Epic Hand Slap

Part: Follow
Dances: Quickstep, Waltz, Nightclub 2-ste
Hovers: 1


I need to get back to posting something every night even if it's short. It's got to be a habit or it won't happen. Like practice. Anyhow, I'll start from tonight. Until now, we've been practicing about 3 nights per week plus social dancing on Saturdays. Jeff dances on Thursdays too and I'm usually there, but since that is the big student teacher dance night, we rarely dance together on Thursdays. This last Saturday Jeff apparently danced a ton and felt like he danced really well, which is great. I, on the other hand, probably danced the least I have so far...but gentlemen were quite scarce, so it's no surprise. The dances we did get in I think went pretty well.

Anyways, back to tonight. I told Jeff I thought we'd better tackle quickstep. Groan. I understood, but there's nothing for it but to beat it into submission. Jeff brought up this evening that whenever he sees me he sort of automatically starts yawning, he thinks because there is some kind of psychosomatic connection between him associating practice with being tired and associating me with practice. He's always saying flattering things like that. But the fact that I picked quickstep didn't help tonight.

We worked on a bit of our first long side, thinking about CBM and in particular our double reverse into the fishtail, because that double reverse always seems a little hairy and it always seems like we could easily not make it. For me, I found that a key was, obviously, keeping my left side stretched up, but also to use my head differently. This time, instead of whipping my head to the left and a bit down as I went into the double reverse, I instead kept it more stretched out and up and just rotated it on its axis. I thought about being a pole in the center of the turn and my head making the pole spin. That seemed to work a lot better, and I think my head movement was much more graceful and less abrupt.

Towards the end of practice, we nailed one of our movements, I think it was something balanced we were trying, and my partner gave me five, but somehow we both put a good amount of force into it and made quite a resounding crack. So then we thought it would be a good idea to see how hard we could slap hands...took a good wind up, and....BAM! My hand almost has all of it's feeling back now. The group class next to us looked around as if they had heard a gunshot. It really sounded like one! And it smarted pretty well too. We're weird.

We ended practice with a little waltz and some nightclub 2-step. I've been feeling a bit unmotivated lately, and Jeff keeps telling me I'm making sad faces. It's not because I'm bored with dance though. I think part of it as it relates to dance is that I need some new material to think about and work on. My dreams of competition also seem to be slipping farther and farther away... In a world dominated by youngsters in their late teens and early twenties, I hear the clock ticking more loudly in my ear every day.