Categories
lessons social dancing USA Dance

What we’re up to this week

The Royal Palm Dancesport Winter Frolic is getting closer and we are getting ready! Had a great lesson on Sunday drilling waltz technique with an emphasis on rotation. I learned that the root word of “waltz” is a word that means “revolve,” so dancers should never forget that a good-looking waltz relies on rotation. It doesn’t have to be dizzying–just enough motion and changes of direction to keep the momentum consistent. We still need to work on this emphasis but it’s already adding a lot of dynamism and energy to our dancing.

Last weekend was USA Dance Greater Macon’s monthly social, which was lots of fun as usual. Paula East did a great job with the music after our usual DJ, Chester Gibbs, had to drop out at the last minute due to an emergency. Thanks, Paula!

Our next dance (our first of 2016!) is coming right up on the 22nd. Mark your calendars and we hope to see you there. Stay tuned to this website for our February group class schedule and don’t forget we are available for private lessons too.

Categories
lessons USA Dance

Demonstrations from James Mulac’s workshops, October 10, 2015

Here are the video clips I took at James’s workshop last weekend. I have these set as “unlisted” on YouTube so please save the link to this post if you’d like to view the videos again. Thanks!

Rumba open breaks:

 

Rumba underarm turn:

 

Waltz left box, change step, right box:

Categories
competitions dance events exhibitions & performances lessons Mercer Ballroom teaching Uncategorized USA Dance

What we’re up to this week

Oh MAN, October is flying by. It’s already been 2 weeks since we got back from the Carolina Fall Classic (I’m about to update our Competitive Highlights page; stand by) and a week since I got to take a workshop and private lesson with a new instructor for us, James. Can’t wait to work with him again tomorrow. We’re also rehearsing with Denise Froemeke for the Kay Center’s Dancing for the Stars event in November. She and Daniel have come up with a really cute routine and I have the perfect dress for her to wear! Oh–AND–we are teaching for Mercer University’s ballroom club this coming Monday as well. Busy Busy Dancers and we love it!

Okay–going to post this update now and get some other photos, videos, and posts up later today and tomorrow. Stay tuned and check back soon. Thanks!

Categories
faaaaaaaame! lessons

Dancing Near the Stars

Last night, Daniel and I got a special treat: we got to take a master class from Tony Dovolani of Dancing With the Stars fame. He was in Atlanta rehearsing with his DWTS season 18 partner NeNe Leakes (Real Housewives of Atlanta) at Academy Ballroom and decided to offer a class. Being star-struck goofballs and avid DWTS fans, we said yes to the class as soon as we heard about it! Tony is very nice and approachable, very funny, and an excellent teacher. He focused on Latin/Rhythm technique and styling with an emphasis on balance and using energy.

Categories
Friday Night Dance Parties lessons social dancing teaching

2014 Scheduling Update

For those who are still drafting their New Year’s resolutions, we are delaying our waltz lessons until February. The dates will be Feb. 16 and Feb. 23–two Sundays–4:00 to 5:30. Total cost for this “mini session” of classes is $45 per person.  Meanwhile, we will be hosting our monthly dance at the Howard Community Club on Friday, January 17 and then Friday, February 28 as scheduled.

I’ve got some more interesting dance news for this year but I’m waiting to make sure everything is finalized before I make it public. (teaser teaser teaser!)

By the way, do you like this new layout?

Categories
lessons teaching USA Dance

Ballroom workshops & lessons coming up

As members of USA Dance Greater Macon chapter 6059, we are very excited that the chapter is bringing professional instructor Josh Jones to Macon for two hours of workshops on Saturday, October 12 at the Howard Community Club. Josh is a National Dance Council of America (NDCA) certified instructor who holds Highly Commended Licentiate and Associate qualifications in International (Standard) Ballroom, as well as a Highly Commended Associate qualification in American Smooth Ballroom from the Imperial Society of Teachers of Dancing (ISTD). He will teach American Smooth Tango at 10:00 a.m. and American Rhythm Cha-cha at 11:00 a.m.  Each workshop is $20 or you can attend both for $35. Plus if you attend both workshops you can also attend the chapter’s monthly dance that evening for free! It doesn’t get much better than that.  I will be there for sure!

Meanwhile we’ve been working with our group class at Madison Studio on the rumba and it’s going great. It turns out that martial artists make excellent dancers (did you know?). This winter we’ll be scheduling our group classes around the studio’s rehearsals for Alice, a version of the Alice in Wonderland story. So if you are interested in joining a group class please let us know so we can verify dates and times. Private lessons are also available and remember: no partner needed.

