Hyperreal

Just back from my regular night at the GUU. It was a good night, but I had to leave early as I was just too dizzy to dance anymore.

I’ve alluded to various things keeping me from going dancing before (e.g. to Dundee) but the main one is that when I’m especially tired and/or particularly stressed I get a bit dizzy. Not enough to make me fall over, but enough to make dancing difficult without falling over.

So going dancing last night and stupidly staying up posting to the forum until 1.30am, plus some other stressful things in my life at the moment made for a difficult night.

I managed both classes, plus a fair amount of freestyle dancing, but it was becoming a tad unpleasant.

It’s a shame I didn’t take up a more sedate hobby where dizziness isn’t such a handicap, but when you’re dancing with girls who just love to dance in circles… well, it can be a problem.

But let me tell you about the rest of the night…

We started the beginners’ call on time tonight, which meant there were 3 guys and 7 girls at the start. Not so good, but hopefully all the latecomers will get the idea and turn up on time in the future.

The beginners’ moves we did were the yo-yo, the shoulder drop, first move and the man-spin. Three fairly tricky moves, but there weren’t that many new-starts (who decides to take up dancing on a wet night like this?) so it wasn’t a big problem. I got to practice my missing beginner’s move, the shoulder drop. Getting more used to it again, but didn’t use it much in the freestyle. (What happens is I’m thinking… there’s a move I want to do on a right-right handhold… let’s get onto right-right… now I need to figure it out before the return… OK… now what was it wanted to do… ??? … ??? … yo-yo… No! That wasn’t it! But what was it… maybe it’ll come to me … and so-on until the music ends…)

I also want to practice the sway, but I don’t know it well enough to try it out on dancers that I’m trying to impress – which is all of them!

First freestyle went quite well, had three or four dances. Began to feel a bit too dizzy. Just had enough time before the intermediate class to get myself back together.

Fortunately there weren’t many spinny moves in the routine, and it goes at a pace that there’s always time to recover.

The moves were… a (false?) double-handed yo-yo variation, which ended with a right-left hand-hold. This moved into a flamenco walk-round spin move. (This is the end of a larger side-to-side shoulders flamenco thing.) From there we did an accordion nelson dip. Not a bad move. A wee walk round and unwrap and a change of hands leads us to a shoulder-slide push-spin, which I still can’t do!

If I felt more confident of the dips, that move would be my move of the night. I like the accordion start. As I’m not so confident on my dipping abilities, I’ll nominate the double-handed yo-yo imitation. I tried it a couple of times during the freestyle and I got it to work the second time. Couldn’t be bothered with all the flamenco stuff, so I found some other way to get back to the girl’s right hand.

I must have had a good six or seven dances during the freestyle. All pretty good, some better, some worse. After each dance though I had to sit down to get my self back together. Eventually I’d had enough though, and made my escape!

So a good night except for feeling tired and dizzy. Actually I didn’t feel that tired (the wonders of Red Bull! – must do that more often) but the effects of the tiredness are harder to banish.

Despite the problems I felt more confident in my dancing. I was trying to do the right thing with my feet, but I kept forgetting. Even so, when I checked they seemed to have behaving better than before. Still lots of room for improvement, but it’s a start and it made me feel better. I felt good about almost all the moves I attempted. I did a couple of catapult variations that I’d either seen other folks do, or had read about, and they worked OK, except for a couple of relative beginners who were expecting a normal catapult (which I why I did the variation – surprises are good!)

Happy.

Will be even happier when this dizziness goes away.

Thanks to my Wednesday night “usual suspects”, plus the dancers whom I don’t dance with often enough, plus the people who I danced with for the first time tonight. And thanks, of course, to the taxis, demos, DJ and teacher.

Cheers guys!

BTW, I’m still looking for a ride to/from Edinburgh on Saturday. I’m still not 100% sure I’ll feel up to it, but if I do, it’d be nice to be able to go. Anyone know of someone else who might have a space in their car? Thanks!

My plans for the immediate future are to go to the GUU tomorrow (Wednesday) and I’m seriously thinking about going to the Edinburgh party on Saturday. Biggest issue there is transport – is there anyone who can offer me a lift home after? (And even a lift there?) Please?

Usual bribes are available, including petrol money, chocolate, hugs, or just tell me what you want…

Any offers, please leave a comment, email me, or send me a PM.

Thanks!!!

So I went to JJ’s for a second time tonight.

Not quite so weird tonight compared to last week – I’m getting used to its different feel. Franck was back teaching it, so it was good to see him, and get the full Franck in JJ’s experience.

