I had already signed up for the Charleston Lindy Exchange when I had my lindy/blues epiphany back in April. Luckily I had a good friend in Charleston, so I formulated a plan to go visit him and only show up to CHEX for the Friday and Saturday late night dances.
My plan worked out quite well. Around 11:30 I'd leave the house, putter over to the dances, dance until 2 or 3, then head back. I spent the days socializing with Carroll and seeing some of his Charlestonly haunts, as well as just relaxing and taking it easy. The level of blues dancing at CHEX was somewhat lower than ATLX, though I think that was mostly due to the smaller attendence. I did have a few notably good dances: A bunch with Wesely, who is in ATL and I now have saved on facebook, one fan-fucking-tastic dance with Kirk from NC, several with Will & Claire's friend who now lives in Dallas but whose name I can never freaking remember, three with a fun asian dude (Josh?) who really let me improvise a lot, and two with Steve from Orlando.
I won't lie - I was vaguely considering going to Blues N Soul in Orlando before... but once I danced with Steve that pretty much sealed the deal for me. If I can monetarily pull it of - I'm going to Orlando.
My knees behaved pretty well over the trip, mostly due to plenty of ice, less dancing than usual, and plenty of ibuprofen. They went all weekend without hurting much though, which is a nice thing.
Next up: either Blues N Soul, or the Portland Blues Experience in July!
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
ATLX, Lindy, and a One Year Retrospective
As of this month, I’ve been dancing again for a whole year. I have a hard time believing both that it’s been a year already, and also that I ever went 3 years without dancing – I can’t imagine missing this huge, integral, amazing thing for so long. What was I thinking when I stopped? Well, I know what I was thinking, and it was along the lines of “dancing makes me an anxious, puking, fainting mess – maybe I should quit.” Luckily since coming back I’ve almost entirely kicked the anxiety, remarkably without too much trouble aside from a couple of incidents while dancing at Tech (no big surprise there, since tech is where I developed most of my dance-related performance anxiety).
So. I’m back, and I’m better than ever.
That said, I’m also coming to realize that I don’t really give a shit about lindy and swing anymore.
This weekend was the Atlanta Lindy Exchange (ATLX) which I, of course, signed up for and attended. It would be a shame to skip your home town exchange after all, right? But as I headed to the first dance on Friday night I realized something alarming – I hadn’t been out dancing lindy in months. Before Christmas, even. I hadn’t realized I’d let lindy fall so much by the wayside, but between my crappy work hours and my awful experience at the Hop Shop, I just had no interest. The last 4 months I’ve been focused entirely on blues, attending 2 blues workshop/exchange weekends and making it out social dancing almost every week.
I headed to the first dance of ATLX and got out on the floor and realized that… well… I hadn’t missed lindy at all. And I’m not at all passionate about it anymore. And I wasn’t having all that much fun dancing it.
There are a lot of contributing factors, I think. Part of it is that lindy is a lot harder on my knees, especially at high speeds. Part is that I really hate the music that a lot of lindy DJs play. “ChunkaChunkaChunka” at 250 BPM is not fun to dance to, and accounts for a huge chunk (no pun intended) of swing music. The final part is that I’ve hit a pretty serious plateau in my lindy – I’m a good dancer but not a great dancer, and the technical challenges facing me to get to the next level are abstract and hard and frustrating.
On the flip side, there’s blues. Any dancing is rough on my knees, but the more sedate pace of blues lets me be more mindful of the potential abuse, and the slower songs give me a bit of a break. I’m passionate about the music in a way that I never really expected to be – trance and breaks and progressive move me in a way that no other music ever has… except for blues. I walk into a bar and hear blues and it’s like my soul is soothed; it’s almost a physical sensation. As for the learning curve… this time last year I had never even heard of dancing blues. A year later I’m goddamn good at it, and I’ve had very little actual instruction. I have a huge potential for improving my dancing – every time I social dance with someone new I expand my repertoire and become familiar with new movements. There is just so much for me to learn, and so many ways that I can improve, even though my level of dancing is high already.
So the first evening dance of ATLX was pretty much a bust. I danced a couple of songs. It was fun-ish, but not thrilling. Luckily the late night had a blues room set up, so I ensconced myself there and had a great few hours. Saturday’s evening dance was a lather-rinse-repeat exercise: show up, dance a couple of songs, feel “meh” about the music, then give up until the late night. Saturday’s late night was absolutely stellar – the venue was Ambient Studios downtown, and the space was just gorgeous and amazing. The room they had set up for blues was perfect from an atmosphere perspective, and the quality of dancing was incredibly high (though it didn’t quite rival bluesalicious).
It’s Monday and my legs are demolished – knees achy and swollen, muscles sore that I didn’t know could be sore… but I’m happy. I think it’s a good thing that I finally addressed the grumpy feelings that had been brewing in regards to lindy. I’m no longer in denial about it, and I know where my dancing passion lies. I don’t need to waste money on lindy workshops and exchanges – I can dedicate all my learning power to blues. Maybe this time next year I’ll feel like re-evaluating that sentiment, but for now I’m pretty ok with it.
Now – I just have to figure out a more pertinent name for this blog, since 8 Springy Counts doesn’t apply to blues at all. Damn.
So. I’m back, and I’m better than ever.
That said, I’m also coming to realize that I don’t really give a shit about lindy and swing anymore.
This weekend was the Atlanta Lindy Exchange (ATLX) which I, of course, signed up for and attended. It would be a shame to skip your home town exchange after all, right? But as I headed to the first dance on Friday night I realized something alarming – I hadn’t been out dancing lindy in months. Before Christmas, even. I hadn’t realized I’d let lindy fall so much by the wayside, but between my crappy work hours and my awful experience at the Hop Shop, I just had no interest. The last 4 months I’ve been focused entirely on blues, attending 2 blues workshop/exchange weekends and making it out social dancing almost every week.
I headed to the first dance of ATLX and got out on the floor and realized that… well… I hadn’t missed lindy at all. And I’m not at all passionate about it anymore. And I wasn’t having all that much fun dancing it.
There are a lot of contributing factors, I think. Part of it is that lindy is a lot harder on my knees, especially at high speeds. Part is that I really hate the music that a lot of lindy DJs play. “ChunkaChunkaChunka” at 250 BPM is not fun to dance to, and accounts for a huge chunk (no pun intended) of swing music. The final part is that I’ve hit a pretty serious plateau in my lindy – I’m a good dancer but not a great dancer, and the technical challenges facing me to get to the next level are abstract and hard and frustrating.
