Thursday, June 30, 2011

New Strategies and Nice Shaping

Part: Follow
Dances: Tango, Waltz, Quickstep
Hovers: 1 (a very good one, I might add)

Yesterday I got kind of a rude surprise when I realized that our week is one day off for the weight lifting, so it was chest and shoulders day and I was expecting legs. As Jeff will attest; chest and shoulders is by far my weakest, and legs my strongest for sure. Anyways, I got through it and am happy that it's legs today.

Practice yesterday was quite short; we decided to take some time to plot out the rest of our week and come up with a practice format or template that we will complete on a weekly basis to help us focus on the issues we are finding in our dancing and also to make sure we allot enough time for a little slow practice daily, warm up, cool down, and plenty for stretching. I was really happy that Jeff brought up this idea, because I've always been one for plotting out the steps, be the project a paper, a sewing project, and assignment at work, you name it. So I think this is going to be really good for both of us and help us really know what we want to get out of each individual practice session. This discussion also broadened a bit to a more general one about our broader and more ultimate goals, and in the end we realized that although some of our ideas about what some of the more proximate goals we should have as a partnership may be different, all we both really care about in the end is getting as good as we can at dancing. We're thinking this new way of scheduling out our practice sessions is really going to help with that.

As for the practice itself, we worked on the tippsies in quickstep briefly, the same issue with timing as always, this time taking smaller steps as Jeff suggested in his last post. It was okay, but I think bringing back the metronome there is going to help. Our waltz and foxtrot felt really good, if I do say so myself, and waltz especially just felt more together and under control; I was rushing less and we were taking our time on the drives and collections. The hover was pretty great too. Jeff mentioned when we finished that he thought it was a pretty good one, and since I thought he was talking about the song we were dancing too I agreed, "Yeah, I'd give it about 4 stars." Jeff chuckled; I suppose we're rating our dancing like Thai food now too? Foxtrot just feels pretty good for us these days, and Jeff worked a bit on the new shaping going into the reverse wave. He did it backwards a few times, and once I did it entirely without his lead (so slap me, I deserve it), but the few times we got it right it felt awesome. Once I was so excited by how it felt that I said "Oooooh...NICE!" as we finished, and Jeff thought that was hilarious. Well, it was nice...what can I say?

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