I’m beginning to think that all the teachers round Scotland read my notes for tips on what to point out the next night. This isn’t just Franck, I’ve noticed it a few times. What happens is I’m standing there thinking about all the things I’m meant to be practicing when the teacher just goes as says exactly what’s in my mind. Uncanny. It’s a bit of a give-away though when the teacher then acknowledges it!

Ever seen “Being John Malkovich”??

So tonight was the night to practice my footwork – off my heels and onto my toes. I didn’t do so badly. It’s a choice though of leading a dull dance as I’m busy concentrating elsewhere, or letting my feet do whatever they want and having an enjoyable dance. I think I struck a balance, and I did find that even when I wasn’t thinking about my feet, they were behaving better.

Definitely more work needed though.

I found the intermediate class tough tonight. The moves themselves were pretty straightforward. On their own I’d have no bother, but I had big problems putting them together. Maybe it’s because I’ve been spoilt by a couple of easy ones recently, perhaps the JJ’s crowd wants tougher moves, or maybe I just had too much other stuff to think about that I couldn’t remember what I was supposed to do most of the time.

Now I think about it though, maybe it really wasn’t any worse than any other intermediate class I’ve had, and I have unrealistic expectations.

What were the moves??? Let’s see if I can remember any better now compared with during the class… First was a basket block walky-turny thing with a spin off for the lady at the end. This led straight into a double-handed yo-yo, which in turn went into a lady comb. Next up was a neck-break with hesitation into a shoulder-led spin. The last real move was a right-handed arm hook walk round, but after that we did a wee across thingy to get back onto the double handhold for the basket. How’s that? Maybe someone who was there can tidy up my naming or descriptions.

I think my favourite move was the neck-break one. I didn’t get to practice any of them in freestyle though. Partly due to lack of confidence in the moves, but also because I was dancing a lot with beginners.

And isn’t it funny how the things you don’t really believe when you’re told them first time come back around and bite you. It’s true – dancing with beginners is really good for people who want to learn more. You have to work so much harder in your lead. It’s good when it all works though. Dancing with all the more experienced dancers is also very necessary – you need to experience what the good work of people before you has done to give you the motivation to go back to dancing with novices.

So I danced with a few of “the usual suspects” again, I danced with a few people new to me. More people asked me to dance, I asked more people who were new to me to dance. Danced with at least three beginners. Maybe didn’t have as many dances though as last week, but I had way more energy last week, not being at work all day beforehand.

So that was it. Enjoyed myself. didn’t get to chat with everyone I’d have liked to, but there’s always next time…

Thanks again to all the dancers, to Franck, and to you for reading this.

Cheers guys, and remember to leave a comment! (Thanks to those who already have!)

Had a wee practice session with some folks today, helping me identify the wheat from the chaff of my dancing, and then hopefully finding a way to sort it!

My chaff can be summarised as I’m doing bad things with my hands and feet… and legs… and arms.

My wheat is that the rest of me seems to be doing OK, and even the bits of me that are sometimes doing bad things aren’t doing it all the time. In fact, sometimes they are doing quite good things.

I’m not a dancer, and after only 3 months trying to be one, it’s not a surprise that my body doesn’t fit naturally into a dancer’s style. In fact, over the course of my life, my body’s got used to having an easy life, I rarely push it, I don’t give it enough exercise and I shouldn’t expect it to immediately just to my command now. But I’m going to see what this old bod can do, it’s surprised me before and maybe I can surprise it.

Things I particularly need to work on include relaxing myself, letting my shoulders go a little, and getting my legs to bend a bit more.

I need to stop sticking my toes up in the air on step backs – in fact in pretty much every part of the dance I need to be more on my toes and balls of my feet and less on the heels.

Although I’ve been told I’ve got a nice gentle lead I sometimes need to make it more assertive. Especially for things like leads on a girl’s hip. This is going to be difficult. I don’t do physical contact well with women I don’t know really well.

On the other side of all this negativity are some good things. For example, I have a few good moves that I can do rather well, I can make a good connection with my partner, and I’m not doing too bad at dancing to the music.

So a few things to bask in, a few things that need practice. All and all, it was a useful exercise, it was fun, and I hope I’m on my way to becoming a better dancer as a result.

Now I’m wondering whether to go to both JJ’s on Tuesday and the GUU on Wednesday. I’m willing to practice: I’m wanting to practice: I’m waiting to practice. (With apologies to G.B. Shaw.)

