Hyperreal

Hi Guys,

Well that was class numero sette. (That’s seven in Italian.)

I’ve been feeling stressed and was really tired going into the class, so please take this into account before telling me what I do or do not need to do.

There was a delay at the start due to the new computerised desk, with lots of people not having their card or having to write out their details. I totally understand why this is being done though. (Though a part of me is thinking DPA??? )

Other big difference was a substitute teacher. As usual, no names, but it’s not going to take a genius to figure out who he was. Also, we had a different demo who is a familiar sight around these boards. (Hi! Nice demoing!)

The moves… Only “new” one was the comb, though it wasn’t really new as I’d done it in a workshop. Or maybe the yo-yo was in some way new, as I think I’ve always done it with a push spin at the end. Dunno. Anyway, I wonder how many beginner moves are left that I haven’t done. :confused:

Again we were in the small hall and it was very crowded. Quite a lot of relatively new starts, and a lot of faces I didn’t recognise - a few people had said they’d also been to the Tuesday night class. I might be hooked, but I’m not that bad yet.

I liked our teacher’s style. He reminded me a lot of the teacher at the Edinburgh workshop with makes me wonder about Martin Harper’s point about “Teaching/dancing persona”, and David James’ suggestion that Ceroc is turning out clones. Hmm… Nah, it’s not that bad, they’re just two very enthusiastic teachers. Anyway, he was very good and also seemed to be popular with the girls as well.

During the class he raised a lot of the points that have recently been discussed on the forums. (Hmm… I wonder if he reads them too )

In the first freestyle danced with a few people. Not so bad. I did dance with someone that a while back I’d turned down. In retrospect I think I was right. I didn’t really enjoy that one. (Sorry if you’re reading this. :blush: ) Maybe it was just me.

Into the revision class and met all the new starts - a few of which were truly awful. A few times I’ve had girls lead the semi-circle and actually lift their hand out of mine. What are they thinking? One poor lady just refused to be led - even during the wee swinging hand bit before the 5,6,7,8… She was determined to do the moves her way, with or without me.

I wonder if it’s possible that some people just can’t do modern jive??? And how long it should take you to realise this? A week? A month? 3 months? A year? More? Please, I’d be very interested in replies to this. Perhaps someone might want to start a new thread based on this question?

I guess partly as a result of the late start we didn’t seem to get very long for revision and only went over the first move (push spin) and the yo-yo.

Our taxis (maybe after reading Wendy’s comments?) were doing a lot of counting of beats.

After the revision i met a bloke (maybe someone here?) who showed me the pretzel. Wow! It looks so complicated but it really is surprisingly easy. Did it first time! I tried to get him to show me the half-windmill that I’d seen on the DVD, but he was unsure how it went and our “demo” (a beginner of just a few weeks) had decided she’d had enough of being practised on. :nice:

We tried to borrow a taxi dancer, but she was busy with a new guy who needed her help much more than I did.

Anyway, by that time Wendy’s 9.45 boring music cut-off had arrived and the music got a bit too challenging for me, and as I was feeling tired and sore I made my excuses and left.

And that was another week done and dusted.

So, despite all the goading I probably didn’t dance any more this week than last. I didn’t really get a chance to see how well I was keeping in time with the music or to practice much actual freestyle.

Oh well, there’s the workshop on Sunday…

So what did I learn this week… Not that much from the actual class. Maybe I’ll take a look at the intermediate class next week. I don’t want to try to run before I know I’m walking right. Hmm… Maybe the workshop will have the answers.

To pick up on the discussion that’s been going on in my thread (and without my permission too! :angry: :na: ) I can definitely tell you that I was seriously intimidated in the first few weeks by watching “expert” dancers and then them coming to ask me to dance. (And at that stage, everyone who’s done more than a few intermediate classes would be an expert to me.) At least for me there was no danger (or there should have been ) of being led into weird and fancy moves beyond my ken. Think of the poor women! (Think of the children! )

I really think that if before the intermediate class all the really good dancers could leave us alone unless you want to taxi, that’d make life for the very early beginners a whole lot easier.

But then that’s just me, and I do see the argument the other way about needing inspiration and better dancers to dance with the more advanced beginners (like me!)

I guess the answer is that as well as the music needing toned down for beginners, the awesome “leet” skills of some of the more advanced dancers should also be turned down a notch or two.

As ever, thanks and “Hi!”s to all the cool people there that I met and/or danced with. I want to say it was a pleasure.

Stay tuned for a weekend report after my second workshop!