This is a story of falling in love with a community. Or how we celebrated the New Year in the most delightful way, with joy, dancing and abundance.

I need to project myself and I like to celebrate New Year’s Eve surrounded by people, so when a few weeks before the end of the year I still didn’t have any plans, I expressed this need loud and clear (thanks fb), and when Marie-Noëlle, my new tango friend, suggested a folk dance ball, I jumped at the chance and booked our tickets. I was not disappointed, best decision of the month!

If only I knew how to draw, so that, failing to show you the photos I didn’t take that evening, I could reproduce in pencil or paint the opulence of the feast that awaited us at the Salle des Casernes in Anduze, in the Cévennes, when we joined the hundred or so other human beings gathered there and gravitating around the buffet, their taste buds all tingled, their lips smiling, and sparkles in their eyes.

More than just a shared dinner, the three or four tables, each several meters long, were transformed into a colorful collaborative banquet worthy of the finest caterers, featuring seafood verrines, salmon rolls with green and pink dill, apple-green guacamole blinis, spicy vermilion gambas, golden gougères, pâté en croute, salmon and lemon brochettes, vegetable sticks with various sauces, apple-green guacamole blinis, spicy vermilion prawns, golden gougères, pâté en croute, salmon and lemon brochettes, vegetable sticks with various sauces, cheese platters, savory cakes, tarts, quiches, salads and petits fours of all kinds. No sooner had we crossed the threshold than we were relieved of our chocolate cake, but we had to make our way to a table and make a little room for our plates of roasted butter squash tartlets, caramelized onions with balsamic vinegar, fresh goat’s cheese and pistachio that I’d spent the afternoon preparing. I’m not sorry I poured all my love into it, it was returned a hundredfold and I’d swear I witnessed the multiplication of the loaves first-hand.

Between several trips to the buffet, our plates filled to the brim, we hit the dance floor, rubbing shoulders with the crowd for bourrées, scottish, waltzes in three, eight or eleven beats, mazurkas, polkas, chapelloises, an dro, and rondo en chaine endiablés. Half the congregation seemed to know exactly what they were doing, the other half following willy-nilly, literally and figuratively sticking together.

Mixed in with this good-natured throng of hippies, babacool, barefooters, festival-goers, contact improvisers, bearded, tattooed, pierced, enkilted, made-up lovers of music, dance and life, we felt like fish in water, as if a new Prana was opening its arms wide to us. I saw some of the dancers I’d met before in tango or forro, thought I recognized others who denied me, tried to find out the secret of the mazurka that refuses to let me in, discovered that the current fashion was to dance the bourrée à six, talked to Marie-Noëlle about Michael Parmenter, debriefed with her about the idiosyncrasies of the tango population and even danced a few with Thomas. What a great way to socialize and dance, dance, dance until your feet hurt!

At half past two, having had our fill of live music, dancing, good humor and food galore (I’ll spare you the dessert buffet, with its chocolate mousses, tiramisu, sweet verrines, cakes, fruit salads and blueberry tart), we made our way back home, but not without a little scare when, on the way back, we came across a stray wild boar, as if to remind us of Obelix who was wisely waiting for us in Carnon.

With symbolic swims on the last day of the year and the first of the next, it was certainly easier to get into the water in Ko Yao Yai Bay, Thailand, a year ago, as we were able to tell Alain (another tango buddy) and his daughter Lorena, whom we met on the beach at Villeneuve-Lès-Maguelone after our first swim of the year and who interrupted our clumsy acrobatics, but we’re doing everything we can to ensure that 2024 is a continuation of 2023, in perpetual discovery, and the drive to live, again and again, against all odds.

Bonus: Atypical cure for cold and boredom

Finally, a little recent memory that I don’t want to forget. In the mountains, we’re waiting for the Chamrousse-Grenoble shuttle bus after a day of hiking in the snow with our brothers, sister-in-law and cousins. The lifts have just stopped, the resort is closing, the sun is setting, we’ve got three quarters of an hour to wait and the cold threatens to numb us, with nowhere to fall back to. Fortunately, the universe gives me an idea. I notice a pile of branches nearby, some small, some longer, some straight, some twisted, and set about finding one to play with, balancing it on one finger. The exercise is addictive, and soon Zephyr and Thomas join me, watched by the amused shoppers who are also waiting for the shuttle.

Far from being a match for Thomas’s good friend, Thomas, who can hold a stick vertically on his nose, after only ten minutes or so of training, we’re starting to get the hang of it reasonably well, and we’re setting ourselves extra challenges like jumping, making our sticks jump, or doing salsa steps with them. So much so that when the others – Nico, Gaël, Sonia, Délia and Azur – come back from their snowman session and see us having fun, they want nothing more than to give it a try. Unfortunately, they don’t get it right the first time. No doubt judging that we had won the best sticks, they asked for ours, which we agreed to lend them, but nothing helped. Should they have had the courage to persevere, the shuttle arrives to put an end to our circus.

One thing’s for sure, moving saves us from the cold, the game from boredom, and when you witness someone’s success, it’s a safe bet that they’ve been training long before you even noticed them…