On the flip side, there’s blues. Any dancing is rough on my knees, but the more sedate pace of blues lets me be more mindful of the potential abuse, and the slower songs give me a bit of a break. I’m passionate about the music in a way that I never really expected to be – trance and breaks and progressive move me in a way that no other music ever has… except for blues. I walk into a bar and hear blues and it’s like my soul is soothed; it’s almost a physical sensation. As for the learning curve… this time last year I had never even heard of dancing blues. A year later I’m goddamn good at it, and I’ve had very little actual instruction. I have a huge potential for improving my dancing – every time I social dance with someone new I expand my repertoire and become familiar with new movements. There is just so much for me to learn, and so many ways that I can improve, even though my level of dancing is high already.
So the first evening dance of ATLX was pretty much a bust. I danced a couple of songs. It was fun-ish, but not thrilling. Luckily the late night had a blues room set up, so I ensconced myself there and had a great few hours. Saturday’s evening dance was a lather-rinse-repeat exercise: show up, dance a couple of songs, feel “meh” about the music, then give up until the late night. Saturday’s late night was absolutely stellar – the venue was Ambient Studios downtown, and the space was just gorgeous and amazing. The room they had set up for blues was perfect from an atmosphere perspective, and the quality of dancing was incredibly high (though it didn’t quite rival bluesalicious).
It’s Monday and my legs are demolished – knees achy and swollen, muscles sore that I didn’t know could be sore… but I’m happy. I think it’s a good thing that I finally addressed the grumpy feelings that had been brewing in regards to lindy. I’m no longer in denial about it, and I know where my dancing passion lies. I don’t need to waste money on lindy workshops and exchanges – I can dedicate all my learning power to blues. Maybe this time next year I’ll feel like re-evaluating that sentiment, but for now I’m pretty ok with it.
Now – I just have to figure out a more pertinent name for this blog, since 8 Springy Counts doesn’t apply to blues at all. Damn.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Bluesalicious 09
I’ve been a very bad girl about updating after my big dancey events lately – I let both the Hop Shop and Enter The Blues passed unremarked, though I had quite a lot of bad to say about the former and quite a lot of good to say about the latter. So. This is me being good and writing about Bluesalicious immediately, before it has a chance to flee my sieve-like brain.
For Bluesalicious, I had the option of either taking some time off Friday and making it to Memphis in time for the Friday night festivities, or taking off Monday and being able to stick around town for the pub-crawl on Beale Street Sunday night. The choice was fairly obvious – I’ve been lusting after dance opportunities every time my coworkers and I go drinking on Beale Street, so I arranged my flight for a Saturday-Monday trip. I opted to get a hotel near Beale Street and rent a car so that I could keep my own hours and schedule (read: get fucktons of sleep in hopes that my legs would hold up and I wouldn’t get sick). It turned out to be a good choice on both counts – though I had some gripes about the hotel, being able to go places when I wanted to meant I was able to get plenty of rest and take it easy for the big events.
Saturday I made it to the hotel around 3ish and go settled in before taking a nice long nap. When I woke up I got in touch with the other Atlanta folks and met up with them for some good old Memphis BBQ at Rendezvous – which turned out to be adjacent to my hotel. How convenient. Once pumped full of meat I strolled back up to my room and dosed up on pain killer, and also iced my knees. These precautions did a lot to make my night less painful, I think.
At 9 I headed over to the Friday night venue. People were pretty slow both arriving and setting up, but I was happy to sit around with my feet propped up and appreciate the atmosphere. The Premiere Palace has a lot of character, though it’s got a few rough edges. Dancing finally got going around 10ish… gods how amazing is it to have a hundred blues leads to choose from? Don’t get me wrong, I love my locals, but there are only 8 or 10 of us who do blues with any level of seriousness. Having an entire room full of leads to choose from was just heavenly. It took me no time at all to get relaxed and into a groove – it seems like every single dance I had that night was amazingly connected, fun, and relaxed. The quality of dancers was super high, and I feel like I learned a lot and gained a ton of experience just social dancing. There were a few times when I felt like I might be missing really “simple” basic blues concepts, owing to the fact that I haven’t really taken any blues classes and mostly just have social-dancing experience. I need to get me to a workshop to smooth out the gaps in my knowledge, I think. It didn’t really have a negative impact on my dancing, but I did notice a couple of moves being lead that just didn’t quite make sense, but seemed omni-present.
Notable leads for the night were Erin from San Francisco, who was the first dance of the night that I really relaxed ad clicked with, Clint from Austin who lead me in the most effortless body rolls ever known to man, Z from Russia who asked me to dance twice in a row after we had an extremely fun and playful first dance, and Kyle (whose location I missed, and who I didn’t get to catch up with on Sunday). Kyle is the first short guy who I’ve had a really effortless dance with – in spite of being a head shorter than me our (3 or so) dances were completely in sync, and we both had time to be playful and expressive.
Dancing with Bert and Ben was great, as always, and it was interesting to feel how my dancing with them changed after we’d all had some variety in partners. Ben’s leads opened up a lot and he lead some moves that I’ve never seen him do, and he did a better job not taking me off my center in his dips. Bert and I both loosened up a lot in our connection, and I could really feel him starting to get down into the floor and have a more distinct pulse. I hope we can all maintain that improvement and variety and take it back to Atlanta.
Oh, did I mention how spectacular the band was Saturday night? The first couple of hours were DJed, but then a really excellent blues band took over - Ms. Nickki with Jesse Frank & the Blues Bandits. I was a little skeptical as they were setting up since they kept blasting the speakers with really nasty feedback, but they were second to none once they were actually playing.
The bottom line on Saturday night is that I was just Spot. Fucking. On. I wish I could dance like that all the time.
I headed back to the hotel around 2:30 or 3 – my legs were starting to get a little sore and I could feel my thighs shaking when I did dips, so I wanted to quit before I overdid it (unlike ETB). I got 9 glorious hours of sleep but woke up feeling a little woozy Sunday morning. Blaming dehydration I chugged water all day, which seemed to help.