Stay tuned for more dance, music, and fun coming up soon!

Categories
lessons

Rules for the Dancefloor

Our dancers have been helping us come up with a list of rules for ballroom dancing.  Herewith, the rules so far:

  1. No tickling, no groping: Keep your hands where they’re supposed to be.  Gentlemen, I’m lookin’ at you.
  2. Stand like a king: Daniel came up with this great phrase to characterize the ideal male dance posture that is both regal and relaxed.
  3. Respect the bubble: Baby & Johnny had this one figured out a quarter-century ago: “This is my dance space; this is your dance space.  I don’t come into yours; you don’t come into mine.”
  4. Don’t snatch: In the South you can use the verb “snatch” to characterize any action of grabbing something suddenly.  Snatching your dance partner is not cool.  Some moves appear to require snatching, but this is an illusion.
  5. You can’t go till he goes: Ladies, this one’s for you.  Your partner gets to decide when you start dancing.  Wait for it. . . wait for it. . .
  6. Don’t “Hulk out”: Concentration does some odd things to one’s facial expressions, neck veins, hand grip, etc.  Keep it loose and light.  (If you start to turn green, you’re doing it wrong.)
  7. No apologetic birds, no sad princesses: Dance big and smile!  Everything you do will look better.

I think I am leaving some out.   Guys & gals, leave me a comment if you remember one that I forgot.

Categories
comp diary lessons

Comp Diary: Round and round and round

Yesterday was our last lesson with Eddie before we go to Gumbo the weekend after next.  We spent our entire lesson (90 minutes) doing “rounds,” which means running through our competition routines over and over again with only a small break between repetitions.  Waltz waltz waltz.  Tango tango.  Waltz-tango. Foxtrot foxtrot foxtrot foxtrot. Waltz-tango-foxtrot. Waltz-tango-foxtrot. Waltz-tango-foxtrot.  You get the idea.

Rounds are ideal for building stamina, obviously: when I took my shoes off at the end of the lesson, they had sweat stains around the top of the heels.  But they also help you learn to change gears really quickly.  In a typical multi-dance heat in a competition, you walk onto the floor and dance anywhere from 2 to 5 dances (depending on your level) consecutively without leaving the floor.  When you have finished one dance, you get a few seconds to take your starting position for the next one, and off you go.  You are judged not only on technique but on “the character of the dance,” so during that short break you have to let go of the dance you just completed and focus on the one that’s coming next.  After making your waltz look like a waltz–smooth, graceful, romantic–you must immediately make your tango look like a tango (sharp and aggressive) and then your foxtrot look like a foxtrot (upbeat, happy, elegant).  And do all this while controlling your nerves, staying in time with the music, and practicing correct floorcraft and technique.  No pressure!

I always have a hard time with waltz, especially in the very first heat of the day.  Being slow, smooth, and controlled is a challenge when you are buzzing with adrenaline.  But yesterday we worked on being more aggressive and powerful in waltz while still expressing the character of the dance: lowering, hinging steps from the hip, covering more floor.  I found that if I really focus on my body, it gives my nervous brain something to do AND my dancing gets better.  Sometimes I look at myself on video and I can see that I’m dancing with some weird combination of laziness and tentativeness.  In some ways I’m holding back (not stretching my steps or working my hips) while in other ways I’m slacking off (letting my bum stick out or not staying left).  Yesterday, after an hour or so of drilling our smooth routines and really trying to overcome those shortcomings, I suddenly found that my dancing in cha-cha, rumba, and swing got better too.  A rising tide lifts all boats, it seems.

We are going to do some more rounds on our own tomorrow and one or two days next week, then we leave for Gumbo next Thursday.  Stay tuned!

Categories
Ballerina Corner competitions exhibitions & performances in other news lessons teaching

Conservation of Dance Momentum

A body that is dancing tends to continue dancing unless acted on by an outside force.  In the absence of outside forces (spring semester ended on May 6;  congratulations, Class of 2011!), we have been dancing a lot and doing a lot of dance-related stuff in the last several days.  Since I haven’t had to teach I’ve been going to four ballet classes a week at Madison Studio: my usual twice-a-week “Pearls” class (average age: 11, focused on beginning pointe work and trying to remember which is croisé and which is effacé) plus two adult classes which, despite being ostensibly for beginners, serve to demonstrate that one can never spend too much time working on the basics.  All this ballet is having several salubrious effects, including finally loosening up the hamstring I pulled a few months ago and keeping me from going insane as I work on revisions to my book manuscript.

