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!

Aria Ballroom: Open House!

Part: Follow, Partner-in-Crime

Dances: Waltz, Viennese Waltz, Tango, Bolero, Nightclub 2-step

(with Jeff, though I danced other dances too)

Hovers: 1

Saturday, March 3rd was the big day. After nearly a year of hard work, and the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears, a dream was coming true. On that day, Aria Ballroom opened its doors and welcomed in at least a couple hundred dancers to see what new playground had been built for them. From the newly renovated lobby and lounge area with fresh paint, new carpet, and relaxing sofas, to the large expanse of solid white oak floor, to the huge flat screen in the ballroom showcasing the dance playlist and promotion slides, to the firey red sign "Aria Ballroom" over the front entrance, to the framed and lighted poster featuring the Aria phoenix hung beneath display lights on the solid wood reception desk, to the changing rooms with lockers and colored drapes dividing the girls and guys' sides, to the little "lead" and "follow" bathroom signs (and I could keep going), Aria could not help but make a grand first impression. Some of the comments I heard were, "professional," "warm and welcoming," "polished," "Well thought-out." How rewarding for those who had worked so hard. The open house was really a huge success.

As for Jeff and I, there were times when it seemed questionable whether the open house deadline would be met. Scrambling to assemble lockers, other furniture, wire the electronics, create playlists, clean the bathrooms (yours truly...but lots more fun with a steamer to help things along!), dust the walls...so many things had to happen. Even the day of open house itself, late into the afternoon we were still there, putting away "construction fallout", vacuuming the floors, finishing up the playlists...any number of small tasks that had to be finished. Somehow, it all came together, and when I arrived at 6 PM after going home to change, it looked beautiful.

For the open house portion of the evening, I wandered around and introduced myself to various guests, gave mini tours to anyone who wanted one, and generally shared the excitement of the whole thing. The dance began later in the evening, after Jeff and Simeon and Kora had given away raffle prizes and thanked everyone for coming and for their support.

The playlist for the dance was very well done, and what with the program on the flat screen showing upcoming dances and the current song information as well as a big crowd of dancers, it was bound to be a good time. I danced quite a lot, some with leads I had never met before who came to check out the new place, some with old friends, and a few with Jeff. We hadn't danced since San Francisco, so I didn't expect it to be great, but it turns out that our biggest challenge was the stickiness of the floor. In the last waltz (the Beegie Adair "Moon River," what else?), this brought us to a halt, and Jeff didn't feel up to trying it again. For bolero, however, which we did try, it worked out great. I don't technically know bolero, but I do love it and since Jeff can lead me decently it worked out rather well. I just love the way it feels and the kind of movement and connection you have, like a cross between waltz and rumba. Our Viennese waltzes went pretty well, except that at the end of our second one I majorly screwed up my neck, and I'm not sure how, but it still is bothering me, even today, one week later. Anyhow, it seems like we've really become very in sync with each other in that dance and really move together more than in any other, and as a result can cover more ground and feel a lot more comfortable in many respects. Plus, how can you not love dancing to "The Kingdom Dance" from Tangled?

Feel the rhythm. Be the melody.

Dear friends,

Since we have gone for several weeks without so much as measly little post, I wanted to provide the rather exciting explanation for the lack of practice sessions and posts to record them.

Without more ado, allow me to introduce Aria Ballroom! Visit the "About Us" and "Instructors" pages, and you will see what project Jeff has been working on for this past year to which we at times have vaguely referred. Those who have appreciated Jeff's photography page on this blog may be interested to know that all photos save one on this website were taken by Jeff.

Since the studio officially opens with an open house and dance party on March 3rd, the last couple of weeks have been crazy busy for Jeff, as a part owner of this enterprise, and for me, in a sense, by extension. From building the floor itself to designing print materials to writing web copy, we've had our hands deep in this thing and just haven't had the wherewithall to practice dance of late. Jeff has been much much more involved in this project than I have, given that he is part owner of the business, while I am really just a volunteer student/"partner-in-crime" who cares a lot about the success of the venture. Given all of this, I realize that the last time we danced together was at Starlight in San Francisco, and the next time will probably be at open house next Saturday. I can't wait!

