Categories
in other news

The inner Mark Twain

Internet, I revealed a secret to our dance class tonight, and now I’m going to share it with you.  But it’s a secret, so I’m going to whisper, and then you can’t tell it to anyone else.  Only your fellow dancers can know this.  Lean in close.  Wait, let me get a mint. Okay, now lean in close…
You don’t have to know very many steps to make other people think you’re an amazing dancer.

Sure, if you want to compete or do performances, then you need a bit more variety.  But if you just want to dance socially–weddings, parties, events like that–a few basics will take you a long way.  The key is in the way you do the steps.  If you are standing up straight with a nice big frame and a pleasant look on your face (or, where applicable, a good nasty tango face), you can do the same three steps over and over again and people  will come up to you afterward to say “You are such a great dancer!”  Enjoy your dancing, and other people will enjoy your dancing.  Daniel and I are not the best technicians in the world (yet…hahaha) but people always remark on how much fun we seem to be having.  That’s what it’s all about, after all!

And take it from me: after you get a compliment on your dancing from a stranger, you will never want to miss another lesson.  Mark Twain once said “I could live two months on a good compliment.”  I’m pretty sure he’s not the only one.

Categories
short takes

Short Take

“90% of competition takes place in about 6 inches, which is the distance between your ears.”–Jason Dungjen, 1998 U.S. pairs figure skating champion

I love this quotation; it sums up my philosophy about competition.

Categories
Ballerina Corner

Multiple modes of foot torture

(I never check my Google search strings–don’t even know how–but I bet that post title will bring out the kinksters and porn seekers.)

Some of you know that I’ve been taking ballet–again, for about the 12th time in my life–for a year or so.  In October, I cautiously re-started dancing en pointe after 20 years.  I’ve been wondering if I should post here about ballet or keep it all about ballroom.  What do you think?

From what I’ve seen online, the prevailing question about ballroom dancers doing ballet is “Will ballet help or hurt my ballroom dancing?”  In my experience, it might do both, but I think it helps more than it hurts.  My perspective may differ because I did ballet pretty seriously as a child and have done it on and off since.  As a result, I’m sure I would not be nearly the ballroom dancer that I am if I had no ballet background.  Ballet works flexibility, foot articulation, leg strength, core strength, knee bend (good for smooth/standard), turnout (good for rhythm/latin), extension, arm position, and probably some other stuff that I’m forgetting. But the number one benefit of ballet is that it absolutely drills you on correct, upright posture.  If you need a lot of practice keeping all your blocks aligned (as Valentina explained it in a workshop I attended last year), ballet is the way to go.

A close second behind improving posture is ballet’s ability to develop a kinesthetic sense in its practitioners.  See, ballet is old-fashioned and traditional: it’s based on a lot of repetitions of a lot of basic exercises, day after day, year after year.  You learn steps and positions and body lines and you do them over and over until you can make them look good without ever having to check yourself in a mirror.  You imitate your teacher as he or she shows combinations and you get more and more accustomed to picking up choreography.

Maybe because I started out as a ballet dancer, I tend to see ballet as the foundation for all other dance forms.  Not in the sense that they evolved from ballet in any direct line, but that studying ballet prepares a dancer to succeed in other genres of dance.  A lot of dance schools require a minimum of ballet study before or while a dancer starts in other styles.  The relative availability of ballet versus ballroom can be an advantage too.  We’re lucky to get 2 ballroom lessons a month but I can easily take 2 ballet classes a week.  Of course, I have to be willing to dance with kids a third my age!

That’s one of the few disadvantages of ballet (if you want to call it a disadvantage; I don’t mind): not every studio offers adult classes or welcomes adults into their classes.  My studio offers a Teen/Adult class aimed at older beginners; I started in that class and am now in the “Pearls” level which is a transition-to-pointe class.  That brings me to disadvantage #2: I sometimes worry about getting injured in ballet and not being able to do ballroom as a result.  My teacher (whom I love, by the way) put us through a wicked “Approaching Pointe” barre yesterday; we did not so much approach pointe as rush up and tackle it, and my feet were on fire by the end.  But obviously nobody made me start dancing en pointe again, and I can quit if it gets too difficult.  A random injury (slippery floor, careless move, pushing it too hard, whatever) could just as soon happen in a ballroom lesson as a ballet class.

