a hold of that ankle. Stretch the other arm towards the ceiling. Now raise up on your foot until you are balancing on your toes. Concentrate on your breathing.”

In sum, I can dance better than you and yoga is a lot harder than you think. That’s all.