Hyperreal

Wow, is that the time??? I’m not long back from Edinburgh, and the party night at Marco’s.

Had a magic time!

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t make the “fun” class again, arriving at about quarter past nine. The night was just getting going, but the numbers seemed lower than I had expected. And in fact, it never seemed as busy there as it was last month. I can only guess it was the Southport effect… Nevertheless, there were plenty of people there, so I never had a problem finding someone to dance with.

I really wasn’t sure how the night would be… Based on the week I’ve had, a mix of highs and lows with sore feet thrown in for good measure, anything could have happened tonight.

So, I did find in the last hour or so a tiredness overtaking me that definitely affected my dancing. However, earlier on, I was much happier with my dancing and my musical interpretation. Neither are any where near good enough, but compared to even a month ago, I’m feeling much better about my performance.

That said, I wasn’t happy about my selection of moves… I’m doing way too many yo-yos, man-spins, part octopuses, and baskets. I go two-handed too often, but can never think of something novel to do. Likewise, when on my right hand, I’m finding it difficult to not just do a yo-yo. And with cross-over hands, it’s almost always the exact same sequence of moves, quite often with two two-handed yo-yos in there. I really need to work on this problem.

My feet… Well they are much, much happier after 3-4 hours of dancing than they would have been in my shoes as they were this last week, or the week before.

Still sore in places, but no-where near as bad as they have been. Hoping I get my Bloch’s before the next class on Tuesday though…

As for the dances themselves… I find the quality of a dance is directly related to how the lady dances with you. If you dance with me, but don’t actually look at me, then no matter how good, experienced, advanced or whatever a dancer you are, I probably won’t enjoy dancing with you.

All the dances that I can remember moments of (and I’m not good at this) were with dancers who kept a good level of eye-contact with me, and smiled. Even a dance with a beginner rated highly with me as she seemed to actually be dancing with me, and enjoying it! I can think of quite a few dances with “better” dancers where that didn’t happen.

Often the partner you’re dancing with seems to go into “auto-pilot”, and instead of interacting with you, is looking round the room to try to figure out who’s up next… My fix for this is throw in a really different move which catches them by surprise, and brings their attention back the the dance they’re currently having… (Though often this seemed to happen as a result of mistakes which not only would throw my partner, but me as well! )

Perhaps you can measure the success of a night by the compliments you get… So tonight, I got asked to dance by some fantastic dancers (a huge compliment), got asked to stay up for a second dance a few times, was given some really lovely compliments by partners before and after dances, got ranked in someone’s “top 5″ of the night, and had a hypothetical proposal of marriage hypothetically considered.

All in all, not a bad one…

Cheers to everyone, extra big thanks to those girls that just make dancing into something beyond reason and understanding.