What do you do without "Kora-ography"?

Part: Follow
Dances: Waltz, Viennese Waltz (sort of)
Hovers: 3


Yesterday practice was a bit frustrating. Luckily I suggested that we warm up with something, so we ended up dancing through our waltz a bit and working on smoothing out the balance in a couple spots. Jeff also kept going into a wing for no apparent reason, basically anywhere he could, and I had to laugh at him because I know how much he hates that figure. He didn't mean to dance it either and kept getting really mad at himself whenever he did it because he was basically making the routine extra hard on himself.

As I was dancing, I was thinking a bit about how I use my rib cage, both to stay lifted and to maintain the different connection points. I envisioned each half of my rib cage needing to match up with certain fixed points so that no matter which way Jeff rotated or twisted my core would twist with it and complete the movement. I think what brought this to mind was a conversation with Kora and another friend during the dance party on Saturday, where Kora was sharing with us some of what she is working on in her recent lessons with the English coaches and her own practice. She was talking a lot about dancing with her sides, and commenting on how the top ladies are so extremely lifted in their ribs, but without sticking them out. Jeff kept commenting last night that I felt taller, and I don't know if it was my focus on staying lifted or the fact that I was wearing my normal practice shoes versus the slightly shorter heeled teaching/practice shoes that I bought recently to wear for social dancing, but my final verdict was that he had shrunk.

Then we decided to tackle our show piece choreography, but really came up empty. We just don't know enough figures to really put something like this together. I know next to nothing about American Smooth Viennese Waltz, and Jeff knows a bit more, but not enough to really choreograph a full show. So the question now becomes, do we put a lot of time and lessons (and therefore money) into getting choreography done for us (enter Kora!), or just not do it and put that time, effort, and resources into working on our dances and preparing for competition? Or do we just pick a different song and dance that we are more familiar with? I guess those are the questions we will be answering tonight. Jeff thinks that we won't have any better luck with the dances we really know, since we mostly just know our routines. I disagreed, however, because I am quite familiar with a lot of figures in standard, as is he, and I think we could come up with much more variety there. Goodness, he does a good enough job of that on the social floor! And yes, although we don't know much in the way of open choreography and all it's flashy figures, we aren't open level dancers, and shouldn't be expected to pull that out of a hat. So I guess we'll see what comes of this. Frankly, I'm getting a little discouraged, as I was so looking forward to it. We've been practicing the same things for so long, I was really excited to do something new with our dancing.