Backyard Blues – 7/29/08

Knees were hurting me too much to dance the lesson last night, but there are a few things I wanted to jot down to come back to once I’m all better: mooches, grinds, and fishtails.

• Mooches are a sweeping of the foot – kind of a toned down boogy-forward. In ventral and dorsal closed, the guy can use his knee between the follows to do these by brushing them to one side or the other. Your feet are offset, so for the leg that the lead has between the follows, he canjust give her a gentle nudge as he does the sweep. For the outside leg, it helps if he makes gentle contact with the outside of the knee and kind of “pulls” her to the side using that contact. Very smooth and light and swishy if done well.
• Grinds are a step that involve turning in one toe and planting it with the knee bent, while keeping the other leg totally straight, then straightening the bent knee. You make an awkward angle with your legs, then resolve it. The straighter you can keep your opposite leg, the niftier it looks. Definitely want to play with these in front of a mirror.
• Fishtails are just the same as fish tails from lindy, though perhaps a little lower and with the knees more bent. It seems like they look best if you focus on swinging your hips out and back on the transition from one foot to the other. Again, mirror practice needs to happen.

We also talked a bit about partial weight changes, but that’s lead follow enough that I don’t feel the need to ramble about it.

Hokay, time for my 2 week hiatus from dancing. Here’s to hoping my willpower is strong. I may blog a bit about the exercises my physical therapist gives me, we’ll see.

Private with Mike – 7/23/08

Bert and I did a private with Mike the Girl last week, and it was pretty good. I wish there had been a chance for me to blog sooner about it, but hopefully I haven’t forgotten too much.

The biggest thing we talked about and focused on was really sinking into a downwards pulse, letting your whole body get into it, down through the knee. I think Bert and I both have a tendency to smooth things out too much, at times. It’s something I’ve been considering in myself a lot lately – I danced with Kirk at the last aseda dance and when we were talking about dancing stuff later he mentioned that he really enjoyed dancing with me and that I’m “very smooth.” I keep coming back to that, obsessing over it in a very un-lisa-like way… “very smooth? Does that mean too smooth? Does that mean I don’t have enough pulse? What if I’m separating out my lower body movement so much that I’m not giving solid feedback to my leader!”

Ack, tangent! Point being, we worked a lot on pulse, and I’d like to try and incorporate that into my lindy to some extent, as well as my blues. For me, we also worked on “walking with purpose” which is to say, really putting some “umph” and attitude into my upper body when I’m doing blues movements that are just walking. Same with doing tap-steps – really sink into and commit to the tap, rather than just sticking my leg out and tapping.

The other big theme we touched on was following technique…. Namely really waiting for my leader to lead a step, rather than assuming and going. It’s a veeeery minor form of back-leading, especially considering some of the lindy back-leading troubles I worked through back in the day – but in blues every step should be lead, so I need to hold on and wait a little longer before taking a step. We spent a while just having Bert lead me around and trying to do “odd” things that I wouldn’t expect, so that I’d really have to listen and commit.

I think that’s the big stuff from my side of things… Mike also had Bert working on keeping his hands quiet and his shoulders back. I think my following focus stole the show a little towards the end, but hopefully he also got something out of it. Yay private lessons!

Backyard Blues – 7/22/08

Just a quick blurb on this one, because I wanted to write down an observation. One of the guys I danced with did something interesting when he turned me a couple of times – he left his hand connected with my back and tummy all the way around the turn. Now – this is obviously a bit of a risky prospect, for a number of reasons: you might end up getting an accidental grope, or you might come across as skeezy or make your follow uncomfortable. But, as it turns out, done right an used sparingly it can be a really interesting tool for keeping a gentle connection. It’s also pretty damn sexy. Nice.

Backyard Blues - 6.24.08

Absolutely excellent Backyard Blues last night, to help offset my horrible day. During the intermediate class we worked a lot on divorcing guy’s movements from girls movements, working a lot from a side-by-side position. For example, getting the guys to lead the girls to take a step without taking a step themselves, then taking a step themselves without leading the girl to take a step. This is very tricky, as feeling the motion of the guy taking a step generally leads you to follow that step, so they have to work to keep you disconnected from that motion. I’ve found it worked better if I kept my eyes closed, so I didn’t get any false visual cues from the guys’ feet – bad habit in itself.

It was a little odd – I almost felt like I got less-good as the evening wore on... I wonder if the two glasses of wine I had dinner did more to get me relaxed than I realized? Or maybe I just started over-thinking things. I dunno. Still, I had some fabulous dancing, regardless, though we were a bit light on guys. Oh, and had to take an advil about 9:30 because my knees were swelling.

I had been planning to start a tango series tomorrow, but I think I’ll hold off until I’m not going to be traveling for work – I should remind me to remind me to enroll once this 6 week series is over.

Buenos Aires Blues Recap

Ok, saving the bellyaching about this event for LJ – this post is just about the stuff I learned.

