Dance class authoritarianism
My hips didn't lie
Against my better judgement (and sense of balance) I once allowed my wife to take me to a salsa dance class. It was in Delft, beyond the 17th century canals and under the flyover to the jumble of concrete and straight lines that dissolve into the borders with Den Hoorn.
For one lesson it was okay, a novelty. By the second it was a painful reminder that my body’s hinges worked the wrong way for this nonsense. By the third my mind followed my legs into full blown rebellion. Every step in the wrong direction was a humiliation, and my hips did nothing but lie. To me, to my wife, to the beat. It was time, half way through a lesson, to escape. My wife agreed, with a sorrowful look in her eyes as though accepting that I had gone beyond what any malfunctioning husband should endure in the name of salsa. We turned for the door.
“You!” We had been spotted. The room went quiet. Everybody looked our way. “You! You cannot leave!” We ducked down, as though trying to find a way through a thicket of barbed wire and past an Achtung Minen! sign. “You cannot leave!” repeated the voice, louder this time and with menace (and rhythm). “You must not leave, this is a dance class.”
My mind whirred and adrenaline pumped. We looked at each other, cheeks flushed with shame, confusion and the knowledge that we were alive, that we just had to keep going whatever deadly obstacle appeared in our way, whatever forces were thrown against us. “Stop!” shouted the voice, even more angrily. But we were free, past the double set of doors and out onto the cool air of a winter night in Delft. Free Delft. Glorious free Delft, where no dance teacher could harm us. A glance back, because we could not be sure that the teacher was not barrelling after us in a spangly outfit. But no, we were free.
I remembered this incident this last week, because it was the Dutch elections. To explain, it’s now a good couple of months since I started putting out the little YouTube videos that I made while writing my book, ‘Orange Sky, Rising Water’. They’ve been well received, and the most successful has now been seen over 10k times. Hoorah! So, the Dutch elections: time for a simple video from me giving a 60 second analysis. What could go wrong?
Plenty. The Dutch have the reputation - among themselves as well as outsiders - for blunt speaking. If they think you’re an idiot they’ll tell you you’re an idiot. If you try to escape a salsa class they will tell you that you absolutely cannot. We had plenty of experience of this forthrightness during our years there. Frankly when I published my book, I expected at least a few ‘You are an idiot’ comments, and the same when I started my YouTube videos.
The surprising and welcoming fact is that this hasn’t really happened. I had one person say that they were terrible videos with terrible music, and another - bizarrely - castigate me for filming a video while walking along the apparently wrong side of a country lane. But otherwise? It’s been great, with lots of compliments gently spiced with polite disagreements with me and between commentators. Even my quick take YouTube Short post-election was warmly received, by real authentic Dutch people. Eh?
Perversely, this has shaken me. What if I misunderstood the country and its people after all? Far from being a sign that I had plugged myself into what really made the Netherlands tick, what if I was utterly wrong and failed to explain the country at all? Maybe all this time I was thinking about the Belgians.
Anyway, here’s my quick take on the elections, in which the liberal D66 did well enough to nose in front of Geert Wilders’ PVV, the populist anti-immigration population with the surprising hair. D66 is in a good place to glue together a centrist-ish coalition. So:
There’s a deep desire for competent government, after the bunch of ineffective rascals they have recently.
PVV only slipped a tiny bit, even after that ineffective rascally time in power. This doesn’t mean there’s a chunk of determined rascists in the electorate; it means that the issues that have driven voters to PVV - generational unfairness, housing, inequality, immigration - remain enormous issues for many. Remember that the Dutch are not the only ones to worry about these issues, and for decades good centrist governments have utterly failed to address them. So…
Bring back competent, centrist government to the Netherlands, but deal with these issues.
Here’s the YouTube Short that I did, from *ahem* just south of Utrecht. Thanks for reading.