One of my greatest joys in visiting new cities is finding excellent places for Bunch on the weekend. Since there was no dancing slated until mid afternoon, I decided to strike out and explore the area around my hotel and the Peabody a bit. I ended up in a pretty famous restaurant called The Majestic. And by “in” I mean “in front of” – it was a gorgeous day and they had a number of patio tables set up. I parked myself with my book for going on 2 hours and enjoyed a delicious brunch of bacon, eggs, hash browns, biscuits, coffee, and ridiculously good $3 mimosas. This place will definitely be on my list any time I’m back in Memphis on a weekend.
After brunch I toodled around downtown a bit more, stopping to do a bit of shopping. After not too long I ended up back at the hotel for a nice nap. I woke up about half way through the afternoon dance at Ernestine & Hazels, so I decided to stop by and check it out, though I wanted to save most of my leg strength for the night dance. I’m really glad I went – the venue is a old Bordello that has been converted into a restaurant/bar/party space. The upstairs rooms and halls were packed with dancers going at it house-party-style; it was worth the trip just to experience that sort of atmosphere. I danced a couple of songs, but I was still tired from the night before, so I had a hard time relaxing. On guy, Matthew, wanted to dance reeeeeal close and was kind of giving me some guidance about relaxing and not amplifying his leads, as well as not getting ahead of him. I appreciated the coaching, but his tone came off a little cheesy (“I want to feel like I’m one with you” – really, dude?) so I had a hard time staying focused. I ended up bugging out after just a few dances to go back to the hotel and rest up for the evening dance.
Sunday night was the event that I was most excited about – the Beale Street pub crawl. I’d been looking forward to dancing on Beale street for months, ever since the first time my coworkers and I went drinking there while on project in Memphis. Unfortunately the night got off to kind of a “blah” start… I should have taken the 7:00 start time with a grain of salt, knowing how late the afternoon dance ran. I wandered down to Beale Street around 7:15, and there pretty much weren’t any dancers in evidence. A small group of us gathered over the next two hours, but we had a hard time getting settled anywhere – the bands kept taking long breaks as soon as we’d walk up, or there wouldn’t be enough space. It was pretty frustrating.
The situation got better once more dancers showed up around 9, and a group of us ensconced ourselves upstairs and Rum Boogie café. I had a few decent dances, though I just wasn’t as “on” as the previous night. I did get to re-meet RJ the Flight Attendant, who I met at KLX last fall – he was probably my best dance of night. The band at rum boogie cracked me up – at one point the lead singer and guitarist had a girl sitting on stage, had his guitar in her lap, and was playing it with his tongue. I shit you not. It was pretty entertaining.
Oh, I also figured out one of the reasons I have such a hard time dancing with girls – when I follow, I tend to look at the guy’s chest for cues about where his weight is and where he’s going next. With girls if I try to do that… well, you can imagine. I danced with two ladies who were lovely leads, but as usual I stumbled my way through the dances like a blushing 14-year-old boy. Ah well.
Rum Boogie was a good time, but the band stopped playing by 11, which was disappointing. They told us we could head next door for more live music, but after 20 minutes of waiting for the band to go on I gave up an headed back to Superior, where the official Bluesalicious DJ was set up. I spent the rest of the night dancing there. I had an ok time, but I wasn’t rivaling the quality of dancing from the night before. I knew my level of dancing would be a little lower since my legs were so achy, but it was like my creativity had leaked away, as well. I had fun, but it wasn’t spectacular.
Finally around 2 I headed back to the hotel to pass out. For some reason I did the same thing that I did after KLX where I woke up ever. Single. Goddamn. Hour. Quite frustrating. I finally gave up on sleep around 10:30, achy and coming down with a cold. My knees are pretty much demolished, and I’m fairly displeased that I didn’t manage the trip without getting sick, in spite of being so very good about sleep and hand-sanitizing. Rawr!
So, there it is, my stream-of-conscious, not at all edited or reviewed, from the brain to the fingers summary of Bluesalicious. I had a really great time, though I’m a bit displeased with my knees and immune system. I’ll definitely be taking my body’s reaction into account as I choose which workshops and exchanges to go to for the rest of the year.
For Bluesalicious, I had the option of either taking some time off Friday and making it to Memphis in time for the Friday night festivities, or taking off Monday and being able to stick around town for the pub-crawl on Beale Street Sunday night. The choice was fairly obvious – I’ve been lusting after dance opportunities every time my coworkers and I go drinking on Beale Street, so I arranged my flight for a Saturday-Monday trip. I opted to get a hotel near Beale Street and rent a car so that I could keep my own hours and schedule (read: get fucktons of sleep in hopes that my legs would hold up and I wouldn’t get sick). It turned out to be a good choice on both counts – though I had some gripes about the hotel, being able to go places when I wanted to meant I was able to get plenty of rest and take it easy for the big events.
Saturday I made it to the hotel around 3ish and go settled in before taking a nice long nap. When I woke up I got in touch with the other Atlanta folks and met up with them for some good old Memphis BBQ at Rendezvous – which turned out to be adjacent to my hotel. How convenient. Once pumped full of meat I strolled back up to my room and dosed up on pain killer, and also iced my knees. These precautions did a lot to make my night less painful, I think.
At 9 I headed over to the Friday night venue. People were pretty slow both arriving and setting up, but I was happy to sit around with my feet propped up and appreciate the atmosphere. The Premiere Palace has a lot of character, though it’s got a few rough edges. Dancing finally got going around 10ish… gods how amazing is it to have a hundred blues leads to choose from? Don’t get me wrong, I love my locals, but there are only 8 or 10 of us who do blues with any level of seriousness. Having an entire room full of leads to choose from was just heavenly. It took me no time at all to get relaxed and into a groove – it seems like every single dance I had that night was amazingly connected, fun, and relaxed. The quality of dancers was super high, and I feel like I learned a lot and gained a ton of experience just social dancing. There were a few times when I felt like I might be missing really “simple” basic blues concepts, owing to the fact that I haven’t really taken any blues classes and mostly just have social-dancing experience. I need to get me to a workshop to smooth out the gaps in my knowledge, I think. It didn’t really have a negative impact on my dancing, but I did notice a couple of moves being lead that just didn’t quite make sense, but seemed omni-present.
Notable leads for the night were Erin from San Francisco, who was the first dance of the night that I really relaxed ad clicked with, Clint from Austin who lead me in the most effortless body rolls ever known to man, Z from Russia who asked me to dance twice in a row after we had an extremely fun and playful first dance, and Kyle (whose location I missed, and who I didn’t get to catch up with on Sunday). Kyle is the first short guy who I’ve had a really effortless dance with – in spite of being a head shorter than me our (3 or so) dances were completely in sync, and we both had time to be playful and expressive.
