Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The Pelican Dance and Back Open Promenades

Part: Follow
Dances: Rumba, Waltz, Tango, Viennese, Foxtrot, Quickstep
Hovers: 0

We warmed up to a rumba last night, and Jeff laughed at me because as soon as he turned on the "Pelican Dance," a random music pick that we hadn't tried before, I recognized it as a theme from the Polovitsian dances in Borodin's "Prince Igor Suite" and got all excited. I've loved that little piece ever since I heard it for the first time at a symphony concert many years ago, and I thought it would be great to dance to.

Then it was on to our round, but for some reason the competition clip we danced to this time was cut very short, so we barely made it half way through each routine. We didn't mind so much though, except that it meant no hover. I'm sure Jeff was thankful for that though.

The focus of practice was the back open promenade into outside swivel section of our tango. Our balance there is not consistent and the checks don't always happen, and when they do they aren't as clean as they should be. We did work on this section a bit, and went through it quite slowly a few times, and that went pretty well. I was working myself on keeping my feet more under my body, as I have a tendency to let my foot and leg fly out when we finish with the promenade link, though it's something I need to work on in general, as my foot placement could be much cleaner, especially in tango.

It was hard to tell at the end whether we made much progress with this section; I guess it's still just an awkward feeling part for me. After the tango, we ended with a bit of lead and follow foxtrot. For some reason last night I kept feeling our connection sliding around; I'm not sure why, but it seemed more of a problem than usual. Jeff also commented about our foxtrot that I often rush (or so it feels to him) coming out of the curved feathers in the weaves that usually follow, but I think that is how it feels to him because I do tend to drive into some pretty long steps there and they are probably too long given that he is going backwards and given the position we are in relatively speaking.

Tomorrow...probably more quickstep. Are you surprised?

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