I remember when I was little, about 10 to 12 years of age, whenever my parents used to go out and leave me and my sister at home alone. With the neighbours down the street watching us. We would go in to the lounge room and move all the furniture that was in the middle of the floor to one side of the room and we would put on some loud music like ABBA, Elvis Presley, Kylie Minogue etc and we would sing and dance and dance until we got tired around in the lounge room, we would spin each other around and make up dance moves and pretend as though we were professional dancers and singers yelling and screaming the words at the top of our lungs. Swear it scared the neighbour’s dogs as not soon after we started, the dogs would join in. It was so much fun, though.

My father did ballroom dancing lessons and I think he mentioned some competitions when he was younger and he also sang soloist for a few years at some event and so forth. I guess that may have been where I developed my love for singing and dancing from. I had a couple of bad experiences when I was younger to do with my singing which I have already written about in one of my first articles which made me believe I was a dreadful singer and that I should not be using my singing voice in public ever so I ended up putting my singing voice in a little box away and hiding it and it only came out around very close friends after those experiences. The children in my street used to have dance competitions in the garage of one of their houses and I used to try to dance. They were so critical of me and my dancing, always picking on it and telling me when I didn’t do something the way they would have done it, so I stopped dancing after a while as. they said some really hurtful things to me and I never won the competitions, anyway. So the only person that would see me dance until I moved out of home was my sister.

When I started renting for the first time, I remember moving my stuff out of the lounge room to make an area to dance in and I used to dance on my own for hours and hours at nights and on weekends, and it felt great. Then, when I was old enough to go to nightclubs, I would go to nightclubs and have a few drinks and dance as I figured that the people there would not be watching anyway as they would be way too drunk to care about my dancing. It turns out I was right. Little by little I would dance at the clubs to the music. I would practice my moves at home first, then go to the clubs and dance with my friends on the dance floor, and it was so much fun. I tried ballroom dancing lessons at one point in my 30s, but the people at the class had their own clicky little groups and would not dance with me and would not invite me out, so I stopped those classes after a couple of months.

When I moved to Melbourne in 2017, I had no friends here, so I started salsa classes as a nice recruiter. I knew suggested I do that, and he told me about the salsa foundation in the city. I started going there and the staff and instructors were so nice and welcoming and friendly, and I have been going there ever since. I know I can be a little of a klutz on the dance floor at the time, but they still encourage me to keep coming back and giving it a go. Eventually, after a few years, I made a few good friends there, and that was great. I am my friends are the ones that go to the level 2 classes constantly as the level 3 classes are too late at night for us.
The reason I liked to sing and dance was so that I could express myself artistically and just be me and have fun. There is nothing on earth like the feeling I get when I sing and dance. And now because of the pandemic, I have had to become gutsy and sing and dance in front of my Facebook community with I built up for my coaching and they love my singing and dancing. So I guess I can’t be all that bad at either of them. If it weren’t for the pandemic probably would have not faced my fears of doing things in front of the camera and breaking through those fears I had and the limiting beliefs I had about singing and dancing. So for me there is another up side for me with this pandemic and that is now I know I am not as bad as I thought I was from those bad defining moments in the past to do with my singing and dancing.

I have now sung for you twice on camera and danced for you 3 times in front of the camera. I feel so grateful to be able to do that now. ©

Copyright © 2022 Lynette Diehm.

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