I have a morbid fear of “lang-arming”, that traditional Afrikaans dancing synonymous with certain folk music. For the life of me, I’ve never been able to figure out the moves.
The town that I live in has a lang-arm club as its biggest night-time attraction. The venue, next to an Epol factory in the industrial region, had its glory days in the Eighties, with packed nights in an unbroken run of almost a decade. Its latest incarnation has been going for eight years, which shows that the demand is as strong as ever with young and old.
Going to a club such as this and sitting out when the lang-arm hits come on in frequent half-hour bursts is like going to an ice-skating rink, putting on ice skates, and then sitting on the side of the arena looking at everyone skating past.
In the club there are short periods when a very dramatic sort of space-age hard house gets played, which gives one the opportunity of dancing “loosely” in the middle of the floor. It’s usually a surreal picture of brandy-and-coke people waving their arms in the air, shouting and twisting their faces as if they’re at a psychedelic trance party.
But a short respite it is, and with the slowing down of the tempo and old favourites such as Blackie Swart’s Liewe Lulu coming back on, it effectively signals the start of the next lang-arm session. If you don’t intend heading out there with a dame on your arm, you are relegated to sitting in sad smoke-lit corners looking at all the smiling couples going by.
Generally, this is not the coolest place to be seen. The other men gazing sombrely into the distance will not necessarily be there because they can’t lang-arm. They’ll be there because they can lang-arm and have asked three or more girls to dance — and have been turned down each time.
Coping with rejection in public is never fun, and it takes a lot of courage to overcome this setback and persist, with the hope of eventually finding a partner that is willing to dance with you (preferably with more than a minute of the song remaining). It’s a partner-a-song, and you have to make a good impression if you’re going to be permitted to have the honour of a second go-around with a lady.
The guys that make it out there and perform aren’t necessarily good-looking. Confidence and knowledge of the dance moves comes first. A girl doesn’t want to stand out for the wrong reasons, such as having someone stepping on her toes or dress.
The rhythm of this most stick-like of dances is strange. One arm is extended stiff and straight, usually the left for the male, the right for the female. Certain step configurations are met, such as in a waltz, but there is room for improvisation, and many couples are swept away in a free-flowing enjoyment that pays homage to the man leading and the woman following.
So if you as a male can’t lead properly, you embarrass the girl. However, some females take a deliberate pleasure in humiliating the hapless male by aggressively deciding to lead once he has failed. These poor men are then dragged along the dance floor in a comically sped-up way by a killer queen bee keen for a spin of domination. A savage instinct takes over, not unlike that of a black widow, and pity the man that has to endure Bok van Blerk in circumstances such as these.
So while it’s deeply unsexy to sit out on the sidelines, holding your drink, at least you’re relatively safe there. Of course, once you’ve been spotted by the females in this most lonely of corners, it greatly diminishes your chances of getting a song later on as you’ve demonstrated your incapacity and have quite likely been turned down a few times.
So it took a lot for me, a gentle gentleman, to finally make it on to the hallowed dance floor and join the smiling stiff-arm circle spinning around in an anti-clockwise fashion.
At the start of the evening I had a brief dance, my anonymity obviously counting in my favour. I was accepted by a lovely female. However, within the first revolution, I began stepping on her toes and getting the directions wrong, and she moved further and further away from me, obviously not impressed. I was greatly relieved when the song ended.
The rest of the evening, I spent some time on the sidelines, trying to regain my confidence, having a drink or two.
It was almost 4am and closing time when I finally got focused, seeking out a partner to dance with. By this stage of the evening, everyone is usually paired up, increasing the agony and desperation. However, I was accepted by the third person I approached. This time I said at the outset that she must please excuse me, I’m still learning how to dance.
“No problem” she said, her eyes glazed.
Within three revolutions I realised I was in serious danger, because she was even more inebriated than me. Although she was leading, she was doing it recklessly, bumping into other couples, who voiced their frequent displeasure.
The moment of truth came when she started falling over backwards and I tried to hold on to her. There comes a point when gravity starts claiming falling bodies and so it was with us. We’d crossed that threshold and were heading down, all the way down. Her head made the sort of thump an orange might make if dropped from a distance on to cement.
There was a brief respite, with me lying on top of her, her smiling vaguely and looking into my eyes — we almost seemed oblivious of the couples dancing around.
It almost became a moment in which we could exchange phone numbers.
But then rough hands grabbed me and threw me out of the club. My lang-arm adventure had come to an end.
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