Dancing with Bert and Ben was great, as always, and it was interesting to feel how my dancing with them changed after we’d all had some variety in partners. Ben’s leads opened up a lot and he lead some moves that I’ve never seen him do, and he did a better job not taking me off my center in his dips. Bert and I both loosened up a lot in our connection, and I could really feel him starting to get down into the floor and have a more distinct pulse. I hope we can all maintain that improvement and variety and take it back to Atlanta.
Oh, did I mention how spectacular the band was Saturday night? The first couple of hours were DJed, but then a really excellent blues band took over - Ms. Nickki with Jesse Frank & the Blues Bandits. I was a little skeptical as they were setting up since they kept blasting the speakers with really nasty feedback, but they were second to none once they were actually playing.
The bottom line on Saturday night is that I was just Spot. Fucking. On. I wish I could dance like that all the time.
I headed back to the hotel around 2:30 or 3 – my legs were starting to get a little sore and I could feel my thighs shaking when I did dips, so I wanted to quit before I overdid it (unlike ETB). I got 9 glorious hours of sleep but woke up feeling a little woozy Sunday morning. Blaming dehydration I chugged water all day, which seemed to help.
One of my greatest joys in visiting new cities is finding excellent places for Bunch on the weekend. Since there was no dancing slated until mid afternoon, I decided to strike out and explore the area around my hotel and the Peabody a bit. I ended up in a pretty famous restaurant called The Majestic. And by “in” I mean “in front of” – it was a gorgeous day and they had a number of patio tables set up. I parked myself with my book for going on 2 hours and enjoyed a delicious brunch of bacon, eggs, hash browns, biscuits, coffee, and ridiculously good $3 mimosas. This place will definitely be on my list any time I’m back in Memphis on a weekend.
After brunch I toodled around downtown a bit more, stopping to do a bit of shopping. After not too long I ended up back at the hotel for a nice nap. I woke up about half way through the afternoon dance at Ernestine & Hazels, so I decided to stop by and check it out, though I wanted to save most of my leg strength for the night dance. I’m really glad I went – the venue is a old Bordello that has been converted into a restaurant/bar/party space. The upstairs rooms and halls were packed with dancers going at it house-party-style; it was worth the trip just to experience that sort of atmosphere. I danced a couple of songs, but I was still tired from the night before, so I had a hard time relaxing. On guy, Matthew, wanted to dance reeeeeal close and was kind of giving me some guidance about relaxing and not amplifying his leads, as well as not getting ahead of him. I appreciated the coaching, but his tone came off a little cheesy (“I want to feel like I’m one with you” – really, dude?) so I had a hard time staying focused. I ended up bugging out after just a few dances to go back to the hotel and rest up for the evening dance.
Sunday night was the event that I was most excited about – the Beale Street pub crawl. I’d been looking forward to dancing on Beale street for months, ever since the first time my coworkers and I went drinking there while on project in Memphis. Unfortunately the night got off to kind of a “blah” start… I should have taken the 7:00 start time with a grain of salt, knowing how late the afternoon dance ran. I wandered down to Beale Street around 7:15, and there pretty much weren’t any dancers in evidence. A small group of us gathered over the next two hours, but we had a hard time getting settled anywhere – the bands kept taking long breaks as soon as we’d walk up, or there wouldn’t be enough space. It was pretty frustrating.
The situation got better once more dancers showed up around 9, and a group of us ensconced ourselves upstairs and Rum Boogie café. I had a few decent dances, though I just wasn’t as “on” as the previous night. I did get to re-meet RJ the Flight Attendant, who I met at KLX last fall – he was probably my best dance of night. The band at rum boogie cracked me up – at one point the lead singer and guitarist had a girl sitting on stage, had his guitar in her lap, and was playing it with his tongue. I shit you not. It was pretty entertaining.
Oh, I also figured out one of the reasons I have such a hard time dancing with girls – when I follow, I tend to look at the guy’s chest for cues about where his weight is and where he’s going next. With girls if I try to do that… well, you can imagine. I danced with two ladies who were lovely leads, but as usual I stumbled my way through the dances like a blushing 14-year-old boy. Ah well.
Rum Boogie was a good time, but the band stopped playing by 11, which was disappointing. They told us we could head next door for more live music, but after 20 minutes of waiting for the band to go on I gave up an headed back to Superior, where the official Bluesalicious DJ was set up. I spent the rest of the night dancing there. I had an ok time, but I wasn’t rivaling the quality of dancing from the night before. I knew my level of dancing would be a little lower since my legs were so achy, but it was like my creativity had leaked away, as well. I had fun, but it wasn’t spectacular.
Finally around 2 I headed back to the hotel to pass out. For some reason I did the same thing that I did after KLX where I woke up ever. Single. Goddamn. Hour. Quite frustrating. I finally gave up on sleep around 10:30, achy and coming down with a cold. My knees are pretty much demolished, and I’m fairly displeased that I didn’t manage the trip without getting sick, in spite of being so very good about sleep and hand-sanitizing. Rawr!
So, there it is, my stream-of-conscious, not at all edited or reviewed, from the brain to the fingers summary of Bluesalicious. I had a really great time, though I’m a bit displeased with my knees and immune system. I’ll definitely be taking my body’s reaction into account as I choose which workshops and exchanges to go to for the rest of the year.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
When you're so caught up in the dancing...
This barely qualifies as a dance post, but I want to go on the record as saying what a surreal experience it is to be dancing to live blues and suddenly realize you're dancing to a slowed-down, bluesed-up version of "I am the Walrus."
That is all.
That is all.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Hot Jam - 12/01/08
Woo! Had a freaking fantastic night of dancing last night – best night at Hot Jam in a while. Also, incidentally, my first trip to Hot Jam in several months – I didn’t realize what I had been missing. Things to remember from the night in notation form and no particular order:
- Had another great dance with Les, a guy I danced with at Graveyard last week. Super fun, excellent lead, and gives me plenty of time to play. Also grins and seems to appreciate when I play, which is always nice. We did contrive to send my glasses spinning across the floor at one point, but I recovered them before they got stepped on, which was a relief. Really need to get new glasses that stay on my face.
