Dances: Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Night-Club 2
Hovers: More than 5!
After our usual round and warm up dance, today's practice focused mainly on quickstep, in particular our second short side which had gotten a bit of short shrift since we've been working on all of the other tough spots but never that part. There was some confusion at the beginning about which side we were working on and I wish I could have recorded our back and forth on that one because I think we sounded so stupid (especially me)...we were both really tired today and it was coming out like, "So this is the short side after our 1st long side"..."No, it's the 2nd short side"...."Yeah, I know....the one after the Big Fish"..."No, not the Big Fish"..."Huh? Oh...the rumba cross"...."No."..."Uh...the part after the rumba cross?"..."What are you talking about?"..."The part after the rumba cross!"...."Here, lemme show you..." And then I go randomly locking my feet because I'm confused and that's what it felt like to me, even though I knew there was no lock step anywhere near that section. I felt like a moron because we know this routine. I do think the focused practice helped though.
We also tackled the rumba cross bit again after Jeff asked what else I thought we need to work on, and I pointed a finger at the side of the room we always dance that part on as though at a map to indicate my pick. I have a mental map of all of our routines, and since we generally dance them starting in the same place on the floor, I know where each part goes on the floor and so it only occurred to me afterwards that it's kind of silly to be pointing at parts of the room to indicate parts of the choreography, but Jeff knew what I meant.
Then we moved on to waltz and did some extra work on the closed impetus reverse pivot into hover. The closed impetus has always felt a bit off balance and to me and the reverse pivot coming out always seems rushed, or at least we seem to rush it, so it comes out less like an eighth note and more like a grace note or an afterthought. I think the focused on practice on this part, as painful as it may be, actually helped a lot, and it was feeling much smoother by the time we ended. Jeff's part of this sequence looks pretty hard; it's one of those times I'm grateful to be a follow. Towards the end though, our hovers started getting less and less balanced, and finally we decided that that was our sign to finish up practice for the night. Bring on the foam rollers!
I have the same confusion when working on specific parts of the routine. My partner doesn't know the names of the figures and would get them completely opposite (e.g. natural instead of reverse and vice versa). However, she knows exactly what needed to be done if she walks me through it.
ReplyDeleteI feel that someday, maybe after a year, the routine would be so ingrained in muscle memory that you can start anywhere and know exactly what to do. *crosses fingers*
I'm actually pretty good with the names of the syllabus steps; ask me to stop mid-step in any of our routines and I bet I could tell you the syllabus name of the figure. I was just tired and confused about what side we were on, and then we have our own silly names for some of the steps too, just to make it more complicated.
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