First Look at Fleckerls

Part: Follow
Dances: Quickstep, Viennese
Hovers: 2


Last night was a normal day, for once...workout, then practice. Since I had missed the Tuesday workout this week and done Monday instead, I had realized that I was going to end up doing arms and back twice and miss chest and shoulders this week. I can't deny that this didn't bother me too much; I figured it wouldn't hurt me once. Unfortunately, Jeff had also thought of this and proceeded straight for the cable cross and popped my bubble by informing me that he switched the schedule just to make sure I got in the chest and shoulders day. No days off for me!

Practice involved me forgetting my shoes and taking all of 10 min. to run home and back to get them (yay for living so close now!), and Jeff "testing" out a whole bunch of new songs that he had looked up after Seattle Star Ball.

Although we ran through bits of all of the dances, our primary focus was again quickstep. Once again we brought out the slow metronome (now a.k.a "tick-tock timing") and just worked through the first long side mostly, though a few times we did get as far as the rumba crosses on the second long side. Naturally, the whole thing works out a lot better that slow, so we'll just keep patiently clicking up the speed. The really tough part slow is the double-reverse, and we actually ended up doing double the rotation we should have on one of them because we just kept spinning since we had so much more time. It was a funny moment when we realized we had ended up aiming to go back the way we had come. In quickstep too I think we were both focusing on the lower connection as in foxtrot, since the slower speeds made it easier to be conscious of. We didn't really talk about practicing it specifically but it seemed that were both thinking about it.

Finally, we dedicated a little time to trying to understand fleckerls in Viennese Waltz, how they work, and where we have to be to actually dance them. By the end we could actually get through a set of reverses, check, naturals, and exit, though we're no where near consistent and usually one of us messes up and crosses in front when it should be behind or the reverse. For me the toughest part is getting out into the natural turn after rotating that fast and hard...for Jeff I expect it's leading me into the darn things in the first place. It's a great feeling though when you get going and really take turns making the rotation happen, and I just love the feeling of the quick torque you get when you whip the leg behind. These will need a ton of work, but we're happy that we at least know the basic steps and know what we're generally shooting for.

For those unfamiliar with fleckerls (and just how hard they are), they are in this video, in the middle...reverses into naturals, just like we were practicing. It's the figure with all the turning in place:

Tonight we have an opportunity to do some social dancing at a new venue, so we're going to check that out instead of practicing tonight...and hopefully will have an interesting new experience to report.