It's murder on the dance floor

Can personality make up for size, asks Gerry Forde in this week's Southlander.

This was really put to the test when my smallest daughter hit the testosterone laden nightlife of a Timaru tavern.

Following her instincts she headed straight for the dance floor. She only got halfway before she was grabbed from behind by her friends. They signalled her to one side of the room.

"Here you dance with your back to a wall!"

So while the others stood drinking and watching for danger like meerkats on duty, she danced ... against the wall. And her dancing caused the problem.

When a bloke is particularly drunk, the slightest movement attracts his attention. By now our girl was hamming up the moves to cajole her mates to relax. She turned and was nearly knocked flat by a huge guy flailing his arms like a windmill in a tornado.

He waded into the centre of the group. His long arms flashed clumsily, he caught the bottom of a glass and sloshed one of the women with beer.

There was a silence tuned to fever pitch. The sodden woman put down her empty glass and rolled up her sleeves, face darker than an antarctic winter. Disco Dick went from playing the fool to playing table drums, beer splatters going far and wide.

The angry woman moved in on the drummer.

At this point my tiny daughter dived between them. The woman glared over the top of her, the drunk swayed behind her tiny frame pulling faces.

Then the petite dancer made her move. She grabbed the sodden woman and two of her mates and crumped them up to the dance floor, diffusing the situation.

For five minutes.

Disco Dick came up behind and started mimicking her dancing. No one in the party was laughing, bodies were tensing.

Would the dance floor become a boxing ring?

Our little girl made her move. She backed into him; he grabbed her shoulders and swayed perilously. Her mates looked confused, was she dirty dancing with the Drop-dead Drunk?

Suddenly she used her largest muscle, swung her hips in reverse and bummed that loser, one step back, two steps, three right off the dance floor, back between the tables and up against the back wall.

She returned still dancing and the whole floor exploded into an ovation.

» Gerry Forde is the Venture Southland regional identity brand manager.

- © Fairfax NZ News