Straightening the Promenade

Part: Follow

Dances: Waltz, Tango, Night-Club 2 step

Hovers: 3?

Thursday's practice was a good, focused one. This time we had the room pretty much to ourselves, so we got to work. We ran through our waltz and spent a good deal of time working on our promenades, not tipping them and making them less of a V shape and more together in the frame. We did this by essentially doing a hover telemark into promenade and then doing a few chasses in a row towards the mirror so that we could check our alignments. I was working on keeping my outside side (my right) up and forward and towards Jeff, and also trying to be better at keeping my head inside the frame. In my efforts to extend, often my head will kind of get out of the "picture frame" in waltz especially and kind of hang out instead of staying in a nice line with my spine.

Jeff was commenting after we went social dancing recently that it really seems that these frame issues (especially in promenade) are really our biggest issue in our dancing, and that once we fix these technicalities, we will probably do very very well since we both seemed to naturally have a good feel for the movement standard dancing requires and a lot of energy moving down the floor. That is something that is very difficult to learn, while the frame issues are definitely something that can be hammered out over time. Of course balance and control and technique are all important for movement too, but we feel that the foundation is there and already gives us kind of an edge, and once we fix the frame, we'll probably be in good shape to be competitive. We'll see though. The frame is pretty important!

After waltz, we focused on tango. We worked about on our reverse outside swivel...never a favorite step of mine...trying to figure out how the timing works. Jeff likes to lead it with the swivel in a more continuous action rather than a sharp sort of punctuated swivel as I was used to when dancing the same figure with Simeon. We realized that both are correct (after watching our demo video), so I think Jeff is going to keep doing what he was doing, and just be extra careful to make sure the timing fits. Again, Jeff was working on his frame issues, and I was trying to be conscious of my movement coming out of the oversway so as to provide my own rotation and not be heavy on Jeff's arm.

We ran through quickstep once; again, it doesn't feel like our best dance, but it's not bad. In any case, we got through it to music without any catastrophes. That's one dance that definitely feels worse than it looks. We also ran through foxtrot as well. Tango, on the other hand, feels okay and looks pretty sad, at least based on that one video we took.

Finally, we ended practice with more work on night club 2-step. We finally got to the ronde section, for which I was quite excited, and that's all we got through for the evening.