Dances: Night-club, Waltz, Tango, Viennese, Foxtrot, Quickstep
Hovers: 2
Another night with a round...though we did do a night-club warm up. We were both a little surprised that our quickstep did not crash and burn quite as expected. And we still felt out of shape. One thing that I think affected our dancing a little was the fact that I decided to dance this round en costume. I've been working away on my ballroom gown and recently finished the hem and skirts (all 5 layers, no less!), and I wanted to make sure the length (which is pretty long, comparatively) and weight were danceable. Still no floats or decorations...but for the first time in forever I must say that I am happy with this project so far. The skirt moves really well, and, by design, the dress does an excellent job of minimizing liabilities and maximizing assets, so I can't wait to make our open debut in it. Some of our latin dance buddies were there practicing, and the visual effect of the ensemble made one of them reconsider his vocation to Latin dancing rather than standard and start wondering aloud if he could grow another 5"! He also made me test its possibilities for Latin by leading me through a basic rumba. That was a bit of a stretch...but fun, nonetheless. Here is a photo of the progress to date...for those interested in such things:
So after the excitement over the dress subsided and I changed back into conventional practicewear, and when Jeff had finished playing Superman with my red float fabric in front of the fan, once again, we got to work on our quickstep. This time it was rumba crosses, another sticky area for us. We just seem to bump around in this section a lot, and our frames don't always match and neither does our timing. I don't know what Jeff was thinking about throughout practice, but as we worked on it, I could feel it getting better. For me, it was all about maintaining the same connection points throughout the motions, taking extra care not to lose the hip, or side, or drop anything independently, or rise or fall without him leading it first. Jeff mentioned in a couple of places that I was a little slow...so since I wasn't jumping the gun as I usually do and trying to be more patient with my movements, I'm sure it was noticeable and I did need a bit of calibration. One thing I was trying very hard to do was keep my left side up and forward...because I know I have a tendency to drop it during that figure. This in turn gave me better balance, so I felt more centered throughout the rotation. Overall, we felt this was quite a successful practice, and now I feel less scared of this figure when we get to it in the routine. You know it's bad when you actually fear certain parts of your routine, and as a follow anticipation is bad enough, but fearful anticipation is the worst!
We ended with the Beegie Adair very slow "Moon River" waltz. It was nice while it lasted, but Jeff's legs said that enough was enough. Wednesday is leg day, after all.
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