DANCE

                                                                                                         Photo by Carol Abel

The missing twenty years in my writing life didn’t just disappear.  I danced my way through them.  I met my former husband and partner Johann Murray in 1985 in a women's karate school, which he attended under extenuating circumstances.  He was already an accomplished dancer and taught me all he knew.  From 1986 through 1991, we owned a ballroom dance studio in Santa Fe, New Mexico. 

We competed professionally from 1991 until 2002 in the American Rhythm category which consists of Cha-Cha, Rumba, Swing, Bolero and Mambo.  Today I am proud that I danced my last professional competition at age 50, with the other dancers typically in their 20s and 30s.  Although dance has always been a dream of mine, I didn’t start any formal training until my mid-thirties—in my 20s, when other folks were practicing, I merely wrote copious poetry about dance instead--it didn’t occur to me yet to put any of that poetry into practice. 

I have taught ballroom and social dance courses at the Aurora Community College, Metro State College in Denver Colorado, and at The University of Northern Colorado.   I also taught Argentine Tango for Colorado Free University (www.freeu.com). 

As of 2006 I frequently dance to Pokémon music with my latest partner, and it looks something like this:

                              Photo by Michael Schulte