Yesterday we had our first private lesson in months–Daniel’s surgery and then the holidays shot the wheels off November and December but we are getting the ball rolling now. We talked to Eddie about moving up from Bronze to Silver level at competition and discussed the possibility of skipping the syllabus levels altogether and starting to compete at Novice, which is the first open level. Neither of us felt quite ready to make that jump but Eddie wanted to start teaching us open choreography anyway. He says it will make us “more rounded dancers.” So we learned a new waltz routine that is so much fun! It is much more complex and strenuous than what we’re used to, but we can already see that once we learn it and polish our technique, it will look fantastic.
Daniel bought a video camera last week so we took it to our lesson. Eddie danced through the routine with me and by himself so that we could review the steps if we needed to when practicing. And boy, did we need to! We practiced a little this afternoon and had to look at the video several times to remember the steps correctly. I am hoping we’ll know them by our next lesson next Saturday.
We are excited. I am not yet sure what level we’ll end up in this year but since we know we want to move up, we are not planning to compete for a while anyway. We want to make sure we go to Gumbo this year and that might be our first competition of the year. If this waltz routine is any indication, we will need every minute of practice between now and then to be ready!