(Eight Year Waltz)

[talonkarrde]

The first step of the waltz is the man’s advance and woman’s retreat. On the surface, the man is dominating the dance,  pushing the woman back, but the correctly danced waltz relies on the man matching how far the lady wishes to retreat. They met at a friend’s wedding, on the dance floor, because they were the best dancers there. He asked her out, and she agreed -  on the condition that they dance a waltz once a year, every year that they stayed together.

Their first two years were, like the beginning of the dance, more momentum than technique. They met at other times, but the night of the waltz was special to them, in the way that is cliché in recountings but special to those that were there. They would spend it dancing, first casually and chatting while they did, and then more seriously, each striving to prove themselves the better dancer. It was a time of getting to know the other’s carriage, style, and life.

The second step of the waltz is the most complicated; the woman turns clockwise as she sweeps her left leg back and out, and the man follows. When danced properly, the eye can not know who is leading or following – if it looks like there is, the dancers are out of sync. She would call him up between March and August and simply say ‘tonight’, and he would clear his schedule, explaining to the others that he had a prior obligation. The courtship had progressed beyond initial attractions; it was no longer about getting to know the other, but rather about fine-tuning styles to be most comfortable and complimentary.

Five years taught him to order her an Alaskan salmone alla crema with 1998 pinot noir; five years gave her the knowledge to get him a 12 oz. ribeye cut and a whiskey sour. Conversations turned from the grand 'what do you like' to the mundane 'what shall we do tomorrow', and more about the future than the past. Their dancing afterwards was also more sedate; they had less to prove and more to enjoy. It traded speed and motion for beauty and grace.

The final step is the closing; the feet come back together as dancers finish the final pivot; it completes the circle and prepares to start it anew. The dancers should be with each other and the music, ‘leader’ and ‘follower’ no longer exist. It became spontaneous; he would tap her on the shoulder and it would be subtly different from the other times; she would look at him with the idea in her eyes and they would go, that night.

The final year, she finished the dance with him and then stopped in the center of the ballroom. He dropped to one knee in front of her and the eight year waltz was complete.

Comments

[lemony-purple.livejournal.com]

I like this! It seems as if it could fit into any time period if not for the 1998 wine (half the time I think of it as modern, the other half, my mind somehow ends up visualizing the 1930s or thereabout). I like the alternating between the steps of the dance and the years passing; the only thing I might suggest is making the timeline a bit longer to show a bit more of the progressing of the relationship.

[talon.livejournal.com]

Again, word limit kills me. I'm glad you liked it, though it got (rightfully) trounced by the competition (http://mahmoth.livejournal.com/18248.html).

I think you're right, the nature of the piece is actually that it would be better expressed as a timeless, era-less piece rather than, say, the common day; it would allow more connection to the piece by making it less restrictive.

Not quite sure how much I could expand the timeline more though, because an integral part is the division of the relationship (and dance) into three specific, separate, steps. Of course the reality is that the steps blend, but...for the purposes of this piece, I didn't want to do any blending.

The one thing I think I would change is the ending, I feel at the same time that it's complete and yet not complete enough. I like the terse quality of it, though I feel like it needs to be drawn out more - the pause right after the end of a dance, if you follow. But I'm not quite sure what the words should be to describe it.

[lemony-purple.livejournal.com]

Ahh, I keep forgetting the word limit-- any suggestions are probably more along the lines of a rewrite without the word limit to see how it would work if extended, since I doubt anything I'm mentioning (for any of them) would work within a set limit.

I see how the timeline has to be restricted into three parts, but at the same time the jumps from two years to five years to eight years make it feel too sudden; the way I was reading it originally was that we were only seeing what happened at the two-year mark and at the five-year mark rather than what happened in the space of two years and in the space of the next three years until five. Maybe that's just because I'm trying to make those fit with the final part-- in that one, all that's shown is just what happened at the eight-year mark.

I'm not sure how you'd go about showing more of what happened in the space of two years, or five, which is what I meant by extending, but since the first step is two years and the second is the next three years, maybe just brief mentions of what went on in year one, or year four, for instance, instead of just the final years of those steps; on the other hand, while this would show the progression of the earlier stages of the relationship, I like that the last step is just what happened in year eight. That one does work better as a sudden jump instead of a gradual progression, so I'm a bit torn on this now.

I think the ending is fine; it's simple and conveys the point, and a pause could potentially make it less dramatic. Then again, I can't really know that without seeing how the pause would be written. It's good as-is, though, enough that I'm not concerned with how it could be done differently. It doesn't feel incomplete.