As I mentioned in a previous post, most French guys know how to dance “le rock”, which is sort of like swing dancing but with simpler footwork, and it is super common to do it at parties.  Well, I found out the secret: Tuesday night dance classes.  I think literally half of the school was crammed into the judo practice room last night practicing different steps and passes as the student leaders of the “binet rock” alternated between teaching new moves and helping people who had questions.

Side note: I initially wrote “rock club” instead of “binet rock” because that’s the literal translation (at Polytechnique the clubs are called “binets”), but “rock club” just doesn’t have the same ring in English.  I’m imagining either a dark dirty club where they play nonstop rock music or a bunch of geologists getting together to chat about their favorite rocks.  Both of these sound incredibly uninteresting to me, so I changed it.  I’m sorry if I offended any geologists out there.

Anyways, since we were on the judo mat everyone had to take off their shoes which I’m sure my partner was quite thankful for as I stepped on his feet an incredibly number of times throughout the night (my salsa partner from Caltech would be ashamed…sorry Irving!).  Also I can’t even blame the sangria this time.

I’m not ashamed to say that I watched an introductory video on youtube before going to the class.  I am ashamed to say that it didn’t help a ton.  Le rock is a bit strange to me because the beat is somewhat arbitrary (depending on what your partner decides) and the guy I was dancing with wasn’t super concerned about it so I had nothing to go on except his lead.  Similar to cuban salsa, there are a lot of moves where I end up all tied up like a pretzel or a croissant and then miraculously get unravelled.  It’s actually quite impressive.  Maybe that’s why the French have such good bakeries.