Dances: All 5 standard
Today, our schedule involved practicing a bit before the weekly Sunday night dance party at the Washington Dance Club in Seattle. Since foxtrot music was playing, we went with that, but didn't really work so much on our usual slow exercises and mostly just ran through the routines to see if we had managed to ingrain any of the concepts we had been practicing so hard at the slower tempos. I think it has helped, but still needs a lot more work. Full speed is an entirely different animal.
In the quickstep, I'm not sure how, we somehow ended one figure in an alignment that I could only call "Promenade Ceiling." We've had good laughs in the past about our "promenade wall" in tango, where somehow we ended up charging towards the studio mirrors all canons firing, only to realize, we're not making progress along the floor here, we're just charging the audience/mirrors/empty chairs. Oops. This time, I think because of Jeff's head position and my focus on keeping my line of vision directed upward, we ended up in a promenade nicely pointed up towards the ceiling, with our heads and frame all following the alignment. Beautiful! Quickstep, ready for take off! Roger!
The dance party itself was fine, but "gentlemen were scarce, and more than one lady in want of a partner" as Elizabeth Bennett would say. That meant that Jeff got tired pretty quickly as he was in even more high demand than usual (and that's saying something!) and I didn't get as much of a cardio workout as I might otherwise have. I think in general the dances we did get in went okay; there were some issues in foxtrot and waltz where having to swivel and cross into wrong side position caused my sparkly top to snag on his shirt, causing me to pull away and break connection, but tango was better once I started to remember that I need to take much smaller steps on the insides of turns. Jeff valiantly floor crafted our way through quickstep, and I think I followed pretty well the random figures that the conditions necessitated that definitely weren't our routine, even though I think he was disappointed because of what making things up on the fly had done to our general flow, but I though he did a great job, and besides, it is terrific practice for competition conditions. In general, I think that was the real object of our social dance practice; it really gets Jeff used to changing things up when necessary to avoid collisions, and it helps me truly learn to follow since I can't rely on knowing a routine in those situations.
I am soooo thankful for the holiday tomorrow...more time to work out and get our dance practice in!
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