{"id":960,"date":"2012-03-18T15:23:10","date_gmt":"2012-03-18T08:23:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.wordpress.com\/?p=960"},"modified":"2013-06-17T18:51:37","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T18:51:37","slug":"ten-cents-a-dance-singapore-03182012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/?p=960","title":{"rendered":"Ten Cents a Dance \u2013 Singapore \u2013 [03\/18\/2012]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Ten cents a dance
\nthat\u2019s what they pay me
\ngee how it weighs me down
\nTen cents a dance
\nPansies and rough guys
\nTough guys who tear my gowns<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve said before that balls are a job of work, many times I\u2019ve said that. During this part of the cruise though, they\u2019re more of a challenge than usual. We\u2019re tired you see, we\u2019re not supposed to be, but we are. The energy of the team is flagging to the point where the cruise director hauled us all into a meeting and collectively rapped our wrists for letting our personal exhaustion show on the work front. We pulled ourselves together after that, exhaustion has its place, and it\u2019s not on the public decks.<\/p>\n

I love the theme night parties, and last night\u2019s St Patrick Day celebrations were actually a lot of fun. Half party, half show, with a good deal of laughter and a good deal of sparkle. The guests enjoyed themselves, which is of course the point.<\/p>\n

Most of you know that I would rather dance than breathe, for me to sit out a dance is an indication that my feet literally won\u2019t let me move for the duration of a song. The thing is, the balls are work, and the dancing involved in them is work as well.\u00a0 There are no female dance hosts you see, though there are several gentlemen on board who are sailing without their wives, or whose wives choose not to grace the floor. So it is that the female members of the entertainment team fill the vacant slot. We fox-trot, we waltz, we guide elderly gentleman who barely know their left foot from their right around the floor in such a way that it makes them feel like they\u2019re Fred Astaire. We are pinched, prodded and held too close by a dozen different strangers in the course of an evening.<\/p>\n

Look available, but never *be* available<\/em><\/p>\n

Basic rule of thumb.<\/p>\n

Most of them are sweet and harmless and it brings us joy to bring a little light into their lives. Many of them are even friends, well, as much friends as we can consider guests without crossing the very delicate invisible line that exists between A-deck and the rest of the world.<\/p>\n

A few people ask how we keep up the perfectly painted, perfectly coy smile, how we keep our eyes sparkling when we\u2019re longing for a hot cup of tea and a warm bed. It\u2019s simple \u2013 they don\u2019t pay to see that we\u2019re tired, they don\u2019t care that we are. Just like triggers in theatre, you find something that you can bring to mind that will make<\/em> you smile. A real smile. You think of something, anything, something a friend did that made you laugh, and there will come a smile.<\/p>\n

But at the end of the night, once you step into the crew elevator and slide out of the public eye, smiles give way to rueful expressions of exhaustion, ringlets get combed out and silk stockings tossed carelessly in the laundry hamper to be dealt with the next day.<\/p>\n

Around here, we know how to make magic, but only when we find it\u2019s absolutely necessary \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Seven to midnight we hear drums
\nLoudly the saxophones blow
\nTrumpets are crashing my eardrums
\nCustomers crush my toes…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ten cents a dance that\u2019s what they pay me gee how it weighs me down Ten cents a dance Pansies and rough guys Tough guys who tear my gowns I\u2019ve said before that balls are a job of work, many … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,40,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-below-the-waterline","category-grand-world-voyage-2012","category-theme-events"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3GtNE-fu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2259,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960\/revisions\/2259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bloodinyoursaltwater.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}