Tango is Le Hard! It’s so very different to stay “up” and on your toes and a little forward. Some takeaway points, other than the obvious:

• Always collect your feet under you after a step. Make your ankles brush if necessary – seems a good reminder to have your feet together, and it looks nice.
• Pay attention to the lead’s chest and shoulders – this is good for getting visual feedback about when to do pivots. Once I manage to get better and following tango this crutch will be less necessary.

Hmm. I though I had more points than that, but maybe not. In spite of the difficulty level I do really want to learn some more tango - I think the subtlety of it w

On blues stuff there isn’t much to write about, except to give myself a reminder to try and teach Bert the really cool counter balanced pivot turn. If we end up doing a private with Mike I’ll definitely bring that up a something to learn – Bert actually does the counter balance stuff well enough that I think we could pull it off (unlike many of the leads from BaB. Blargle). I think I spent most of the weekend over-thinking my blues dancing, and thus didn’t do a very good job – I just need to shut my damn eyes, stop thinking, and go with it. Still, the class with Michael and Jaya gave me some interesting blues-style things to think about – namely with tap stepping, using each stap or step to send your hips back and up. This creates an interesting body dynamic, without being to lindy-bouncy.

Tying a couple of things back into Mike’s Master Class from the other day: she’s totally right about trusting my lead. I caught myself being very tentative when dancing with a couple of new people... if varied by how well I felt like I could understand them. The couple of great dancers I danced with I followed unerringly and unabashedly, but especially with beginning/intermediate people I found myself holding back a lot. The result is that my dancing seems hesitant sometimes, or I don’t end up where I need to be, because I don’t trust where they’re putting me. I also think some of the styling from Michael & Jaya will help me put as much oomph into my “up” stance as my “down” stance.

Oh, and as a reference note: my knees both got swollen and achy by the end of the day saturday. Not sure if it was the standing or the dancing. Ice packs and advil brought the swelling down in time for the evening dance, but I was tingy again the next day (albeit without the swelling).

Guess that’s it. Glad I managed to get something useful out of the weekend.

Backyard Blues – 6/3/08

The beginner class was a “pre-baby” intro class to both blues and tango. We mostly practiced taking steps in each and talked a lot about the differences in lead and frame between the two. The large majority of the time was spent eyes closed, practicing very subtly lead weight-changes. Tango is... odd so far. Stepping backwards feels strange, and I’m not sure I’m correctly drawing my weight up. Taking my legs so far out from under my center of weight feels strange as well – it’s such a non-swingy thing to really stretch out your legs like that. Looking forward to learning a bit more at Buenos Aires Blues this weekend.

Last night’s intermediate class was something that I should have expected from the title, but just didn’t make the connection... it was a master class, which basically means everyone gets up and dances one at a time (or rather two at a time, but with everyone focusing on the person whose “turn” it is). I’m exceptionally glad I came to the beginner class first, because it got my nerves entirely un-jangled, so I wasn’t too tense for the mater class. We played spin-the-bottle to pick who was going first and who would dance with them. Of course I ended up being first -_- My partner was Angelo, who I’m much more comfortable dancing with now than I used to be (now that I know he’s actually fun and goofy in spite of the serious face he puts on while dancing). However, I have a bit of a hard time sometimes because I’m a good... oh... 6 inches taller than he is, so it’s really easy for me to get strung out and disconnected. Bleh. I don’t feel like I did a really great job – it was nerve wracking being the center of attention, and I was concentrating so hard that it actually made it harder to follow.

Still, I got some good feedback – FG complimented my footwork, which is nice. James reminded me to look up... I thought I’d been doing better about that, but maybe it was the nerves. Mike’s feedback was interesting... the first bit was to commit as solidly to being “up” as I am to being “down.” It’s kind of hard to word-ify without demonstrations, but basically as much as I get down into a nice low frame and commit to it, I should also take the same energy when I’m in a more up-right frame. This is an interesting observation, and makes me think that while I’ve mostly broken the habit of getting too high or on my toes during turns, I may still be doing a lot of low-energy “standing there” while I wait for things to happen sometimes. Definitely something to keep in mind.

The second bit of Mike-feedback was to trust my lead and commit to the actions he’s leading, even if I don’t know where they’re going. This is something I’m fine with in lindy with pretty much everything, I think the trouble last night just sprang from the fact that I was nervous, not as comfortable with Angelo, terrified of screwing up, and not nearly as confident doing blues as I am doing lindy.

Good feedback overall, and I was pleased with the opportunity to get to know a lot of the folks that came a little better. Nothing gets you comfy with each other like constructive criticism! I had some nice dances later in the evening, as well. I feel like I’m still fighting with James a bit when he and I dance – I can’t figure out why I tend to get my feet tangled with his. I do better when I just fucking relax though, so I should focus on that. It’s not like James can be intimidating, since I was the one who dragged him into dancing years ago. Dancing with Ken is also getting better, though there’s still a bit of awkwardness from time to time. I had a nice start of a dance with Angelo before work called him away – he promised we’d finish it up another time. I also danced blues with Reggie for the first time, which was goddamn heavenly... I hope my inexperience doesn’t scare him off, because damn it was nice. And, as always, I had a number of good dances with Bert, though the music tried to skip out during my favorite song, which was Le Sad.

Right, that’s probably more than enough about that.