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…You get dragged into performing your host country’s national dance in front of hundreds of strangers.

That’s what happened to me this Saturday, at a wedding feast that one of my local friends, who was to be the maid of honor, had invited me to. Much as I love dancing, I mostly avoid it at these events: the dancing area is usually squeezed in amongst the dinner tables – more of a dance aisle than a dance floor – and the lights are always so bright, and most of the time the number of people watching so far exceeds the number dancing, that even if I was the most average Kazakh girl in the world, I would feel like a spectacle up there. But at the same time, it’s painful to have nowhere to dance, because I do love dancing…

Thus, on this night, it was nearing midnight, and only one or two of the people sitting at my table had ventured onto the dance floor and back. (Another obstacle to getting in the dance zone here: at most Kazakh weddings, every single table has to come up and give a toast, which takes a lot of time – so usually the dance songs alternate with long sessions of toast-giving. That means the dancers have to go back to their seats after every song, which makes it really hard to get a critical mass of people on the dance floor). But now a song was starting, and I felt a familiar tap at my shoulder – the tap of the insistent random man, drunk enough to ask a strange girl to dance, but sober enough to dance with style, as a surprising number of Kazakh men can do. So I thought, “Oh, well, I haven’t been up there yet…” and I went with him.

Only when I reached the dance aisle did I realize that the music hadn’t started, and the space before me remained bare. In fact, the tamada (the Kazakh version of an MC) was still talking, although I hadn’t bothered to wonder what about. Now that I listened to him, I realized that he was inviting six couples to join him on the dance floor… to take part in a dance-off.

That’s right. He would give us about thirty seconds with a variety of different types of songs, and the audience – the masses of unfamiliar faces crowding the dinner tables in the room, plus my friend up in the maid of honor’s chair, trying to hide her widening smile – would judge us on our energy and style. And I thought, “Oh, shit.” And then I reasoned that there was no going back now. And I thought, “Oh, well.”

So the music started, naturally, with the Kazakh national dance – the Kara Zhorga. This is a dance that, when performed by professionals, can be quite powerful; it’s centered in the shoulders, and meant to imitate the movements of a black stallion. (Here’s an example.) Luckily, though, it’s also fairly easy to fake, as long as you can bend your arms at the elbow and move them in circles. This is what I did, while my partner escaped into a blissful flurry of foot-stomping, shoulder-rolling, and hip-shaking – which, luckily, I was not called upon to reciprocate. After awhile I put in a little effort at my shoulders, too, to avoid looking like a complete limp noodle – but not enough to risk making the cut to the next round.

The tamada stopped us and announced the next dance – Uzbek-style. The music then acquired an infectious drumbeat, and the drunker men on the dance floor, including my partner, started moving their heads in time to it. I did basically the same thing I did during the first dance – which seemed to be the path the other woman had decided on, too. The tamada once again cut us off, and I couldn’t catch the name of the next dance he announced – but at its mention, all the men started kicking their feet into the air and knocking their ankles together. Maybe that’s a Tajik thing? Anyway, my kara zhorga served me just as well during this round – well enough, that is, to keep time to the music while my partner did his thing; but not well enough to keep us from being disqualified when the music ended.

So I made a rush for my table and watched the rest of the action from the sidelines. I missed the Spanish dance and the Indian dance, in which the tamada positioned the men and women across the room from one another, and instructed the men to run towards the women in ecstatic slow-motion. But I’d been in the spotlight long enough for one of the young women at my table to compliment me on my skill at Kazakh dancing.

If only, I thought, she’d seen me when I was really trying…