Lesson #12

Dance:  Viennese Waltz
Part:  Lead
Workout:  Chest and shoulders at the gym.
Random Life Event:  Haircut day today.

Yes you read the dance line correctly.  Today was Viennese Waltz day.  For some reason Sarah came up with the idea to focus on Viennese Waltz in our lesson today with Kora.  I had no objection since I've never really spent time working on that dance.  The most we ever work on it is at the Sunday night dances where Sarah and I just dance through it trying not to kill or be killed by anyone else in the process.  Now during these dances the Viennese Waltz generally feels fine.  Sarah and I seem to understand this particular dance naturally.  Though we were about to find out what we were doing wrong.

Kora started out by fixing my Prep Step.  Apparently I liked to dip into the Prep Step as a wind up into my natural turns.  Instead, Kora had me go straight back and wind up from the waist up.  From there I was to swing through Sarah and upward.  This would then prevent the dipping into each and every one of the natural turns.  Sarah was charged with the task of keeping track of her head.  There was a specific way it was suppose to move.  The first time we tried all of this together was a disaster.  Sarah's head was doing something weird and I wasn't swinging through.  But after a few more tries, things started to come together.  To be honest, it didn't feel altogether that different, however Kora said it looked much better.  Find by me if the changes come that easy.

The next part was to look at the Reverse Turns.  In this figure I was not lowering and pushing through my standing leg enough.  Sarah on the other hand wasn't swinging through me enough.  So Kora had me trying to lower and push up and through my standing leg and having Sarah swing her sides alternately.  The result was a somewhat uncontrollable Reverse Turn that traveled quite a bit down the floor.  After about 15 minutes we were starting to regain some control, but it's hard to do that and think of everything you're supposed to be focused on correcting.  I'm proud to say that for both the Natural and Reverse Turn we did well.  With a little practice we should be able to have the main principle down.

Last but not least was Fleckerls.  They are tough.  I spent half the time looking down at my feet before I noticed that's what was throwing a lot of it off.  Meanwhile, Sarah had decided to always dance to her own SUPER FAST tempo regardless of the pace I was traveling at.  It was an interesting and hilarious learning experience.  Fleckerls are going to require quite a bit of work, but it's to be expected as neither of us have done them before.  Apparently we get our choice of either doing them in wrong side or right side position.  I guess we'll have to practice and see which one fits us best.

To close out I wanted to bring some attention to the Random Life Event line.  I got a haircut today which isn't anything special since it grows like a weed.  But I actually asked my stylist to leave the top long this time.  Usually I go for short hair all around.  My hair only does one thing and that is stick straight up.  It's standard issue, Asian communist hair and doesn't like to conform to anything else.  So if you're looking for the spiky look, I've got it down cold.  What made me want to grow it out now is the fact that we might be looking into some competitions in the near future.  If that's the case I need to make sure my hair is long enough to slick back or do something other than spiky.  It's funny how your life starts to revolve around this sport which only seems to take and never gives.  :)