Stephen's gift made room for him, again.
Only sad thing is that, in this occurrence, a lifetime lament of mine has once again played out: The fun people always move away.
It sure seemed to be the case when I was in school. The cool classmate with whom you made close friends and good memories would be whisked away by parents who accepted better job opportunities elsewhere, split up, whatever.
It was a job opportunity that claimed Stephen K. Stone, my instructor and partner in the 2021 edition of Little Rock's popular charity dance contest, Dancing With Our Stars. Stephen, whom I've jokingly referred to as my "dance husband" since that contest, came to be a dear friend of Dre's and mine.
Stephen was a dance professor at my alma mater, the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He'd had a number of previous dance-education posts; his stay in Arkansas had been the longest of his career. At the time we met, he was in his twilight days at the university, as it had made a decision to discontinue its dance program. He's now beginning his next adventure, teaching dance at the University of Wisconsin ... a state whose name is stuck in my head due to its recurring reference in "2012," the 2009 mega-disaster/end-of-world movie Dre watches whenever it airs on television even though we've got the DVD.
I love dance, but before the competition, the closest I'd done per "partner" dancing was freestyle dancing, at nightclubs or special events, with Hubby and other guys who positioned themselves across from me and also did their own thing. I'd harbored many a daydream about performing a modern-dance routine with a faceless partner. That daydream fell a bit short during a group salsa-dancing lesson a few years back, when I was paired with a dour "partner" who made no attempt to hide his disappointment that I wasn't already fit to compete in the World Salsa championships. I shied away from any more such lessons.
But while covering Dancing With Our Stars for this paper's High Profile section, I'd taken a fancy to the annual benefit for the Children's Tumor Foundation, which helps those living with neurofibromatosis. Based on ABC's "Dancing With the Stars," the end-of-summer contest features competing local well-knowns performing dance routines with local instructors before judges and an appreciative crowd. This year's event took place Thursday (congrats to whoever won!).
Long story short: I went from covering Dancing With Our Stars to being a judge for the 2020 contest, a virtual event for which we met in a studio setting and watched recorded dance routines on video. In 2021 I was asked to compete in what would once again be a live event. I said yes, both honored and petrified.
My first meeting with Stephen, my assigned instructor, was via a Zoom call. To my relief, he was quite the affable fellow. He interviewed me about my music and dance-style preferences. I told him I had a love for Afro-Latin/Cuban/Caribbean dance, especially since I was a Zumba fan. Then I revealed how much I love Gloria Estefan's early hits, "Conga" and "Rhythm Is Gonna Get You," both of which could get me up off a sickbed to dance. An Estefan fan himself, he suggested a routine from the latter song.
We scheduled our first rehearsal for early July. Hit by the summertime lazies and the what-have-I-dones, I mildly dreaded the beginning of rehearsals.
Which seems strange now. We hit it off and fell into a routine of rehearsing a couple of times a week over the summer. My fears of failure at "real" partner dancing dissipated, thanks to Stephen's gentleness, his patience, his way of using down-to-earth metaphors when describing various dance steps and how to do them, his dedication, his sense of humor (and, ahem, his appreciation for my warped sense of humor) and his words of praise. I thought like a dancer, he said.
While resting, we'd sit to chat about any and everything. Knowing that he was concerned about what would happen after his job came to an end, I texted him Proverbs 18:16, the Bible verse that says that a man's gift makes room for him.
We didn't win the contest, which took place Sept. 9 last year, but we wowed the crowd ... and I won a friendship. I felt like I'd known Stephen forever. And when Dre met him, he instantly liked him, too.
The three of us got together for a number of dinners and outings as the months passed. (Stephen either really liked my cooking or was a really good liar.) And the three of us would talk about any and everything. Dre and I encouraged him as best we could — while simultaneously dreading his departure — during his search for the next dance professorship, a search which stalled for a while before the University of Wisconsin finally bit.
"Hard to find friends like those," Dre has said repeatedly since our last get-together with Stephen, two days before he blew town.
We've promised to stay in touch and, when possible, exchange visits. (Dre and I have already declared that any visits we make up North would have to be during the warmer months.)
Meanwhile I'm reminded of the end of "2012," when actress Thandiwe (formerly known as Thandie) Newton's character, Laura Wilson, is reading aloud from a book written by the movie's main character, Jackson Curtis. In the last sentence of the book, Curtis has concluded that "somehow or another, we all have relatives in Wisconsin."
Friends, too, it seems.
Email: hwilliams@adgnewsroom.com