At the beginning of my daughter’s high school experience, she was placed in a class called social dancing. This course is all about ballroom dancing. At first, she wasn’t thrilled, but it filled a required elective.

“It’s either this or art class,” I told her.

Yeah she was even less thrilled with that idea so she stayed in social dance. Over the course of that semester something happened. what started out as a chore or requirement turned into a passion.

Now, she’s pretty inhibited in social settings, especially if she thinks anybody is watching her, so the stone-faced expressions she made during her first-performance-ever! cracked me up. And yet, she desired to go back for more. We had to move her classes around the next semester so she could be in ballroom technique, which is just another step above the basic social dance class, but she loved it. I think I even remember her attempting to smile during that second public performance.

This year, as a junior, she finally made the JV ballroom team, and her mania for ballroom dancing has only grown. I never thought anything could get my daughter to come out of that self-inflicted shell she puts herself in, but then her teacher decided to give the JV ballroom a tango.

“A tango…?” I say when I hear the news, trying hard to keep my expression neutral. I mean I’m no ballroom expert but I recall that dance being a kind of sensual one. “So how’s that going?”

“Good. I have to be careful not to wrap my leg around his hip too hard before he dips me–my heel caught him the butt one time.”

She laughed at her comment, but my spinning thoughts were still stuck on the fact my daughter was willingly putting her leg around a boy’s waist. “So…you’re liking the chorography then?”

“Oh yeah. It’s so cool, I think it may be my favorite type of ballroom dancing yet.”

And this upcoming performance may be my favorite one to watch, just so I can confirm with my own eyes that it’s my inhibited daughter up there putting her leg around a boy before being dipped. I’ve failed for years at getting my daughter to be more social with her peers. If I had known ballroom would have this effect on her, I would have signed her up much earlier in life.