Monday, June 13, 2011

Free Spin Balancing Every 6,000 Steps

But I wouldn't count on it...

Part: Follow
Dances: Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Night Club 2-step
Hovers: 4!

Today I was really tired, and for some reason after doing my cardio workout I felt pretty light headed, and I kind of thought it would go away, but my head felt really heavy and kind of dizzy all night. That wasn't helpful, but otherwise I got a pretty good workout in. My arms are getting stronger, for sure.

We warmed up with night club 2-step, "Lady in Red" since Jeff let me pick the music, and then of course had to tease me unmercifully about it because I always want to dance night club 2-step. It's great for just getting into the groove of dancing though, because it's really chill and easy and smooth. And sometimes, after working out, I'm lazy...what can I say?

After that we danced a round minus Viennese, thought we did try about two bars of Viennese with a track from the Narnia soundtrack. My little sister would be so proud! Waltz is overall more controlled, tango is getting much more together as I said yesterday, foxtrot is more stretched out and quickstep is a lot smoother and less frenetic on the first long side, but other parts still need some work.

Then we did more of the deathly slow practice, and deathly is indeed an apt descriptor. I was a bit too tired today to maintain full command of my movement, and I did fall more than usual, especially in waltz. I'm also having a very difficult time driving forward into a natural spin turn at that speed...somehow I just feel like I don't have enough room when we're going that slow. And then again perhaps it's just that old fear that we long legged ladies have of really going for those drives when we're dancing with someone who is not significantly taller. It's no excuse since with proper technique it should work out just fine, but I get nervous all the same about that slight risk of a fatal collision. Still, it was good practice.

In tango we spent some more time on the back open promenade, and I like the way it is feeling much more now that we have the rotation figured out, as it ends up balanced and less twisted up. We also danced our really hard fallaway-reverse-slip pivot section of death probably the best we ever have, and that time I really stayed in my own space on the inside of the turns.

I tried doing the exercise where I put both of my arms up in front of me and off to the left on the left side of Jeff's frame while simultaneously dancing to the slow metronome in foxtrot, but that was a fail. I still can't multi-task that well yet. I can either keep my balance or keep my balance, but not both at once. In other words, I can't focus on keeping my arms properly balanced out in that awkward position and also my whole body and legs as I'm crawling along at that pace. One or the other, thank you very much. Combining drills will be really good down the road, but right now it's like a harder version of patting your head and rubbing your stomach.

Oh, and Jeff conveniently decided that our hover doesn't actually need that much work after all. After last night's hover-taken-too-far, he had promised me that we needed to work on this so that we could avoid similar mishaps in the future, and I of course had enthusiastically agreed. "We get to practice the hover? Over and over? That sounds like a good idea." But today Jeff had changed his mind about how good it was. We did have a couple of nice ones today, I will agree, but no hard core hover practice. Sad day.

1 comment:

  1. I wouldn't necessarily describe it as "a fatal collision." (I speak from having been at the business end of a lady's knee) Yes, it was very painful. I *felt* like I was going to die. But I didn't die.

    On the other hand, I suppose if an impact were of sufficient force to utterly preclude future offspring, and the resultant despair inducing one to end one's own existence, I suppose it could be described as a fatal collision, albeit indirectly.

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