Practice Party

Part: Follow

Dances: Waltz, Foxtrot, Tango, Viennese Waltz, a side of Quickstep

Hovers: 2

Aria Ballroom hosts four dance parties a week (don't know how long I'll be able to keep up with that!), but one of them is a ballroom practice party on Thursday nights. This dance features a variety of ballroom music and is meant to be more focused on practice dancing with other students and just a chance to get some more dancing in. I guess you could say it is less formal than your usual ballroom dance. Also, this dance offers the opportunity to students to sign up for certain dances with an Aria Ballroom teacher, so as you may imagine, Simeon had a pretty full card, and Jeff was booked for dances as well. Since I felt that students should have first dibs on my partner for this dance since he is now a teacher, I just kind of hung out and danced with whoever wanted to dance. Simeon decided he wanted to completely fill his card and wrote me in for a Viennese waltz, and I'm afraid I almost ran him over...it took a few iterations for us to get the strides to match up, but after that it worked out fine. I even tried to dance a paso with him later on; I had learned and performed a paso routine maybe two years ago, and hadn't danced it in at least a year, so it was pretty funny because I had forgotten most of it. Funny how much your muscles still remember though.

Jeff and I danced at least a little bit of all of our standard dances. Even though the new floor is huge, I noticed that we're managing to fill it with our waltz routine, partly due to Jeff's re-configuring of some of the angles, and partly because we just seem to be moving pretty well. I felt that on Thursday night our dancing was pretty huge...my extension felt bigger and more secure than sometimes, and I didn't feel like we were fighting each other at all so the shapes were bigger and looser. It probably looked bad because my neck was still not cooperating, but it was fun and felt good, anyhow. Plus, we danced some hover crosses! Yay! Too bad there aren't any in our routine.

Oddly enough, I feel like my dancing and overall performance has improved since I haven't been working out quite as much. Maybe my cardio endurance is not as good as it was, but I feel more in control and strong, and I have less muscle fatigue. Before I found that I was so tired that I often couldn't keep myself up...now, I feel strong but more flexible and in control. I think my more balanced regime of cardio a few days a week with some weights thrown in here and there and some ballet on top of that are kind of the magic mix for me. Plus, my new trial run on the Paleo diet is helping things too, I think. I feel lighter and more alert, but at the same time I have less adrenaline and energy than before; I'm just on a more even keel overall. It's always hard to find that perfect balance. This afternoon, I'm off to Kora's dance conditioning class. We'll see what that adds to the mix!