Heel Turns

Part: Follow

Dances: Night club 2-step, Foxtrot

Hovers: 0

After an unusually long and perhaps less rigorous workout than usual, we headed in to practice. One of our Latin dance buddies was already there, working on his jive and cha-cha. His dancing is looking really really good these days; we really do need to find him a good partner.

I had pegged Thursday night for foxtrot, and specifically for our heel turns. Since Jeff always complains about how hard they are to lead and I always complain about following them, I thought it would be a good thing to work on. Even though we usually get through them passably, it seems we often lose connection or bump along there, so they need a little TLC. I wanted to work on my stretch also coming out of the turns. It helps with the flow if the lady stretches out a bit as she rounds the corner, if you will, but it has be a stretch that doesn't affect the frame, so it requires a flexibility in the arms so that body connection is not lost. I've had a bad history with this, so that was one thing I was thinking about.

I was also trying to keep my knees softer going into the heel turn as it makes the whole thing more stable and smooth; for some reason I always have a tendency to rise and straighten my legs going into the heel turns. This was a little tough this particular day because of my still hurt knee. Another huge challenge is timing the draw in of the free leg; and the drop of the heel of the standing leg. It takes a lot of control to wait to drop until the heels are together, and though I've gotten much better at that, I still always want to draw in the leg a little quickly, though I think there is something about the timing of the heel turn that actually requires the follow to drop her heels a little earlier than normal, but don't quote me on that.

Other than our initial warm up, we didn't branch out too much on this practice. We focused on foxtrot heel turns and that was it. I did have an embarrassing moment when I realized that I had called our reverse turns (which are the heel turning figures for the follow in our routine) natural turns in our practice plan. Oops! And I'm supposedly the ballroom syllabus nerd of the partnership.