Float Test

Part: Follow

Dances: Nightclub 2-step, Waltz, Tango, Viennese Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep

Hovers: 1

Tonight was back to the usual practice schedule; warm up with nightclub 2-step, then a round, and then our focused dance of the night, which was tango. We got started a bit late though, and our nightclub was more of us trying to figure out the figure we were working on last Wednesday when our hands kept getting tangled up. Well, they kept getting tangled up again.

For the round, I decided to run a "float test" to see if the floats on my new ballgown that I'm finishing up are length appropriate, so I put on the dress and we danced our round, which ended up being a shorter one, due to the length of the music on the video. Jeff says he stepped on something (float or dress hem) about four times, plus he almost inhaled the ribbon streamers handing from my right wrist. I was unsure about those, so I may remove them. The big float itself is perhaps a bit long, so I think I will make it a little short so it is less likely to drag when we make any low sweeping motions. Here is photographic evidence of the floats in question, except that you can't see the streamers on the right in this one:

After that, amid Jeff's excited expostulations about various Macbooks and their various virtues, we practiced toughest part of our tango. That is, of course, the fallaway-reverse-slip-pivot into reverse outside swivel section of doom. We mostly practiced it slowly, and I think we evened out our balance a bit. I, for one, felt much more solid over my own feet this time, and I was taking care not to let my body or legs get ahead of each other. What we realized, or had known all a long but need to work on, is that we need to keep the frame rotating consistently throughout the entire figure. Where the wrinkle comes in, I think, is that we also need to move and step in a fairly straight line, so that our frame is rotating on top, but we're still traveling down the floor. Not easy. We tried it once really focusing on that rotation, and the result was a smoother rotation for sure, but we didn't move as much or get as far. The next step will be to isolate the upper body as it constantly rotates from the lower as it drives down the floor.

One problem that we've run into lately that Jeff brought up again today was his wrist just giving out after dancing some of the dances with me. I'm not sure what it is, but something I'm doing is making him have to grip me harder or torque his wrist a weird way. I still think it has to do with the change in our position...now that we're connected lower, things have shifted, and perhaps I haven't accomodated properly for the shift in center. I'm guessing I need to rotate a little to the right as well, but I want to try some things out and see what feels more comfortable for him.

Practice ended with the Moon River waltz. We both love dancing to that piece; it's slow and forces us to be controlled and balanced in our movement, and it has such an iconic waltz feel to it. Jeff observed afterwards, "I think our waltz is ready." I think so too.