Staying Lifted

Part: Follow

Dances: Night-club 2-step, Quickstep, Waltz (sort of)

Hovers: 0

After a decent workout, we headed in to practice quickstep. Recently we decided that quickstep is quite behind our other dances and needs some serious work. I had made some rather unintelligible notes about what to work on because I couldn't remember the names of the figures in the particular section I was thinking of...or at least, I remembered some of the names but not some of the steps in the middle, so I kind of confused Jeff at first. Anyways, we figured out which part it was. After warming up with night club 2-step, we started working on that section. It wasn't going too smoothly; I find that coming out of certain figures I have a lot of momentum and energy which sometimes propels me into the next step before Jeff is ready, which is not helpful. There was also the problem of the closed impetus, which is a tough heel turn for Jeff, and I it's my job not to get in his way but also to help provide momentum for the turn. I found that as we were practicing these parts what helped the most on my part was if I focused on keeping my left side very lifted and forward, and basically made sure that my left side and shoulder stayed in the same position relative to Jeff no matter what the body position or rotation. Obvious stuff, but something I decided to focus my attention on. I think that sometimes when I'm not thinking about it my side and shoulder get pulled away when we have that strong rotation, or else I get pulled in front. Anyways, it seemed to help, and in our best run through of the section I felt I did a pretty good job of this.

Then it was time to cool down with some waltz...but we only got through the first long side. Jeff's knee was bothering him (the left one too...it must be contagious!) and it wasn't the best it's been, so we ended practice for the night. I expect we'll be back at quickstep again in the next few sessions at least. Lots of work to do there still.