- Danced 3 songs with Daniel, a tech guy I met at AVS. He’s just learning lindy but he has a good 6-count foundation so he leads nicely enough. Needs to stop counting and appreciate the music though ;P Had a funny conversation with him while dancing because he and Benjy both pulled an odd move on me. He lead it well enough, but it was different enough to catch my attention – turns out someone taught it at a class a couple of weeks ago.
- Saw Pretty-Boy-Fletcher again, who I also met at AVS. After the first Andrew Sutton class at AVS he and I practiced a bit and it was really good, but last night his lead was really, really tense. Super sad L
- Speaking of, I had a pretty rough dance with Robert, too, which is a shame. His lead was a lot stiffer than I wanted, and we kept bumping on free turns (probably my fault, but still). Made me sad, because I want to have goo dances with him!
- On the bright side, Leigh Ellen from KLX is moving to Atlanta! Whee! Yay for girls that I get along with. We also danced together, which didn’t go great, but mostly because girls (apparently) make me all shy and clumsy.
- I also danced with a new guy named Shaun (sean?). He was good, though our first dance was a little awkward due to space constraints and my being determined to bump into the fireplace. He came to ask me for another dance later though, which is always both encouraging and promising.
- Oh, also re-met Bryan from AVS (tall lanky guy, shaved/short hair, big beard). Didn’t get to dance with him, but wanted to note and remember his name.
Anyway, bottom line is that I had a fantastic time. My knees were a little tired but not too achy by the end of the night, though my right ankle was hurting some. I was a good girl an iced when I got home, so today my legs are fatigued, but don’t hurt much. Whee!
Monday, November 17, 2008
KLX 08
Wow. What a fucking spectacular weekend. Incoming: longer than usual rant with a higher personal-to-dance ramble ratio than I generally put here, but I feel the need to adequately commemorate my first exchange experience. Man, can you believe that in the 7 years I've been dancing (and/or not dancing) that I've never been to a real exchange? Terror!
So, without further ado, the weekend from the top.
Thanks to being stuck at work for 12 hours on Thursday, I got to head out of the office early on Friday, putting me on the road early enough to avoid The Traffics. Amaze! This may be the first time I've ever driven out of ATL without hitting some sort of slowdown. A good portent of Weekend To Come. The drive went smoothly until I got off the interstate in Lenoir City... and my phone rings. It's my PM. They've been working on a deployment all day and shit is broken. Talk about putting a damper on my drama-free departure. Luckily I managed to talk them through the issue even though I didn't have the code in front of me - I won't get into how displeased I was that I had walked the dev in question through the EXACT SAME issue last week. Seriously, dude.
Anyway, I made it to my dad's place around 6. Sam & Cal were ridiculously hyped up to see me, and much shrieking and running around ensued. I filled myself with some dinner, hopped online to make sure that work wasn't still having issues... and promptly lost all enthusiasm for going out dancing, from some combination of tired and full. Luckily, Coworker of Awesomeness was online chatting with me, and convinced me to get off my lazy ass. I dragged myself out the door with middling enthusiasm around 8:15.
I made it to the Friday Evening dance to find a pretty decent crowd, a pretty good band... and basically no one that I knew. There were a couple of familiar faces that I recognized from Atlanta Varsity Showdown, but nobody that I was really on more than nodding/exchanging brief pleasantries with terms. It became pretty quickly apparent that I wasn't going to get much dancing done if I stood around and waited to be asked, so I started grabbing people. I have no problem asking guys to dance, but it does start to get a little discouraging after a while, especially when you know next to no one.
By 10:30 or 11 the tiredness was starting to catch up to me again, and my enthusiasm was fading fast - though I'm loathe to admit it, I started eying the door pretty hard. I decided to migrate to the other side of the floor, see if I could get one or two more good dances, then maybe call it a night. Enter two of my Notable Leads from the weekend, David and Josh. I snagged these two gentlemen in turn and danced with them back to back, and all of the sudden my enthusiasm was restored.
Josh's most notable feature is his amazing pulse - smooth and springy without being overdone. I felt so connected to the music when I danced with him, and his lead was light and encouraging, leaving me lots of room to play. Our first dance consisted almost entirely of swingouts in which we'd each do a variation and play off the other person's styling. Massively entertaining - I love a dance where the sum total of your communication is in movement and shared giggles.
David... just damn. I would be such a great dancer if I could dance with him on a regular basis. He has a fantastic feel for the music, and his style is just so smooth and expressive. His lead and connection are both light and gentle, but he's still very clear. He's also massively tuned into his follow's position, weight, and balance - I didn't once get pulled off my center while dancing with him. As a result, I really felt like I could focus on keeping my own connection light and supple, something I've been working on since the Followers Footsteps series last month.
Wooo, tangent! Anyway, I had two great dances and that convinced me to keep at it. I left the evening dance a little early so that I would have time to procure ice for my knees and transfer over to the late night venue. I made it to the Square Dance Center with time to spare and sat with a 5lb bag of ice spread over my knees like a good little physical therapy patient. I was pretty impressed at how well they were holding up - the drive up made them pretty achy, but dancing actually seemed to help rather than hurt.
People finally started trickling in around 12:30 for the midnight breakfast. I sat down with a guy named John and his wife Tiffany, who were in town from Hawaii, where John is deployed in the Navy. My last dance at the evening venue was with John, and he was a lot of fun - very playful and well connected, if not a little flashy. He pulled the flashy off without being a bad lead, so I suppose I can't complain... any guy that inspires enough confidence in me that I'll let him really dip me within the first few dances is pretty impressive.
Eventually David joined us at the table, and then the really geekery got going. Here's an absolute first for me, ever - David worked with the consulting division of Microsoft up in Canada for a few years... and he worked with Avanade. I was completely floored - absolutely NO one has heard of my company, even people who work for Microsoft and Accenture. Cue "it's a small world" theme here. Anyway, from that point on we really hit it off, and suddenly rather than feeling a little lonely at the exchange I had several great people to chat with.
The Friday late-night is a little bit of a blur... I had a couple more good dances with various people, including David and John. Sadly the blues room upstairs was a little dead - they had half the lights off, but left 1 set of florescents on so you could see, and it kind of killed the atmosphere. David and I ruminated on the possibility of bringing some christmas lights to make it better for Saturday. Oh, and I also had a really fun dance with Megan - dancing with her is just so different from dancing with boys. I'm not quite sure how to put words on it... there was one point when we were dancing where we did something and she got all smiley and was expounding on how boys don't appreciate "the stretch" in music like girls do. That's definitely true for some leads, but there's more to it than that. I feel the same difference when I dance with Mike the Girl - one of these days I'll have to see if I can't find the words to express it.