I can now say that I've laid hardwood flooring, actually ridden a belt sander (because apparently my weight was just perfect to make it do its job properly), and conceived some of the design and copy pieces for web and print. This whole project has been the realization of a dream for many, not only for the owners, including Jeff and our coaches Simeon and Kora, but also for many students like me. We've wanted to have a place to dance regularly that really feels like home to us, and where that dance community that has become really a second family can congregate and do what we love best together. Aria Ballroom is going to be that place. Won't you come join us?

Starlight!

Part: Follow

Dances: Waltz, Tango, Viennese, Foxtrot, sort of Quickstep, Night-club 2-step, Cha-cha, Rumba, East-Coast Swing, West Coast Swing

Hovers: 1

Last Friday was definitely one of my favorite social dance outings so far. Jeff and I had both joined some of our dancer friends and traveled down to the San Francisco bay area for the weekend, to visit friends, dance, and for some, go to the City Lights Ball (where I danced a competition with Simeon last year). Starlight (now called Cheryl Burke, although apparently everyone calls it Starlight), is the dance studio Jeff used to frequent when he lived in the bay area, and he's told me a lot about it over time, and made me really want to dance there sometime. He still has some devoted fans there as well, as several of the regular ladies got so excited when he showed up.

What I liked about it was that there was a large floor, and they separated the ballroom dance party and the club dances into separate rooms, so for those more inclined to salsa, west-coast swing, and bachata, there was a smaller room, and for the ballroom, the large floor. Also, the upcoming and currently played dances were projected onto a large monitor by the floor, so you could see what dances were coming up and decide which ones you wanted to dance. I quickly discovered that this gave me a sort of virtual "dance card," as I ended up having multiple leads "reserve" me for upcoming dances. Now while that was quite flattering, sometimes I didn't particularly want to dance again with some of them...at least, after dancing a jive I didn't necessarily want to book a waltz with a certain lead, but it's much harder to say no to a "reservation" than in the moment to say, "Oh, thank you, but I am going to sit this one out." Jeff laughed at my predicament and told me to just say it was already reserved...which of course I hate doing if it's not true. But he was good enough to ask me ahead of time about certain dances so that I could truthfully say..."I'm sorry! Already dancing this one with someone." I guess I can't complain. :)

There were a lot of dancers there, and it seemed no shortage of leads, which was a nice change. It seems like they all wanted to dance too. I got the impression that most of them were taking dance lessons or classes, as many I danced with appeared to be following routines and at great pains to make sure they got them right, but I had no problem with that. At least they were really making an effort to dance well, and since I'm the same way I really appreciated it. Many of the dancers I'm used to locally are in it purely for the fun social aspect, which is fine, but sometimes it seems like they don't really care about how well they're leading you, the follow, or care at all about improving.

The music was good, the dancing was lively and there was lots of it, and finally, one of my very best friends from my college years showed up with her boyfriend! I hadn't seen her in probably two years, so it was so much fun to visit with her, show her and the boyfriend a few steps, and see them get out there on the dance floor and join the fray. Of course, she hadn't seen me dance since college, so she was interested to see what I'd been devoting so much time too since we graduated almost three years ago. I think they both thought that the tango was the highlight. Compared with last week, I thought Jeff and I danced well. Tango was pretty together, and I don't know how it felt for Jeff, but I thought I had my body position a little more figured out so I wasn't being so heavy on him. It felt lighter, anyways. Plus, yay for the huge floor! We had a good time trying to take up the space, though we couldn't quite fill it with some of our routines. I guess we're just not accustomed to having that much leg room.

We ended up leaving before the dance was over because a couple of our friends in our group wanted to go to the hotel where the competition was to meet up with our coaches, so I rather begrudgingly changed back in to my street shoes.

That night I danced a lot with different leads, had some nice smooth dances with Jeff, and sat out visiting with one of my long-lost friends for some time. I didn't get too tired and actually enjoyed making a spectacle of myself in a brand new dance scene. It doesn't get much better than that!