Hyperreal

After a night off back home on Sunday, on Monday it was back to the Grand Tour.

First stop – Dundee!

Well, almost… Actual first stop was Perth to meet up two friends, one local, the other up for a few days extra after the competition…

We travelled through to Dundee together, along with another person who although invited to join us, ended up driving! Lovely journey over though…

Dundee’s Invercarse Hotel is rather fab. It is a hotel venue, so it’s the usual script of dance-floor surrounded by tables and chairs, under a fancy roof with a chandelier or two… But compared with other places I’ve seen, this place was grander than most, and bigger than most. They also do cool things like put out iced water and glasses (real glasses!) on the tables for the dancers.

I arrived just in time to join the end of the beginner’s class. Even at this stage I realised that I knew quite a few of the people – perhaps from previous journeys east, or at parties or the comps.

In fact, there were quite a few people not only who had attended the competitions, but had taken part, and even won. (Was it my imagination, but did Dundee have the greatest representation both on and off the floor in Musselburgh? Certainly there were more there than you’d expect compared to Glasgow or Edinburgh.)

Here are the moves we learnt…

• Granada Mangle – done a couple times before now, so not as difficult…
• Side-to-side shoulders dip thingy – found the dip bit (the girl sort-of crouches as you lead her under her arms) quite difficult to lead effectively, though all the girls dipped at the appropriate moment, or even before…
• Secret spin – not sure of the name, but this could easily just be called the double-handed yo-yo spin.

In the freestyle, I felt I was dancing better than I had in Musselburgh, though on two or three occasions I had real problems with my rhythm – I kept feeling that I was losing the beat of the song I was dancing to. I think this might have been the result of poor rhythm from my partner, rather than me, in combination with a “challenging” track, but ultimately it’s up to me to make sure these things work.

I didn’t feel happy about that at all, though when I danced with some of the dancers I think are good, things worked out much better.

I had a smashing dance to the Austin Powers theme (Soul Bossa Nova, by Quincy Jones). That was my dance of the night.

Afterwards, our little group of three chilled back in Perth, with a lovely cup of tea and some toast.

But it was back to the hotel for a (hopefully) good night’s sleep before Edinburgh…

Thanks to all the Dundee regulars for making it a great night.

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Next stop – Edinburgh!

In the morning I travelled to Edinburgh in the company of our new English friend.

We did some of the tourist stuff, including doing the Castle, seeing the One O’clock Gun, and taking a bus tour. We also toured some of the more obscure one-way routes around the Lothian Road/Haymarket area…

In the end though, we ended up at Marco’s rather early. In fact I think we were the first there, after the venue manager, teacher and DJ. (The DJ was getting to look familiar – I’m sure I’ve seen her on every other stop on my tour up to now! )

Unfortunately not many more people turned up. And there were more guys than girls! I’d guess there was no more than 30-40 people there by the end of the beginner’s class. For a time there was three extra men.

During the intermediate class, things got worse. There was maybe a dozen women, and about seventeen guys…

This is especially bad as we were learning some very tricky moves!

• First move swizzle spin – it does what it says on the tin.
• Tea-pot into shoulder slide and arm-hold step/wiggle thing – this was a bit tricky, involving going from a tea-pot, into a shoulder slide, then coming out of that, twist L arm round to go into arm hold L-R with woman to lead stepping/wiggling, with a pull and push away.
• Granada Mangle! – Yep, that move again!
• Mangle Part II! – This time though we followed the Granada Mangle with Part II (the revenge!) This is done by raising the right hand, and turning the girl until you end up in a swizzle position the other way around. Then it’s just the same as the first part, but a mirror image. On the way out, raise left hand and turn out to whatever…

Well that was the fourth time I’d done the Granada Mangle, though in both Edinburgh and Dundee it was slightly different than I’d been taught before. Previously in the swizzle, we’d done the full thing, though we’d lead the arm out to the side lover than normal in order to make the fold back up to shoulder easier. These times we were taught to just lead to the shoulder without the arm out. Not sure what is “correct”, but I think the full swizzle would look better.

Despite the low numbers, there were quite a few good dancers there. Had some really good dances, including with the teacher.

I left slightly before the night ended though, to make sure I would be able to get my train and be home before midnight.

Not a bad night, but next time I’ll try to get a more popular night.

Cheers to my travelling companion for the day, and all the cool people at Marco’s who were there.