Thanks to the wonderful folks who helped me, and thanks to you for reading and maybe leaving a comment below…

See you on the dance floor…

Just back from a wee trip to Perth…

First can I say what a beautiful city Perth is? Lovely, even if there was a bit of a drizzle. Got to say though that the council could spend some time and money learning about these things called street name signs – you know the things that tell people unfamiliar with the layout of the roads exactly where they are?

I didn’t get lost, but it wasn’t thanks to any street signs.

That’s my gripe over.

I’m in two minds about naming names. On the forum I almost never named names, but if I just want to say hi to someone, it seems silly not to. So I think I will…

So thanks to Pauline and Jo for making me feel really welcome to the Perth class, and also to Steve, whom I didn’t get to talk to for very long, for, as ever, providing a quality set of tunes.

At the class, there’s both James and Melanie teaching – James teaches the main classes, while Melanie does a “Body Movement Class” for the interested intermediates during the beginners’ class. I went along to Melanie’s class.

Melanie later explained to me the thinking behind these classes, how it’s about developing musicality in the way you move your feet, arms, body, etc… All good stuff, though I found it just a bit tough. Probably because I missed out on previous classes, so didn’t have the ground-work others had. This week mainly covered different steps. Including this thing “the triple step” that I’d heard mentioned on the forum, but didn’t have a clue what it was. My triple step is pants, but my grapevine is much better.

Came out of that class exhausted.

Missed the first freestyle due to chatting with folks while recovering. Was just ready to dance when the intermediate class started!

Like yesterday, we had a fairly straight-forward sequence of moves to do. A first move variation (with hips!), a simple shoulder slide ceroc spin, and a yo-yo variation which had a catapult kind of feel to it, but not really.

James enjoyed himself watching the guys trying to do things with their hips – my feeling is that if God meant guys to do things with their hips he’d have given us hips to do things with. Not my move of the night. Instead it’d be the yo-yo variation, though when practicing it in freestyle because it goes straight into the first move hips thing, when I tried it, some of the girls I danced with anticipated the full hips stuff. Not so good. I’ll maybe practice it again back in Glasgow this coming week.

After the class I managed to get a few dances in before I had to leave. I found the dance floor to be very crowded, though Steve was saying the numbers were a little lower than normal. Compared to JJ’s or even the GUU, I was having a much harder time finding space for me and my partner on the floor and there were many near-misses and even one or two collisions.

At 10 o’clock I had to do my Cinderella act, though I managed to get away with all my footwear – who was it that lost their shoe in Dundee the other week?

I liked Perth though. The venue is nice. Good room and a good floor, built to dance on. Though I didn’t dance with many folks, the people I met at the classes seemed friendly.

All-in-all, I give it my stamp of approval. Now if only it didn’t cost an arm and a leg to get there on the train!

Thanks again to Pauline, Steve, Jo and James and Melanie, (and everyone else,) for making my first trip to Perth a great success.

Cheers!

Back to my usual haunt tonight. It’s good to be home.

The class was good, once it had started! Lots of new beginners, and a delayed set-up put the start back at least 15 minutes.

Got to do the shoulder drop in the beginners class. I like this move, but haven’t done it very much lately, so it was good to get a wee practice of it. I like to do multiple slides to the side before I drop the girl’s hand – it’s fun and it lets you know whether they’re paying attention or not. During freestyle though it didn’t go so well with some of the folks I tried it on. Probably because I haven’t got my timing and lead of the move right. So, some revision needed there!

Because of the late start the first freestyle was over very quickly. But it meant more time for the intermediate class and later freestyle.

The moves we did in the intermediate class weren’t so difficult this week – no leans or anything like that, and compared to what I saw of the intermediate class I missed out on last night, it was a doddle.

We had a pretzel variation, a basket variation (which might have been the same one as we did a few weeks back) and a first move variation. Although I had problems with the pretzel variation at first, I got it together by the end. I think a big problem is that sometimes you’re partnered with someone equally clueless and so your hesitant lead is misunderstood by your partner who doesn’t know any better and so things go wrong. When partnered up with someone who has figured out the move, it makes it much easier to then know what it’s meant to feel like and so easier to repeat it, even with the less experienced dancers.

All the moves were ones I could see myself doing in the future, and I think I practised them all during the freestyle.

Was feeling really tired tonight, so my freestyle dancing wasn’t all it should have been. I started poorly, got better for a time after the intermediate class, but then my mind shut down and I was back to leading repetitive first moves and yo-yos.

