Undercover

As the sole foreigner at BigCorporate I stand out rather. People I haven't met before seem to know who I am. I'm also 20 years over the average age of their staff.  Not a situation for the fainthearted.

But I do value those situations where I'm not effecting the dynamics. Where chameleon-like I take on the colour of the walls, the team forgets I'm there and talks amongst themselves, often switching to Swahili or Sheng, the cool youf dialect for a sentence or two. It's not that I completely 'get' what's going on, more that I'm a lone small boat, bobbing freely on gentle waves, in tune with the scene if not entirely of it.

And in the same way I so love my new dance classes, Latino Rhythms and Bellydancing, held at the United Nations social club. Latino rhythms is run by a 20 something cool, male Columbian. The students seem entirely Spanish and Latin American. I'm dark haired, swarthy looking, Celtic if we're being precise. The teacher asked me at the first class where I was from. Embarrassed, a bit overwhelmed as I looked at the other smooth, shimmying types, I stuttered 'Br, Br, British'. 'Ah Brazilian' he said, and turned up the music, deaf to my corrections.  You would think he might realise from the lack of wiggle in my hips that I'm not Brazilian, or at best a left-footed-behind-the-beat-expat-Brazilian.  But having pigeonholed me he wants to be helpful, and adds glosses to the Spanish instructions, specially for me, in Portuguese. 

And I love the blending in to new realities. The kind of understanding the Spanish repartee. How, surrounded by sultry sylph-like students who imbibed salsa and meringe with their mother's milk, I can kid myself that I too have this multiple rhythm, that I have an exotic southern shadow side.  'Uno, dos, tres' I mutter to myself, as if repetition of his mystical instructions will work a deeper magic.  'Vuelta' he hollers, and the class smoothly rotates, to face one red-faced slow Brazilian, still rooted to the spot and now moving in the wrong direction.  By the class's energy levels I'm guessing that some of the music is hits from the 80s and 90s, some of the dances the Latino equivalents, - far smoother - of YMCA and the birdy song.  Why does no one run UK rhythms classes, where I could strut my YMCA stuff?

The bellydancing is taught by a balletic early 50s Egyptian woman. Poise and grace in her little finger. The muscle control which can move an eyebrow in time with the music, while rotating hips in one direction and hands in another.  Again the students are Spanish, Arabic, - again on colouring alone I blend in - but again as we jangle our scarves and wobble our waists, as we wave our arms to draw attention to our crooked hips, as we learn the entry dance that Cinderella would do as she swept down the grand staircase in the pantomime, well I feel, for a moment, part of a beautiful giggling Bedouin gang.