Return to ballroom dancing gives woman courage to leave husband, reclaim passion
Return to ballroom dancing gives woman courage to leave husband, reclaim passion

By M.J. Van Deventer

Published: August 3, 2008

Can a gift of dance lessons change a life? It did for Janet Carlson, who tells her true story in "Quick, Before the Music Stops: How Ballroom Dancing Saved My Life” (Broadway Books, $19.95).

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Carlson studied ballet, jazz and ballroom dancing while attending Yale University, and in her 20s, she was a successful competitive ballroom dancer for seven years. But she abandoned dancing for 20 years as she pursued her career as an editor for luxury magazines, raised two daughters and tried to salvage a rocky marriage.

At age 45, she writes, "To be precise, I was half dead.” Looking back on that day, when her mind drifted at a bar mitzvah, she writes, "I feel sorry for the person I was then ... and that she had gotten to half dead without even putting up a fight.” She was somehow withdrawn in the midst of her life and the lives of her children. Her marriage to a well-known photographer was out of synch.

A year after she realized her life was in chaos, her husband, whom she describes as "pathologically mellow,” gave her 20 dance lessons for Valentine's Day. "He took me to a ballroom dance studio and, in so doing, set me free,” Carlson writes. One spin around the floor, and she knew she had found her footing again.

As dance came back into her life, she gained the courage to end her marriage. "A mudslide,” she called the unhappy union. She embraced her giddiness. "Because of it, I unwittingly allow dance to become the light of my life, while my marriage by increments becomes the darkness.”

The words of ballet master George Balanchine, "Now! What are you saving it for? Do it now!” became a mantra for Carlson. She feels sexy and sultry again. She finds joy in the arms of other men on the dance floor and justifies the inevitable physical contact as a normal part of the dance experience.

Dance awakens her to long-dormant passions. She feels motivated again and plunges enthusiastically into her work as the beauty and health director for Town & Country magazine. Her relationship with her daughters grows stronger.

And she is still dancing. She writes, "There is no time for regret in dance. You have only now, this moment for your performance, your glorious movement. Whatever you're going to do, do it now, quick, before the music stops.”

Carlson is now certified by the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing and continues to have a great love for her job. She lives in Westchester County, N.Y., with her daughters.

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