Hyperreal

I’ve had a busy weekend… Then finally to Stirling, for Franck’s “Focus On…” workshop and Sheena’s “Smooth Grooves”…

(Previously I had been at a workshop in Dundee with Nigel & Nina, on Blues dancing; next was a party later that night…; then on Sunday I then had the final part of the “Feeling Good” workshop… )

Unfortunately I’ve left it too late to remember much of this night…

But let’s see what I do remember…

This week was musicality, and in particular, interpreting music in your movement.

The class was a follow on from the one the week before about isolating the connection. The idea being that before you can add musicality into any of your movement, you need to have your connection with your partner isolated so you don’t disturb it.

So, if your hands and arms are (mostly) busy connecting with your partner, and your legs are stepping in time with the music, there isn’t much room for musical movement.

Guys have it especially bad, as we also have less brain power to spare after working out the lead… But help is near-by! Your partner is your musical limb! And one that can think for it(her)self too!

But if you do have spare brain power, we can do things like move your feet or spare hand to interpret the music, perhaps following a different instrument than just the beat of the drum. (But there’s more of using your spare hand coming up next week… )

But even if you don’t have time to do clever things with your own limbs, you should be able to acknowledge to your partner that you are noticing the music and giving her time to do the interpretation for you… And an acknowledgement could be as simple as a raised eyebrow at the right time. For guys, subtle can be good.

Most of the rest of the workshop was giving examples of things you couple do from listening to and working with the musical phrasing. So you can do things like blocks when there is a pause in the vocal or by one of the instruments…

Another thing would be to find an interpretation to a particular phrase of the music and repeat it during other phrases in the music where it will compliment, and give an alternative flavour to your interpretation.

And that’s about all I can remember…

The freestyle was very good… On Tuesday night following this freestyle I wrote that I’d say how good the night was and wonder why, so I guess I should…

Especially the first half-dozen or so dances at the beginning of the freestyle were just superb. I suspected it might be the music, but since looking at the playlist for the night, these songs weren’t especially “better” than ones later. Perhaps it was tiredness that brought the rest of the night down a notch or two, compared with these first dances…

Or maybe it was the connection I had with my partner and us with the music that was just hard to repeat. Talking of repeating, there’s also the possibility that after my first bunch of dances I just started getting bored with my style and that made the rest not quite as magical in my eyes…

I’m not really sure. Anyway, it was a very good night and a great end to a fantastic weekend. I left early again, maybe at around half ten. I was too tired to dance any more and so I left when the going was good.

What a weekend though…

Big thanks to everybody involved.

(Ooh, looks like I remembered more than I thought I would! )