Ballet will teach you to move differently than ballroom does, and that could be a disadvantage.  I have a hard time doing cha-cha locks and rumba walks correctly because keeping my hips still & level is so second-nature to me.  Occasionally a move perplexes because my muscle memory wants to do it the ballet way, and the ballroom way is something different.  Someday I’ll have to tackle my tendency to dance Smooth with a bit of turnout.  I know it’s not technically right but it is both habitual and (to this ballerina’s mind) better-looking.

So I’ll ask again: should I write about ballet on DLDancers.com?  I can tag the posts “Ballerina Corner” or something,

Categories
dancing in the media

The bar has been raised

Further to my previous, how many does it take to tango? Got this from Joyce, a clip from 1997’s The Tango Lesson*:

Must confess that something about the woman being passed from guy to guy gives me the creeps ever so slightly (and might be dangerous–around 2:40, one of the guys almost takes a Comme Il Faut to the face), but it does provide interesting ideas for a group routine. Of course, in a real group of dancers, the genders would be reversed, with one man being passed from woman to woman!

*I haven’t seen it, but it’s going on the Netflix queue.

Categories
dancing in the media

The Geico Tango

Geico commercials can get a little tiring.  They have so many different campaigns that it seems like one of their ads shows up in every single commercial break.  And that brown-haired guy with his hands in his pockets gets on my nerves.  But Daniel and I love this ad:

Our friend John Osborne could outdo this trio.  He is an expert at doing the swing with two girls at the same time.  (It takes three to swing? Wait, no, don’t go there.)

Categories
lessons

When feminists do the mambo

We started learning a mambo routine in our lesson with Eddie today.  The mambo is going to be our nemesis, at least for a while.  I understood “on2” when Johnny Castle explained it.  For that matter, I understand it when Eddie explains it.  Then the music comes on, the tempo is INSANE, and we are both struggling to keep up.  But it’ll come.  Rome not built in a day, etc.  Eddie, you see, used to be world professional mambo champion.  Asking him to teach the mambo is like asking Daniel to root for the Canadiens.

I had to tell Eddie that he is not allowed to put that “conga drum motion on my butt” thing in our routine.  Not that Daniel wouldn’t like it (heehee) but it’s…a little objectifying, don’t you think?  I explained to the gentlemen that “this is what you get when a feminist does the mambo.”  Already I have to learn to shimmy convincingly and with a straight face.  My objection to the shimmy is not so much ideological as psychological.  I don’t think of myself as the shimmy type.  I will after this, I suppose.  Meanwhile, Daniel has concluded that a half-hour of mambo a day will take care of any worries he has about excess weight.  Who knew dancing was such a source of self-improvement?

Categories
Uncategorized

Equally true for ballroom dancing

For “hockey” read “dancing”; for “bowling” read “all activities other than dancing”:

“Ovi” creeps me out even when his head is firmly attached to his body but I love this commercial.

Categories
Friday Night Dance Parties social dancing

New Year, New Dance Dates

Happy 2011, everybody!  After a slow-and-steady year of monthly Sunday night dances we’ve had the opportunity to move our monthly dances to the second Friday of each month.  Dances will start at 7:30 p.m. and end at 10 p.m. Everything else stays the same: Howard Community Club, $5 admission, casual dress.  Dates are as follows:

  • January 14
  • February 25 (not the second Friday, obviously–something was already booked)
  • March 11
  • April 8
  • May 13
  • June 10
  • July 8
  • August 12
  • September 9
  • October 14
  • November 11
  • December 16

We hope to see you for another year of great dancing!