Waltz Unclunkified

Part: Follow

Dances: All five standard and Latin, except Paso

Hovers: 3

A blog post in 10 minutes; can I do it? Yesterday was another good practice. As Jeff mentioned, we had more company, including a couple of friends, bikini girls, and the break dancing kids, who obviously thought they were pretty hot stuff and sooo much cooler than those silly adults trying to dance to a loud clicking noise. Besides, they had speakers! What they forgot is that Jeff had the whole sound system...so when they started getting really obnoxious he just coolly pumped up one of the more aggressive techno style tango tracks and we charged around the room (with some pointed promenades in their general direction) to show who was really boss. They eventually left, as I think they found us rather boring to mess with anyways since we were obviously not going to pay any attention their goofing off.

We did more waltz to the metronome, and Jeff was heard to say, "I really enjoy practicing to the metronome . . . well, maybe enjoy isn't the word," and I finished the thought by agreeing that it's really fun to see the results of the exercise so quickly. For example, last night after our metronome exercise, we had figured out where we are falling in the weave figures, had fixed that, and we had also discovered for the first time that I always rush a certain step coming out of it, which I fixed. The result was a really smooth, together, and "unclunky" first long side in the waltz; plus, we covered a lot of ground. We're pretty thrilled to have made so much improvement already, just after two days of this exercise with the waltz. We did more of the same with foxtrot and quickstep. In quickstep we quickly realized that when we danced it that slowly, we both had a hard time remembering the rhythm of our routine, since quickstep rhythms are like drum beat patterns, and when slowed down that much it doesn't feel anywhere near the same.

We finished the practice session with a Latin round, just to mix it up. Another good practice session for the books. In the next post I will talk about the basketball player who fell into our practice room like an alien from outer space.