Dances: Night-club 2-step, Tango, Foxtrot, Waltz
Hovers: 1
Yesterday night I entered the practice room to find the fans running full blast, the door cracked open, the mirrors on the back wall completely fogged up, and little puddles of water on the floor, and Jeff groaning about the human humidity level. Apparently the spin class or whatever class preceded us really worked up a sweat and caused the elevated humidity when combined with a cold weather outside. I suggested we practice tango, and that turned out to be the perfect dance for the conditions, since in tango it's generally considered anathema to let the feet slide. I got startled by the stickiness when we went to dance our first figure; I normally cheat quite a bit apparently, and my feet were getting stuck and not allowing me to, so it was good to feel the difference.
Since the section following our two fallaway reverse slip pivots has been a chronic problem, at least for me, I suggested we work on that, basically entering the oversway and getting out of it with the proper drive and rotation, again, it's mostly a matter of me providing enough rotation of my own so that I don't feel heavy on Jeff. We also found that I was rising a bit on my heel turn, and when I fixed that Jeff said it felt much better. I hate the way heel turns feel in tango, since you're essentially just planting the feet one after the other with heels together and toes out...really awkward. Then I was trying to figure out the direction of my step coming out of the oversway into the natural turning figure; Simeon had told me I needed to drive back more, but Kora had told me I actually needed to pick up my foot and step around Jeff. What I found is that I think I just need to step just left of his foot and rotate my upper body a lot more than my hips and legs. I know that's an important component and I'm not sure if my footwork is fixed yet, but at least that is part of the picture. I was also getting behind and wonky in the chasse coming out of this section, but I think because I am not completing the rotation quickly and cleanly enough and so I'm still trying to get back normal alignment as the chasse starts. After a few runs it was coming together a bit more.
We ended practice with a foxtrot and waltz run through. The sticky floor was quite a problem in those dances, but we managed. It's rather sad, but I don't know exactly what happened to our foxtrot. I think it's been broken; it just doesn't feel as good as it used to. Maybe we just need a fresh approach. Last night I compiled some practice plans for the rest of this week, so maybe that will help us get more focus in our practices and approach things from a new angle.
No comments:
Post a Comment