Hyperreal

Went up to Stirling last night for Franck’s “Focus on…” workshop and Sheena’s “Smooth Grooves”…

The workshop was on “Isolating the Connection” – allowing you to keep the connection (primarily the hand-hold) with your partner clear and smooth while the rest of your body is doing it’s own thing.

This is something I’ve come across before, both in this series of workshops, and in Marc’s style workshop at the BFG, but this was a workshop exclusively on this topic.

We did the usual pat-a-cake exercises, where you are connected with your partner through a strong hands-on-each-other connection, and then you do various things (jumping, footwork, etc.) while your partner has her/his eyes closed and see if they notice…

An exercise I found particularly interesting involved doing an “in-and-out” with your partner while her eyes were closed. She should not notice if you are stepping back, not stepping at all, or stepping in (in a semi-mambo-walk style.)

We then did a few moves where you had to isolate the connection during the move in order to add extra footwork or style. It’s important to note it’s not just the guy’s responsibility to isolate – so in a first move ronde, if the girl’s going to do a sweeping ronde on the “twist out” part of the move, this must be isolated so the guy (theoretically) doesn’t notice a difference which could affect his lead, balance or timing.

We also did a few simpler moves where the guy would position himself differently coming out of a move, but with the idea that if the girl’s eyes were closed she wouldn’t be able to tell…

The last thing we did was practice the First Move Colombian, where the guy has to keep a steady lead while executing a fairly complex movement.

All good stuff. I don’t think I did too badly, in that most of the variation of positioning in moves we practiced I either already do some of, or do similar things, and they usually seem to work.

Keyword for the day: smooth.

Then it was onto the freestyle…

It was another good night of music. Nothing too out there this week for me – except Carnival de Paris (Dario G), it has way too many changes of style for me, and I just wasn’t working well with its Salsa-esque rhythm. Then when the bagpipes come in! Help!!!

As before with the limited, but well balanced numbers (maybe about 7 men and women) you end up dancing with the same people a few times, but all of them are good dancers, some very good, so dancing with them all was a pleasure, and as I’ve said before when I’m dancing with the best dancers it really brings the best out in me. Found myself doing things I’d never done before, and having a lot of fun.

This seems to be related to the current discussion on the forum about moves vs. steps. When I’m not fully “in the zone”, when the dancer isn’t so advanced, or sometimes if the music isn’t working for me, I’m definitely dancing moves… But as those three things come together I feel myself beginning to approach that nirvana of abandoning moves, and just dancing.

Hopefully this is just a transition period and I’ll be able to make more of this…

A lady I respect, a very fine dancer, told me I had a very good lead. That’s what I like to hear.

Unfortunately I had to do another Cinderella act, and leave to get my train before the end. The good bit of this is that there’s now a later train than before so I was able to stay until about half 10, and I got home for midnight-ish. (With at least half an hour waiting for trains during that time.)

For a Sunday night (a school night), this is actually not such a bad thing, compared with getting home about 2 am if I get a lift home at the end.

I was also getting tired and had hurt my back somehow, so my last half hour’s dancing was, let’s say… minimalist…

I’m in Dundee next weekend, but I hope to make it to Stirling for the second half of the isolation workshop, when it is applied to musicality…

Thanks folks for a fun evening, hope you had a good time too.