Thursday Thirteen

And my 50th post!

I blithely agreed with my best friend, Ronnie, that we should both list our favorite 13 dance tunes today. It turned out to be the most difficult TT ever! Dancing has always been part of my life, but after rummaging around in the CD collection to jog my memory, I now realize that, for me, it's always been a solitary and/or highly choreographed activity. I never learned the Frug, Electric Slide, disco moves, and certainly not the Lambada. I never did the Chicken Dance, YMCA, or the Time Warp. If it required a partner or was really popular, I was and still am, a non-participant. Well, there are some exceptions: junior high and high school "social" dances and the occasional wedding reception, Twisting in the living room with my mom, doing the Hokey Pokey at the skating rink, and dancing with my kids when they were toddlers. But before and after that came the ballet and tap lessons, gyrating to the radio in my bedroom, Tahitian, Hawaiian, Samoan, and Maori dance lessons and performances, drill team routines, dance concerts during hippy days, and I often do Tai Chi to music. When I dance with other people, I want it choreographed. When it's just me, I dance to my own drummer! So, in no particular order, this music has provided bits and pieces of my soundtrack:

13 Favorite Dance Tunes

1. Sleeping Bag ~ ZZ Top, Greatest Hits

2. Migra ~ Santana, Supernatural

3. The Rhythm of the Heat ~ Peter Gabriel, Security

4. Key West Intermezzo ~ John Mellencamp, Mr. Happy Go Lucky

5. Interlude: Let's Dance/Miss You Much ~ Janet Jackson, Rhythm Nation

6. Loco-motion ~ Little Eva (Note: at a jr. high dance, we did the Loco-motion in a long line. I didn't know there was an actual dance--I thought we were making it up!)

7. Slave to Love ~ Brian Ferry, Boys and Girls

8. Spanish Moon ~ Little Feat, Waiting for Columbus

9. Glad All Over ~ Dave Clark Five

10. Simply Irresistible ~ Robert Palmer, Heavy Nova

11. River's Dance ~ Greg Edmonson, Firefly

12. Don't Come Around Here No More ~ Tom Petty, Southern Accents

When I was 11, I was introduced to Tahitian dance and I still think it's the ultimate dance music. If you're not familiar with it, you can look and listen here:

13. Te Hamata at the 2007 Te Mahana Hiro’a o Tahiti Children’s Tahitian Dance Competition in Laie, Hawaii.