Hyperreal

Tuesday… JJ’s…

Interesting night… Not at all sure what happened, but my dancing has changed…

It started from the very beginning. I arrived just before the end of the beginner’s class, but got talking to a friend so didn’t take part in the class. But we were up dancing as soon as the class finished…

And I found myself doing moves I’ve rarely done before. Many more arms-over-the-heads turns and such. And – yes, I can hardly believe it – combs!

I’ve seen glimpses of this in my dancing over the last few months, but it was really strong tonight. Going back to my regular moves was a bit boring in comparison, though as the night went on my old-style dancing and my new-style dancing tended to blend more into each other, as if someone was stirring it.

Of course, any time new stuff comes into my dancing, the amount of errors go way up as I figure out what works and what doesn’t. Apologies to all the confused girls out there I danced with tonight who must have walked away puzzled at the end of our dances. Hope you enjoyed the change though, and if you’ve got a little patience, maybe this new stuff can stay with me and I’ll be able to smooth it out into something much more pleasant.

Let’s have a look at the intermediate class… Quite difficult this week, I thought.

• Basket caress – lovely comb-type move in the basket. As taught you do the comb as you go into the basket. I more often do it during a wee basket walk… We were shown a repeated caress, or a slow caress. Cool.
• LH comb duck spin – the name says it all. LH comb. Duck under girl’s arm, letting go, and swinging your L arm down and round to your back leading yourself in a spin while the lady is still connected to your R shoulder. As you come round her RH should drop into your LH.
• Open neck-break – led via the girl’s shoulders, very difficult…
• Comb hesitation? – start to comb yourself, but stop early, and come back and comb the lady. Has a wee dip of the hands between combs on the half count. Need to hold girl’s hip with LH to stop her running away as you bring your hand back towards her.

The key point in tonight’s moves was about transferring the lead to the “other” hand, allowing what was the leading hand to play around. So in the basket caress, where much of the lead is in the LH, because it’s busy with the caress part, the RH which usually doesn’t do much has to do all the leading. In the hesitation comb, you have to transfer the lead from the RH which starts the comb, to the LH which holds the girl close via her hip. In the duck-spin, it’s actually your shoulder that takes the lead while you spin… There’s an obvious transfer of lead in the neck-break, but I don’t see the other hand doing anything interesting in the meantime…

I didn’t get on well with most of these moves. As I said, the basket caress I already do, though not necessarily in the same way… The other moves are very atypical for me. I found the duck spin very tricky. Both the duck (getting low enough) and the spin. With the spin, I found keeping my balance very difficult, and getting my hand in the right place to reconnect I didn’t find easy, though I usually was able to reconnect fairly easily as I came round and faced my partner.

The open neck-break, I never seemed to have my RH in the right place at the right time to properly lead the turn out. When I tried to concentrate on it more, I stopped leading with the L on the spin out… Typically while trying to lead the second turn via the girl’s shoulder, my arm would be stretched across the girl, and on a couple of occasions my hand ended up dangerously close to getting me a slap.

After the disaster of that move, I was never really ready for the next comb…

Part of my problem tonight was my position on the dance floor, at the back, right, where my view of the stage was usually somewhere over my shoulder… Need to try to get my more normal position next time, though with a new arrangement for the girls’ queuing, it means that I could end up over that side more often…

Think I’ve covered everything I need to. The main freestyle was a pleasure, I had lots of fab dances, there was lots of fab music, I had a fab time.

Cheers everyone!