Take a Deep Breath; it's the Pirate Ship!

Part: Follow

Dances: Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep

Hovers: 1

Monday night; warm up was night club 2 step once again, and this time Jeff was determined to figure out how to exit the shadow position figure we've been doing on the right footing, so in the end he figured it out. Now we have another figure to add to our "Youtube Special," "Left-whisk contra-check" and of course, the immortal grapevine. Jeff can never get enough of that, or passing twinkles for that matter. A social dancer born and bred for sure.

We then danced through our waltz, and proceeded once more to investigate our quickstep issues. I had my syllabus book with me this time, so I looked up the tipsies to confirm the timing, and turns out that they are actually quick-and-quick, with the beat value of 1/2, 1/2, 1, so really no syncopation, and rather flat. We also watched a video of Mirko dancing that figure (I posted it in an early blog post, actually) to see how it looked, and sure enough, it was pretty even, and not really bouncy at all. Practice a la tick-tock timing followed, and as we worked on it to a slightly faster speed than we were used to, we focused on making the chasse part like a simple change (the larger steps were slowing us down), and I worked on sending my left side past Jeff as we entered the turn with enough energy to help us get going and hopefully pick up the pace faster. Because of the dramatic swing in this section, Jeff likened it to a pirate ship, in particular the pirate ship ride, where essentially the whole ride is sitting in a "ship" as is swings up and down and back and forth. I broke down in giggles a couple of times though, because Jeff was concentrating so hard that he took a huge gulp of air right after the prep step as we headed into the figure, as though he was about to dive into the deep end, and I could definitely feel it. Here comes the pirate ship, take a deep breath!!!

We ended with a foxtrot, which felt decent this time. I have decided, however, that I am not a fan of my feather finishes. They don't feel right to me and they didn't look good in my video. Something is wrong with the second step, but I haven't figure out exactly what. I've been called on it before too, but the fixes suggested just haven't worked yet. This is something I'm going to need to figure out as I can't get far without the feather finish.