We are still working on our paso doble; on Monday we went over the videos we recorded in our last lesson with Eddie and just repeated, repeated, repeated the steps without even trying to get up to tempo.  This video that a friend sent me earlier today demonstrates just how far up “up to tempo” actually is.

No lesson this past weekend, but on Sunday we had an all-studio blocking rehearsal at Madison Studio for the recital on June 4.  Having the entire population of the studio in one place at one time was an impressive exercise!  It was our dancers’ first time doing their recital piece for any kind of audience and they did great.  We also managed to remember our rumba routine despite not having done it for a while.  The real high point was running the “production finale” in which every class appears, one after the other, and dances a short additional routine.  Lots of us are in more than one class, so there was a lot of dashing from one side of the studio to the other, hurried changing of shoes, and general crowd control.  The ballroom dancers also had a good laugh at the “FootUndeez” I wear for the contemporary ballet number I’m dancing in.  Yes, they look like panties for your feet.  Hence the name.  Can we all just move on now?  (Okay, they are pretty funny, especially the ones I’ve seen that have a little pink net tutu ruffle around the elastic part.)

After regular classes on Monday (Pearls class, paso practice with Daniel, ballroom class) and adult class Tuesday at noon, the ballroom group reconvened at the studio on Tuesday evening to get pictures taken.  The marvelous Keiko Guest (check out the “Fine Art” side of her site for sure, but a couple of those may not be SFW) comes to the studio once a year to take individual pictures of everyone in their recital costumes.  She brings along a staff of 3 or 4 people, a small photography-studio setup (lights, background, even one of those fans to make your hair blow around and look glamorous), and more computer equipment than I ever thought possible.  In less than an hour we had lined up to wait, had a jolly time getting our photos taken, and looked at our proofs to order prints.  The pictures were amazingly good and I can’t wait to get the prints.  Ms. Guest is a former dancer herself, so she understands what good lines look like and how to adjust people’s positions so that on film, we look like better dancers than we probably really are!  Daniel and I had a lot of fun coming up with poses for ourselves and then inflicting them on our other two couples.  The best part was taking some shots of all 6 of us together.  She somehow made us all look attractive and dancerly while crammed into about 4 square feet of space on her backdrop.

So it’s been a great couple of weeks, and the beat goes on.  This evening we’re dancing at Pinegate with the performance ensemble from Madison, then on Saturday we have a lesson from Eddie.  And today we got a call from another retirement community here in town, wanting us to schedule a performance.  AND…according to the counter on their website, Gumbo is just 5 days away.  I’m pleased to report that the counter is not accurate!

Categories
comp diary lessons

Comp Diary: There is no bull.

Yesterday we started learning a Paso Doble routine in our lesson with Eddie.  Daniel is especially excited about the paso because it requires good posture and sharp movements: he feels like it will help him improve his technique in our other dances.  Plus, he loves exhibition-style routines with lots of eye-catching, dramatic moves. We entered Open Paso Doble for the competition in Baton Rouge, hoping we would have the routine ready to go by mid-June.  That may or may not happen!  We learned enough steps on Saturday that we can get through a 90-second heat, but it’s a pretty challenging dance.  The steps are not too complex and the routine is not complicated.  The hard part is the musical phrasing.  In other competition dances, as long as you start on the “one” (i.e., 5-6-7-8-ONE), you’re generally okay.  It’s perfectly acceptable to wait a couple of bars and make sure you catch the beat before starting off.  Paso doble music, on the other hand, is very structured.  Yesterday, Daniel asked Eddie where in the music we have to start.  We were a little intimidated when we found out that we have to start on 3.  As in, the third beat after the song starts.  Silence–one–two–GO.  If we start wrong, or if we don’t get the timing right during the routine, then we’re irrevocably in the weeds.  So that’s pretty scary.  On the other hand, I get to do a tour jete, which is awesome.

Here’s some competition paso from a few years ago, using the music that is almost always used for paso doble:

And here’s an exhibition paso:

It is cool to watch these top-level dancers and see them doing the same steps we are learning (albeit doing them a lot better!).  We are in a little over our heads, but we are challenging ourselves and we’re motivated to improve, so it will come.  Will it come by June 17?  Not sure.  I am still hopeful.

And remember: the man is the matador.  The woman is the cape.  And there is no bull.