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friends & family social dancing USA Dance

Rumba with Kecky and Teeb

Yesterday afternoon we met up with our friends Kelly & Steve (known to Kelly’s toddler niece as Kecky and Teeb) to help them work on their wedding dance. They are getting married at the beginning of May. Kelly started ballroom at the same time I did, but didn’t stick with it seriously for want of a steady partner. Maybe this wedding dance will be the gateway drug that turns the newlyweds into dedicated dancers!

They already had a song picked out and we agreed that they should dance a rumba.  They are quick studies and worked up a routine in less than an hour.  I can’t wait to see them dance it at their wedding.

Surprisingly, they had not had enough dancing in the afternoon and agreed to have dinner with us and then go to the USA Dance chapter’s monthly dance in the evening.  Paula taught some waltz basics at the lesson before the dance, which was very well attended.  Everyone was decked out in their Valentine’s Day red.  Daniel got to be one of several “dance hosts”: women paid $1 for a ticket to dance with a dance host, with the money going to our chapter.  He collected ten tickets!  He also took a bunch of videos during the evening, including the debut of a new line dance/mixer that Dianne taught us.  I’ll post that to our YouTube channel as soon as Daniel figures out how to get the videos off his camera–it’s brand new.

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in other news lessons

Practice makes hilarity

We saw Eddie again last weekend and spent most of our lesson learning a tango routine. Now we have 2 routines to practice while he is traveling for the next few weeks–we won’t get another lesson till early March. So far I have elbowed Daniel in the face twice (once each in waltz and tango) and gotten a hockey-style two-minute holding penalty for leaning on him too much in one section of the tango. I would characterize our routines at this juncture as “not ready for prime time” but we are having a lot of laughs learning them.

In other news, I am branching out my dance experience by going back to ballet classes after several years away. After a couple of weeks of “Teen/Adult Ballet” at the Madison Studio, I was asked to take a small role in the studio’s upcoming production, “Swan Lake Selections.” I am the Queen, which is a pantomime role rather than a dance role–in some of the traditional story ballets there are pantomime parts that serve to advance the plot, using pantomime as a kind of sign language. I went to my first rehearsal today to learn my part in Scene 1. I get to “greet” everyone at my son’s birthday party by walking around in a big circle while they bow to me, then have a conversation in pantomime with my son. My son is turning 21, which means that if you go by my real age, I had him at age 16. The Queen is a teenage mother! You can see the Queen in this video of an American Ballet Theatre production of Swan Lake:

Much like our waltz & tango performances, my Queen performance is not too polished yet. But at least I did not elbow anyone in the face.