Attack of the Dust Bunnies

Part: Follow

Dances: Nightclub 2-step, Waltz, Tango, Viennese, Foxtrot, Quickstep

Hovers: 2

Monday night. Perhaps because of last week, perhaps because it followed the weekend, we both seemed a bit resolved to make something of this practice. This is going to be a light week for us practice-wise due to other personal plans and commitments we have, so we're making them count. Warm up was the usual, and then came our round. Our round was actually quite good, I thought, though we lost it in a couple of places more due to just forgetting where we were than the dancing itself falling apart. Tango is feeling less polite, and I think I've stopped rising in the fallaways, and even the reverse-outside-swivel-of-doom is actually working. I must say though, that Jeff's attempts avoid the dreaded "polite tango" almost made me giggle a few times, as a couple of our promenade closes sounded suspiciously paso-like. I also couldn't help myself in the waltz when we whisked into the corner and disturbed a large family of dust bunnies who flew up around us, protesting about our invasion of their sacred space. I missed it, but apparently Jeff almost impaled the both of us upon the handlebar of a bike in another corner, but of these kinds of dangers I am usually blissfully ignorant. A couple of times before he has tried to impress on me just how close I've come to splitting my head open on a post, or cracking my crown on a mirrored wall. In each case, he has averted the danger and steered us to safety, so that I've come to dance without fear in that regard, though I think sometimes he wishes I knew what perils he's saved me from. At least he can comfort himself with knowing that he's earned my trust to the point that I'm often unaware of these near occasions of death.

I hadn't updated our practice calendar in time for Jeff to sync it with his...so he asked me what we were practicing. I said quickstep, and then, with some trepidation, he asked, "You didn't put down the...not the...you DID..." as I nodded. Yes, the rumba crosses. After the obligatory groans (rumba crosses are my personal white whale of our quickstep; Jeff's are the tipsies), I explained my strategy. We can dance them fairly well and balanced slowly and at a moderate tempo, but once we get up to speed, I feel like we barely keep it together. My thought was that we should practice them at a moderate speed, and gradually increase our speed time after time by using a metronome until we had achieved a faster than comp tempo pace. This would make the performance of them at regular full speed feel easier. Such an exercise used to help my piano practice plenty; my teacher called it "clicking it up." Jeff felt we didn't need a metronome for this, so we went right into it. I think it helped. We got faster and faster, and while we didn't top comp speed, we got accustomed to dancing the piece at a faster pace.

After we'd had enough of the rumba crosses and Jeff's every other word was "pho time," we danced our final lead-follow dance...the Moon River waltz. I still love to dance to this piece; it's so classic, so simple, and so smooth. Just classy all around, like we want our dancing to be. One day it will be more than a dream.

The Results of Overextension

Part: Follow

Dances: Cha-cha, Nightclub 2-step, Waltz, Foxtrot, Quickstep, Bachata (yes, I know)

Hovers: 1

Friday night we skipped practice altogether and just worked out prior to going social dancing. For some reason this week had really done us both in, and we knew we weren't going to get much out of a pre-social dance practice. For me, the dancing began with cha-cha, and from there on out it was the usual Friday night social dance party at Danceworks. It's always a floorcrafting challenge, but we seem to be doing fairly well in that department. Obviously that's almost entirely Jeff's job and so to his credit, but I'll add that it does take a certain flexibility in a follow that I am becoming better and better at achieving. Normally we dance one Viennese there, but the one they played was ridiculously fast, and for the amount Jeff and I like to move...it would have been deadly to attempt it at about a 50% increase in speed! I also got asked to dance a bachata, but was too out of it to realize it until I was out on the floor dancing. No!!! Not only do I dislike this dance very much, but I was just so not in "the spirit of the thing" that I was tensing up in all the wrong places and being very awkward to lead. Under usual circumstances I'd just laugh at myself and go with the flow and enjoy it anyways, but that night my heart was just not in it. I ended up leaving the dance a bit early because I felt so out of it that it seemed pointless for me to be there. I guess I was just very tired from the previous week and even dancing wasn't enough to cure me of that, as it often is.

