Mirror neurons

I really needed Risa after yesterday in work. It's amazing how the stress vanishes with a few good dances.

Kevin was there last night for the first time in a long time, and I watched him and Lisa dancing together. He's one of the few men in Cardiff who I really enjoy watching dance: he's extremely smooth and precise. I keep meaning to ask him if he'd mind me filming him on my cameraphone so I can nick some of his moves.

He makes it look easy, but his dancing is the product of a lot of thought and practice - I know because I once inadvertently had a private lesson with him. (I say 'inadvertently' - he was teaching a class, and me and a talented female beginner were the only two people who turned up.) He taught me some unique details to leads for standard moves which I've never encountered from anyone else.

But here's a thing: after watching him and Lisa, my next dance was vastly better than the ones I'd had early that evening. Even though I hadn't consciously changed my dancing I felt much more subtle and relaxed. Which is really surprising considering that the next dance was bachata. It was 'Lamento Boliviano', inevitably, danced with Debbie (also inevitably): she reckoned it was our best yet.

The same thing happened to me once before after watching another smooth and precise dancer. I put it down to mirror neurons. They're the circuits in our brain that fire whether we're watching someone else do something or doing it ourselves, which means that watching someone else dancing really well is almost as good as practising doing it yourself.

Unfortunately the effect didn't last that long as overheating and tiredness soon dragged my dancing back to its usual late Thursday night level : (

One other good thing last night: I finally got a positive response ("lovely!") to the 'surprising' move Andy taught me the other week. All it needed was the right partner.