Playing Catch Up

I totally missed writing up last week. It was pretty hectic for some reason, and I never got back to doing something about it. It was just as well, as it was a rough lesson.

We had a guest instructor, who was kind of put on the spot. Tanis was ill, and this new person seemed a little ill-prepared. It was a challenge to stay with her, as well, because I think she thought we were a little farther advanced than we were. Well, than some of us were. Some students are awfully good. Or maybe just looser and more flexibile. (Might have something to do with being a lot younger... what's up with that?)

The one complaint I had was that we really didn't do a lot of warmup routines. Or maybe the warmups felt like full routines. We seemed to dive right into new steps, and we spent some time doing pull backs and another backward move.

Lots of sweating, and trying to keep up, and by the end, completely unable to perform the simplest move, both because my head no longer had any control over my feet, and my leg muscles were simply ready to fall off.

It was a great workout, but an extremely frustrating night.

Tanis was back tonight though. Great, intense warmup, and that was a challenge for me because my calves and ankles were awfully tight (likely form the 16 km run yesterday). But they started to loosen up a little.

After that, we did a lot of things, and as usual, most of it slipped through my brain. There was a lot of traveling stuff, which wasn't too evil. I actually managed to pull off some respectable flaps, with an actual pha-lap sound. Then some riffs, which we'd done in intro, but which I'd forgotten. Didn't take me too long to get them back.

Tanis is adapting a routine from the Fred Astaire film Shall We Dance. Sounds like it's a simplified a little, just for us beginners. But there's some interesting moves, and of course I don't remember much of it.

We also did the Honi Coles Stroll, at least the last, and most complicated step. This is in preparation for the whole thing, which is something we'll be doing in the next couple of weeks.

The Stroll is traditionally done to the Take the A-Train (Count Basie, I think). But we also did another start of a routine to the same tune, and if I understood right, it's some of the Astaire moves. The one part that was so cool was this move that was a kind of twirl combined with a cramp roll. And astoundingly, I actually pulled it off a couple of times! The trick is to not think about it, but to launch into it and just do it at speed. Doing it slow and trying to think it through is where it gets too complex. You also fall down, cuz it's hard to spin like that in slow motion. Actually, you fall down if you do it fast too, cuz your centre of gravity seems to wander away from that stable position over your feet. But I did do it. (no, really!)

Anyway, some of this stuff will hopefully begin to stick in the next few weeks, and maybe I'll even be able to practice some of it.

First Lesson of a New Session

Great night for dancing. It felt really good to be back at it again. I thought I'd be stiffer and more awkward than I was, but I wasn't bad. I managed to get through the Shimmy without any problems. I even was doing the extra taps that I used to have to skip. I still suck at cramp rolls, and draw backs are all but impossible for some reason. However, the fact that I can remember what these moves are called is evidence that I managed to retain something from the spring classes.

There were seventeen of us in the class tonight; two of us are guys. At least one person was in the noon hour classes that got me started in this, and four others were in the last round of evening classes from last spring.

We have our old instructor Tanis again. She has a warmup routine to drill into us, and we are going to do a couple of different pieces over the next few weeks. One is based on Fred Astaire, a style which is, according to Tanis, upright and on the toes. The other is based on Eleanor Powell, and is more flat footed and low to the ground. Gonna be too cool.

We did one exercise which was all moving backward. It starts out with a brush-tap-heel move, the name of which escapes me, then switches into a drawback. Before that, we were doing the first step in a cross-over pattern, which again demonstrated just how stiff I am.

There was a traveling exercise alternating between shuffles and phalaps. I'm sure I didn't connect with the floor hardly at all in the shuffles. Is there such a thing as air tap? Actually it wasn't as bad as that; I did get the phalaps to actually sound right, although I could tell I was pushing hard cuz I could feel it in the knees.

At the end we did some improvisational stuff, which was neat. We probably looked like a kindergarten class with the sticks and triangles and tambourines We divided into smaller groups, and we were to each come up with a rhythm that the others would copy. Then one of us would dream up a rhythm that the rest would then add to. That was kinda neat. I found I could get an interesting variation by alternating between the triangle and my loose tap with a drumstick.

Doing the Shimmy was fun. There are a few in the class that either didn't know it, or have learned a different version, so we did spend a little time on it. But we went through the four parts. Tanis says there are actually eight parts, so we'll get to learn the other four soon. I like the Shimmy because it's so self contained and complete. Doing the whole thing through is kind of impressive.

Tonight was a great start. It was nice to see some familiar faces, too. It was and fun, and felt good, and I think it'll be a good year.