One thing I did enjoy was dancing waltz and foxtrot to some traditional Christmas music. Greensleeves is quite a lovely waltz.

Resolution for next week: sleep more and don't over-extend. This applies to life as well as hovers. One pulls over your partner, the other your emotional equilibrium.

Back Open Promenade and 5,000 Hits

Part: Follow

Dances: Nightclub 2-step, Waltz, Tango, Viennese, Foxtrot, Quickstep

Hovers: 1

Thursday night's practice began with the usual warm up and round, which we had ended up skipping on Wednesday. We continue to improve stamina-wise. Not sure about how the dancing looks though...sometimes it doesn't feel pretty, so I guess we'll have to film ourselves again sometime soon to get an idea. Dancing was a little treacherous as well in a certain corner of the floor; it was sooo slippery that we've very nearly wiped out there on several occasions. I'm seriously tempted to take some castor oil directly to the floor.

Practice itself was fairly brief; we focused on tango, the back open promenade piece. I feel like we haven't been consistent about when the rotation happens versus when we keep it straight, and how that fits in with the step alignments. We went through it a few times slowly and had a better feel for it by the end. The key seems to be that Jeff rotates around me on the first half and checks, and then I rotate on the next step to complete the motion. As Jeff commented on this practice, it seemed like one of those figures that feels pretty bad most of the time when we dance through the routine, but then when we go to practice it, it isn't so bad after all. I suggested that it could be what precedes or follows the figure in the routine that is throwing us off, but he reminded me that they are the simplest figures, so that doesn't make a lot of sense. Perhaps it's just a matter of focus; the correct technique on these steps is not habitual yet, and when the focus is trying to get through the routine alive and with some semblance of togetherness, we forget the little things that make some of these pieces work. I'd say the rumba cross in quickstep is similar in that respect.

I think we ended with waltz; sadly, I don't remember for sure.

A quick note of thanks to our faithful readers: Our blog has now topped 5,000 page views and 222 posts! I don't think we realized when we came up with this idea back in May that we'd build this kind of connection with other dancers and enthusiasts here in our community and world beyond it. In the beginning we started this mostly just for ourselves, but thought it would be fun if others also wanted to share our journey, as it were. We've been happy that this has proved to be the case, and speaking for myself, the support has often provided me with that little extra kick of motivation that we all need sometimes. Thank you again; hopefully this is only the beginning!

Spiraling Feathers

Part: Follow

Dances: Nightclub 2-step, Foxtrot, Waltz

Hovers: 0

Wednesday night was a tough one for me. I joined Jeff for the workout, which was fine, and good for me probably because I don't normally do leg day. It was confusing though because I don't have where I am on the weight stacks memorized for the leg machines. So I'd usually start way too light and work my way up. It's probably just as well though, because my knee is still holding me back substantially.

Instead of dancing a round, we went right into our focused practiced on foxtrot. Well, we didn't exactly go right into it, and it wasn't that focused, but that was the dance we worked on. I had thought we should look at our basics again, the feather three step combination and the extended reverse wave, as that exercise seemed quite helpful last time. We worked mostly on the CBM rotation, but I think we overdid it to the point of pulling off our direction so much that we sort of ended up making a spiral going down the floor. We weren't isolating the hips enough from the upper body, so the upper body rotations were affecting our alignment far too much.

I guess hindsight is always 20/20, right? This practice frustrated me because I felt I would have used the time much better by sleeping, and done my dancing more good as well. Sometimes we have great practices even when I'm tired and it's totally worth it, but some days it seems like we get no where and it feels like I made the sacrifice for nothing. I suppose that's bound to happen, as Jeff has commented before on this blog, "You win some, you lose some." Here's hoping we'll win some more soon.