Right, like I said, the late night was a bit of a blur. I finally got home around 3:30 and passed the hells out... only to be woken up around 7:30 when Sam & Cal woke up and started calling upstairs for me to get up. My dad & Pam are currently just living in the new extension of the house while the original half gets renovated, and the result is that there is no door between the upstairs and the downstairs. I managed to grab a few more broken chunks of rest, but by 9:30 I gave up. Spent the day socializing with the family, then hit up the KLX dinner. Ate delicious pesto, had a longer conversation than I've ever had before with Robert, then headed to the evening dance.
Did I mention that the Saturday Evening Dance was a live performance by Christabel & the Jons? Oh. Hells. Yes. I danced myself silly for the first set - I think I maybe sat out two songs at most. I also gave David fair warning that there was One Song that I was required to dance with him to, assuming Christa remembered that when she was ATL she promised me that they'd play it for the exchange.
I started to wear out a bit during the second set, but I was still having a blast dancing. Other notable dancers... Yossef (who I met at AVS), Seth (liked him a lot though he didn't give me the time I wanted to milk the music), Bennet (cute, skinny, goofy guy who's a teacher and knows Bela)... I know there are more, but I'm already forgetting. It doesn't help that I probably danced with 5 guys named John. Ah well.
A little before 11, I got pretty bummeed... Christa announced that they were going to play their last song, and then struck up a tune from the new CD, rather than the song she promised me in ATL. Luckily it was just a ruse; the song ended and then she said "So in the last few weeks I've had a few people saying we should play a blues tune..." and they struck up "You go to my Head." As promised I grabbed David and we had a really great dance - have I mentioned how goddamn much I love that song? I don't think I've ever danced it with anyone except Bert, so it was a fun experience to see how someone else interpreted it. Sooo happy.
Sadly, Christa's set ending by 11 meant that the energy level of the dance kind of plummetted. It's hard to go from Excellent Live Music to a DJ set and keep things up. I had promised David a ride to the Late Night venue, and we ended up leaving a little early on the logic that we could show up and spend some time setting up the Blues Room to be more intimate using the lights he bought the afternoon before. We drove over to the Square Dance Center.... and there was no one there. Oops. We ended up sitting in the car for a while while he played me samples of good blues off his MP3 player - he has pretty similar taste in stuff to DJ as Mike the Girl, so it was a fun experience. After a while we got bored of waiting and decided to run back to his hotel so he could pick up his laptop just in case they'd let him DJ for a while. We pulled out of the parking lot right as another carload of people pulled in - I can only imagine how it looked, what with my windows all steamed up. Scandalous!
Anyway, we found the hotel, procured laptop, then headed back to the venue and had more luck this time setting up lights and such. David pulling chairs in to make the dance space a little smaller when a couple of people showed up from downstairs and wanted to know what was up... apparently at the last minute they'd decided to make the blues room a "whatever the DJ wants" room instead. And the DJ lined up first wanted fucking Fast Charleston. Let me tell you how pleased I (and David, and Terri, and a whole slew of other people) were about that. The end result was that from 1 until 3 the upstairs and downstairs were playing functionally equivalent music - too fast and totally not appropriate for a late-night. We all groused around a lot, but I managed to get a few more good dances in on the slower songs.
Finally around 3 the DJs switched over and Jim Wheatley took over upstairs. Now that man can run a blues room. By this time I was practically ill I was so tired and sleep-depped, but I found some more reserves when Jim started spinning - he was playing a really great variety... some soul, some solid blues, some slightly more modern stuff. I think the hour and a half I danced in that blues room did more for my blues-following than all of the dancing I've done at Northside in the last 4 months. I could just feel myself listening and responding better and better as the night went on. It was pretty amazing. My biggest observation is that I need to work harder on keeping my back in my lead's hand - I could feel myself coming disconnected there from time to time.
Much as I would have liked to keep dancing, I was asleep on my feet by 4:30, so we headed out. David obliged me with crash space at his hotel so I didn't have to drive the 40 minutes back to my dads (and so I could hopefully get unmolested sleep, rather than having my sisters wake me up early again). Unfortunately I was so exhausted that I had a hard time relaxing enough to pass out, and I ended up waking up every hour or so. I finally gave up on sleeping around 10 and dragged myself out of bed to head back to my dad's for an early Thanksgiving dinner.
Sadly that's it as far as dancing, though I will ramble a little about sleep-dep... this weekend was the first time I've been sleep deprived for fun. Sure, there was that one Infamous Project at Tech where we were in the lab for 50 hours, but that was misery for the sake of grades. This weekend I danced for about 16 hours, and slept a total of about 10. And I had so much fucking fun. Granted I was almost in trouble on the drive back to ATL... my MP3 player died about an hour from home, and I was obliged to keep myself awake by singing Girl Scout Camp songs. Any time I stopped I could feel my head start to get woozy, so I'd have to dredge up another one to sing. I had no idea I remembered so many of those things....
But anyway, the bottom line is that I had an amazing time. In addition to the dancing I really connected with a couple of new friends - I hope we can keep up with each other and meet up again sometime. On top of everything, my knees even behaved themselves, which is a small miracle in itself.
Final thoughts: I need to remember to look up info on the Portland fusion-workshop that David told me about, as well as seeing what's up with Knoxville's Rhythm workshop (I think in April?). I also need to remember that next time I do an exchange, I should get a damn hotel room rather than trying to stay with family - dancing is so much more fun when I'm not dead on my feet.
Whew! I think that's it. I'm all rambled out.
So, without further ado, the weekend from the top.
Thanks to being stuck at work for 12 hours on Thursday, I got to head out of the office early on Friday, putting me on the road early enough to avoid The Traffics. Amaze! This may be the first time I've ever driven out of ATL without hitting some sort of slowdown. A good portent of Weekend To Come. The drive went smoothly until I got off the interstate in Lenoir City... and my phone rings. It's my PM. They've been working on a deployment all day and shit is broken. Talk about putting a damper on my drama-free departure. Luckily I managed to talk them through the issue even though I didn't have the code in front of me - I won't get into how displeased I was that I had walked the dev in question through the EXACT SAME issue last week. Seriously, dude.
