These Hips

Corinne O’Shaughnessy

Author doing her moves.

Word Count 547

Even though I am not the best dancer, I love my nightly salsa, bachata and cumbia classes in Oaxaca, a place I’ve been living for a few months. Every moment, even when I can’t get my body to do what my eyes see it’s supposed to, I relish trying.

That is, until tonight.

Tonight, the final routine is a bachata sequence. Bachata is famously sensual, and this particular sequence is especially so. My partner Emmanuel is perhaps in his mid-20s and has a gentle smile and dark sparkling eyes. I am 61, with a deep vertical thought crease between my eyebrows and crepey skin more often found on 90-year-old tanning bed addicts. For the first time I find myself, while counting uno, dos, tres, hip flick quatro, not pondering will I able to memorize and execute this routine, but…am I allowed to? May I swing my hips and roll my body like I know I can, or will doing so mean I have become a bad aging joke?

After a few basicos with vueltas, there’s an open move where partners end up back-to-back with arms outstretched, fingers gently clasped. When hands are released, the woman floats her arms in a gentle oval above her head, while the man reaches behind his back, finds her hip and tugs, like starting an old gas-operated lawnmower, to spin her for her four count vuelta to the right. Then a tug on the other hip, and a spin to the left. She lowers her forearms until they rest softly on the man’s shoulders while he embraces her with his hands flat on her shoulder blades, and dips her back and to one side while she makes a semi-circle with her hips, then repeats the dip and semi-circle on the other. The sequence ends with the woman making a final extra wide booty arc that flows into a body roll ending in a chest tap.

As I tap Emmanuel’s chest with mine, I wonder, Is this young man throwing up a little in his mouth? Will he go directly to a Mezcaleria after class where instead of taking besitos, or gentle sips, of a fine mezcal, he’ll buy the cheapest available and gulp large quantities to obliterate the memory of this particular bachata routine where he had the misfortune of being partnered with the gringa senior citizen?

My neurotic mental nose-dive is interrupted when he taps my right hip with his left hand and guides me through a wider, more pronounced booty arc and demonstrates a more accentuated body roll that he asks me to mimic. “Sí,” he says, when I do. “Otra vez. Desde al principio.” We practice the sequence again, but this time I allow myself to just feel the music and let go. With each dip and turn where I trust he won’t drop me, I melt into the movements and as my hips complete the final wide arc and I tap his chest with mine, he looks me in the eyes and says, “Perfecto.”

My moves certainly weren’t “perfecto,” but what was, was the complete joy of moving together.

A slow shy smile broadens across his face, and he begins shimmying his shoulders, and gestures for me to do the same. We end the evening, laughing quietly, shimmying and spinning and doing our own little bachata thing and I am reminded once again how much time I spend potentially ruining beautiful moments by projecting my own insecurities onto the minds of others.

Am I allowed to body roll and swing my hips?

Yes, I decide. Yes I am.