Good Hovers and Bad Hovers

Part: Follow

Dances: Foxtrot, Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Cha-cha, Salsa, Night Club 2-step, West Coast Swing

Hovers: 5 or more...I lost count!

Friday night wasn't much of a practice night for us. Part of that was my fault since I got there late, but since we were going social dancing afterwards I think the motivation was a little blah. Jeff decided to test my following with the first long side of our foxtrot by varying the beat in odd ways and stopping in unexpected places. I discovered that one of the problem in our hover telemark is that I keep dropping my left side when we have the strong left shape, a natural mistake to make, but it explains why Jeff kept saying I felt heavy. That steps is bothering me right now; I always feel like I ought to be keeping my hips, legs, and feet close to Jeff's so that I can feel when he comes out into promenade or whatever comes next, but then because of the rotation and left shape into the figure, my upper body get's too far away and my legs usuall come too because they have to stay under my own body if I'm not going to fall. Anyways, it was good to practice that way, and though very challenging, it helps us nail down the specific problem pieces.

Social dancing was fun and much the same as usual. This time I had hurting knees though since I started to try running again this week, and I'm beginning to remember why I stopped. We danced a cha-cha and salsa, kind of breaking the whole standard mold, and the fun thing about that was my swishy red skirt on the twists and spins. I should wear skirts for social dancing more often. Our night club also went pretty well, and then we danced some waltz, Viennese watlz, and foxtrot. A lot of their waltzes are very fast for your standard slow watlz, so Jeff gets creative and does lots of passing twinkles and some random foxtrot figures to make things run smoothly. Our Viennese felt pretty good comparatively too, and it was a long one. I think we felt more relaxed that sometimes, and I was trying not extend so much. I don't know if it was because we had a short practice and he felt he had something to make up to me, or whether he was just feeling generous, but in our last waltz Jeff led quite a lot of hovers. I was most appreciative, and for the last one, which was sort of drawn out, I felt like I had the space to really stretch out and maybe took it a bit too far. It would have been fine if my weight had been more forward in the legs, I think, but we survived. It was the end of the song and a group was watching us, and it seemed like a nice finale. Ah well. I also heard from Jeff that some people were asking if we were pros! That's hard to imagine, but a nice compliment all the same. For all we're going through to work on our many technical problems, it's comforting to know that the overall effect is still generally good...and that we look like we move well as a couple. Still a long ways to go though.