Anyway, I made it to my dad's place around 6. Sam & Cal were ridiculously hyped up to see me, and much shrieking and running around ensued. I filled myself with some dinner, hopped online to make sure that work wasn't still having issues... and promptly lost all enthusiasm for going out dancing, from some combination of tired and full. Luckily, Coworker of Awesomeness was online chatting with me, and convinced me to get off my lazy ass. I dragged myself out the door with middling enthusiasm around 8:15.
I made it to the Friday Evening dance to find a pretty decent crowd, a pretty good band... and basically no one that I knew. There were a couple of familiar faces that I recognized from Atlanta Varsity Showdown, but nobody that I was really on more than nodding/exchanging brief pleasantries with terms. It became pretty quickly apparent that I wasn't going to get much dancing done if I stood around and waited to be asked, so I started grabbing people. I have no problem asking guys to dance, but it does start to get a little discouraging after a while, especially when you know next to no one.
By 10:30 or 11 the tiredness was starting to catch up to me again, and my enthusiasm was fading fast - though I'm loathe to admit it, I started eying the door pretty hard. I decided to migrate to the other side of the floor, see if I could get one or two more good dances, then maybe call it a night. Enter two of my Notable Leads from the weekend, David and Josh. I snagged these two gentlemen in turn and danced with them back to back, and all of the sudden my enthusiasm was restored.
Josh's most notable feature is his amazing pulse - smooth and springy without being overdone. I felt so connected to the music when I danced with him, and his lead was light and encouraging, leaving me lots of room to play. Our first dance consisted almost entirely of swingouts in which we'd each do a variation and play off the other person's styling. Massively entertaining - I love a dance where the sum total of your communication is in movement and shared giggles.
David... just damn. I would be such a great dancer if I could dance with him on a regular basis. He has a fantastic feel for the music, and his style is just so smooth and expressive. His lead and connection are both light and gentle, but he's still very clear. He's also massively tuned into his follow's position, weight, and balance - I didn't once get pulled off my center while dancing with him. As a result, I really felt like I could focus on keeping my own connection light and supple, something I've been working on since the Followers Footsteps series last month.
Wooo, tangent! Anyway, I had two great dances and that convinced me to keep at it. I left the evening dance a little early so that I would have time to procure ice for my knees and transfer over to the late night venue. I made it to the Square Dance Center with time to spare and sat with a 5lb bag of ice spread over my knees like a good little physical therapy patient. I was pretty impressed at how well they were holding up - the drive up made them pretty achy, but dancing actually seemed to help rather than hurt.
People finally started trickling in around 12:30 for the midnight breakfast. I sat down with a guy named John and his wife Tiffany, who were in town from Hawaii, where John is deployed in the Navy. My last dance at the evening venue was with John, and he was a lot of fun - very playful and well connected, if not a little flashy. He pulled the flashy off without being a bad lead, so I suppose I can't complain... any guy that inspires enough confidence in me that I'll let him really dip me within the first few dances is pretty impressive.
Eventually David joined us at the table, and then the really geekery got going. Here's an absolute first for me, ever - David worked with the consulting division of Microsoft up in Canada for a few years... and he worked with Avanade. I was completely floored - absolutely NO one has heard of my company, even people who work for Microsoft and Accenture. Cue "it's a small world" theme here. Anyway, from that point on we really hit it off, and suddenly rather than feeling a little lonely at the exchange I had several great people to chat with.
The Friday late-night is a little bit of a blur... I had a couple more good dances with various people, including David and John. Sadly the blues room upstairs was a little dead - they had half the lights off, but left 1 set of florescents on so you could see, and it kind of killed the atmosphere. David and I ruminated on the possibility of bringing some christmas lights to make it better for Saturday. Oh, and I also had a really fun dance with Megan - dancing with her is just so different from dancing with boys. I'm not quite sure how to put words on it... there was one point when we were dancing where we did something and she got all smiley and was expounding on how boys don't appreciate "the stretch" in music like girls do. That's definitely true for some leads, but there's more to it than that. I feel the same difference when I dance with Mike the Girl - one of these days I'll have to see if I can't find the words to express it.
Right, like I said, the late night was a bit of a blur. I finally got home around 3:30 and passed the hells out... only to be woken up around 7:30 when Sam & Cal woke up and started calling upstairs for me to get up. My dad & Pam are currently just living in the new extension of the house while the original half gets renovated, and the result is that there is no door between the upstairs and the downstairs. I managed to grab a few more broken chunks of rest, but by 9:30 I gave up. Spent the day socializing with the family, then hit up the KLX dinner. Ate delicious pesto, had a longer conversation than I've ever had before with Robert, then headed to the evening dance.
Did I mention that the Saturday Evening Dance was a live performance by Christabel & the Jons? Oh. Hells. Yes. I danced myself silly for the first set - I think I maybe sat out two songs at most. I also gave David fair warning that there was One Song that I was required to dance with him to, assuming Christa remembered that when she was ATL she promised me that they'd play it for the exchange.
I started to wear out a bit during the second set, but I was still having a blast dancing. Other notable dancers... Yossef (who I met at AVS), Seth (liked him a lot though he didn't give me the time I wanted to milk the music), Bennet (cute, skinny, goofy guy who's a teacher and knows Bela)... I know there are more, but I'm already forgetting. It doesn't help that I probably danced with 5 guys named John. Ah well.
A little before 11, I got pretty bummeed... Christa announced that they were going to play their last song, and then struck up a tune from the new CD, rather than the song she promised me in ATL. Luckily it was just a ruse; the song ended and then she said "So in the last few weeks I've had a few people saying we should play a blues tune..." and they struck up "You go to my Head." As promised I grabbed David and we had a really great dance - have I mentioned how goddamn much I love that song? I don't think I've ever danced it with anyone except Bert, so it was a fun experience to see how someone else interpreted it. Sooo happy.
Sadly, Christa's set ending by 11 meant that the energy level of the dance kind of plummetted. It's hard to go from Excellent Live Music to a DJ set and keep things up. I had promised David a ride to the Late Night venue, and we ended up leaving a little early on the logic that we could show up and spend some time setting up the Blues Room to be more intimate using the lights he bought the afternoon before. We drove over to the Square Dance Center.... and there was no one there. Oops. We ended up sitting in the car for a while while he played me samples of good blues off his MP3 player - he has pretty similar taste in stuff to DJ as Mike the Girl, so it was a fun experience. After a while we got bored of waiting and decided to run back to his hotel so he could pick up his laptop just in case they'd let him DJ for a while. We pulled out of the parking lot right as another carload of people pulled in - I can only imagine how it looked, what with my windows all steamed up. Scandalous!
