The Fallaway Foot

Part: Follow

Dance: Tango

Hovers: 1

Tonight's practice was a bit on the shorter side, but we at least had a plan for what to practice and got to work on the specific figure that continues to frustrate us. I think Jeff just wanted to be done early, so he insisted after a brief period of focused practice that the first long side in tango (which we had picked to focus on) was actually feeling really good, so we had achieved our objective and could we be done now? Actually, as far as the fallaway-reverse-slip-pivot section of doom goes, it was actually feeling tons better. Before practice today I had watched a video that our coaches had made for us of them dancing our routine, and saw how Kora places and angles her feet in those figures, and it was not how I have been doing it. The frustrating thing for me though is that when I first learned this normally difficult figure, somehow I actually naturally did a pretty good job with the alignment of it, and Simeon had commented on this because it is usually a pretty tricky figure to learn. The part that I think I've always needed to work on, however, has not so much been the angle of the feet, but rather the size of my steps, and also taking care to keep my feet well tucked underneath me to facilitate the rotation on the inside of the turn. At some point when we were working on this I was told that I need to angle my left foot out more in the direction of the turn when going back in fallaway, but I think that has backfired for me by pulling me out of alignment with Jeff. It's never felt as good since I started trying to do that. Anyways, last night I decided to resort to my old ways of keeping my left foot more facing him and even angled slightly in the direction the promenade, and I think it was much smoother. Fallaway really is just moving backwards in promenade position, after all.

That tango piece was really all we worked on, besides a quick round. Foxtrot is still feeling really good, so once we get that promenade straightened out...we'll be in great shape, I think. Not done, of course, but at least we'll have a dance we can feel really confident about.

Since practice ended a bit earlier today, I joined Jeff and our Latin dancer practice buddy for pho at a little hole-in-the-wall Vietnamese place. Somehow the yumminess and general congeniality which ensued generated an intense and thought provoking discussion of morality and moral norms, which, if you ask me, is a great excuse for staying up too late, even if it did challenge me to recall some important principles from Moral Theology 301 almost 4 years ago! Luckily, today is Friday, I love philosophy, and we have a 3 day weekend ahead; no regrets.