Anyway, we found the hotel, procured laptop, then headed back to the venue and had more luck this time setting up lights and such. David pulling chairs in to make the dance space a little smaller when a couple of people showed up from downstairs and wanted to know what was up... apparently at the last minute they'd decided to make the blues room a "whatever the DJ wants" room instead. And the DJ lined up first wanted fucking Fast Charleston. Let me tell you how pleased I (and David, and Terri, and a whole slew of other people) were about that. The end result was that from 1 until 3 the upstairs and downstairs were playing functionally equivalent music - too fast and totally not appropriate for a late-night. We all groused around a lot, but I managed to get a few more good dances in on the slower songs.
Finally around 3 the DJs switched over and Jim Wheatley took over upstairs. Now that man can run a blues room. By this time I was practically ill I was so tired and sleep-depped, but I found some more reserves when Jim started spinning - he was playing a really great variety... some soul, some solid blues, some slightly more modern stuff. I think the hour and a half I danced in that blues room did more for my blues-following than all of the dancing I've done at Northside in the last 4 months. I could just feel myself listening and responding better and better as the night went on. It was pretty amazing. My biggest observation is that I need to work harder on keeping my back in my lead's hand - I could feel myself coming disconnected there from time to time.
Much as I would have liked to keep dancing, I was asleep on my feet by 4:30, so we headed out. David obliged me with crash space at his hotel so I didn't have to drive the 40 minutes back to my dads (and so I could hopefully get unmolested sleep, rather than having my sisters wake me up early again). Unfortunately I was so exhausted that I had a hard time relaxing enough to pass out, and I ended up waking up every hour or so. I finally gave up on sleeping around 10 and dragged myself out of bed to head back to my dad's for an early Thanksgiving dinner.
Sadly that's it as far as dancing, though I will ramble a little about sleep-dep... this weekend was the first time I've been sleep deprived for fun. Sure, there was that one Infamous Project at Tech where we were in the lab for 50 hours, but that was misery for the sake of grades. This weekend I danced for about 16 hours, and slept a total of about 10. And I had so much fucking fun. Granted I was almost in trouble on the drive back to ATL... my MP3 player died about an hour from home, and I was obliged to keep myself awake by singing Girl Scout Camp songs. Any time I stopped I could feel my head start to get woozy, so I'd have to dredge up another one to sing. I had no idea I remembered so many of those things....
But anyway, the bottom line is that I had an amazing time. In addition to the dancing I really connected with a couple of new friends - I hope we can keep up with each other and meet up again sometime. On top of everything, my knees even behaved themselves, which is a small miracle in itself.
Final thoughts: I need to remember to look up info on the Portland fusion-workshop that David told me about, as well as seeing what's up with Knoxville's Rhythm workshop (I think in April?). I also need to remember that next time I do an exchange, I should get a damn hotel room rather than trying to stay with family - dancing is so much more fun when I'm not dead on my feet.
Whew! I think that's it. I'm all rambled out.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Follower's Footsteps - Week 1
Hmm, I suppose I never got around to writing up a physical therapy post, complete with lists of home-exercises. Ah well, I think they're pretty well ingrained in my head at this point.
Anyway, I started a 4 week class series last thursday, and it was Damn Excellent. It's called "Follower's Footsteps" and it's an int/adv class focused on women and spicing up our dancing. Sadly, I'll only be able to go to 3 of the 4 weeks.
The class size is absolutely perfect - 4 women plus Evin, who is teaching. It's free for leads, and we actually ended up perfectly balanced last week. Ideal! One of the leads is Evin's husband... whose name I totally know, and remembered last week in spite of only having met him once... but it's gone from my head now. Stupid brain. Anyway, he's SO fantastic to dance with, and a fun guy to boot. He gave me some really great feedback on how the different things we tried in class last week felt from a lead perspective.
Right, so, last week we worked on loosening our frame - how long have I been working on that now? My problem is that even if I start loose, I tighten up the longer I go. Just need to keep concentrating and practicing. Anyway, using said loose frame, we worked on a swing out variant that involves kind of walking into your arm, almost like you're clotheslining yourself. This creates an interesting shape, and leaves you room to play with your feet and body isolations some. It's very essential to keep that nice loose frame thoughout, because if you're loose you can really communicate to your lead that you're doing something different, just in the way that your hand creates weight and counter-balance. If you're too tight, the "sproing" of the swingout doesn't change, so he'll be less likely to leave you the play space you're asking for.
We mostly focused on taking the time and improvising, but Evin did give us one specific bit of footwork to try - it basically amounts to a sweep-step on 6 and a pivot with a little bobble-step on 8 to get back in place.
Next week: Tuck Turns!
Anyway, I started a 4 week class series last thursday, and it was Damn Excellent. It's called "Follower's Footsteps" and it's an int/adv class focused on women and spicing up our dancing. Sadly, I'll only be able to go to 3 of the 4 weeks.
The class size is absolutely perfect - 4 women plus Evin, who is teaching. It's free for leads, and we actually ended up perfectly balanced last week. Ideal! One of the leads is Evin's husband... whose name I totally know, and remembered last week in spite of only having met him once... but it's gone from my head now. Stupid brain. Anyway, he's SO fantastic to dance with, and a fun guy to boot. He gave me some really great feedback on how the different things we tried in class last week felt from a lead perspective.
Right, so, last week we worked on loosening our frame - how long have I been working on that now? My problem is that even if I start loose, I tighten up the longer I go. Just need to keep concentrating and practicing. Anyway, using said loose frame, we worked on a swing out variant that involves kind of walking into your arm, almost like you're clotheslining yourself. This creates an interesting shape, and leaves you room to play with your feet and body isolations some. It's very essential to keep that nice loose frame thoughout, because if you're loose you can really communicate to your lead that you're doing something different, just in the way that your hand creates weight and counter-balance. If you're too tight, the "sproing" of the swingout doesn't change, so he'll be less likely to leave you the play space you're asking for.
We mostly focused on taking the time and improvising, but Evin did give us one specific bit of footwork to try - it basically amounts to a sweep-step on 6 and a pivot with a little bobble-step on 8 to get back in place.
Next week: Tuck Turns!
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