Danced with quite a lot of folks, nevertheless.

One big difference between the GUU and JJ’s is that I get asked to dance a great deal more at the GUU, while in JJ’s I had to do pretty much all of the asking. Now that might have been because I didn’t do the intermediate class at JJ’s and so was less visible as a decent dancer to dance with. Or it might have been just because I must be a familiar face at the GUU and not at JJ’s. Or maybe it’s something to do with the profile of the people at the two venues.

I don’t know, but I like being lazy, and at the GUU I can be.

In a short while I’m about to post the location of this blog to the forum.

Maybe I’ll get lots of traffic, maybe none.

Anyway, to you that have made it over, welcome! Have a look around, and please leave a comment or two.

I should say that a lot of the posts here have just been copied verbatim from the forum, and so they still have the vbulletin code which I need to translate into the appropriate codes for this site. But that’s a boring tedious job, so who knows when that will happen?

I should also clarify that only the posts that were mine have been copied, and where there have been quotes, I’ve anonymized them. Hope no-one has a problem with this.

I haven’t copied every last post I’ve ever made though – just the ones that I should were particularly thoughtful, and specifically about my experiences of dancing.

I’m thinking that in the future I’ll keep my mega postings here, and keep it short for the forum.

Of course, comments welcome. (You need to give a name and email address, but it doesn’t need to be your real one if you don’t want to give it. It will not be made public either way.)

Went to Jumpin’ Jaks for the first time tonight, for the Tuesday class.

It felt weird. I seem to like weird analogies, so here’s one I made up about this.

It’s like you come home to your house, and your family is there, and all your furniture and stuff, but the house that they’re all in has totally changed. Different walls, different rooms, different everything. And you’re the only one that’s noticed the difference.

Like I said, weird.

I’m not going to go into a big long spiel about how the class was, but we did have lots of new beginners, presumably as a result of the busk. That said, I don’t know what a typical night at JJ’s is like to compare.

Because there were so many beginners I was asked by one of the taxi dancers to help out in the consolidation class. Which was nice. Except it meant I missed the Intermediate class. Thinking about it now, maybe it’d have been better for some of the more advanced rather than the less advanced to help out, and let a novice intermediate get the most out of the night.

But then I hope to be doing two other classes this week, plus Sunday, if that happens. So I think maybe missing one intermediate class isn’t so bad.

Back to the story… I was partnered for a bit during this class with a complete novice who was doing really, really well. Her spins were fantastic. Turned out she’s been dancing lots and lots of other dances, right from the age of three, and her mother was a world champion in her particular discipline. I reckon she’ll be teaching me quite soon.

During the freestyle after, probably due to feeling a little uncomfortable in the unfamiliar surroundings, I didn’t dance as much as I would have on my usual Wednesday night. Also, I didn’t know so many people and I didn’t know who would be helpful for me to dance with.

I did dance with “the usual suspects” – three or four people I know well enough, and have danced with often enough, to make it easy to dance with them.

Overall though, not my best night.

Wow. That’s all I need to say really.

Oh? you want to know more anyway?

OK… Well I’ve just had [i]the[/i] most fabulous day. There were many highlights, but i think I’ll have covered most of them in these two words: [i]busk[/i] and [i]party[/i].

Still want to know more?

Alright then, by popular demand… (a couple of people told me yesterday I had to post my impressions of my first busk and full party experience.)

Let’s talk about the busk first…

Glasgow was at its finest yesterday, the sun was out as a group of dancers gathered in the centre of town for fun and evangelism. “Hi!” to everyone who was there, especially to all the people I met for the first time, it was good to put faces to names, and in some cases also put names to names! Alas my anonymity continues to slip away! :tears:

It was my first time busking, but it isn’t rocket science. You’re either dancing or handing out flyers. (Or watching the awesome dancers when you should be handing out flyers. ) I had come expecting to be spending pretty much all the time doing the flyers bit. I was wrong.

One lady in particular made it her business to make sure I did my share of dancing. Cheers! By the end of the thing I think I’d danced at least once (some three or four times) with all the women there. Thanks to each of them. (And sorry if I missed anyone!)

Handing out flyers was surprisingly more fun than I thought it would be. My natural bias meant I targeted more girls than guys, and would you believe that most of the our girls were targeting guys? Hey, between us, we must have our bases covered, no? Teamwork in dancing and teamwork in leafleting. :nice:

The best thing was when folks would come up and ask for a leaflet - makes the job so much easier. :waycool:

I talked to at least half-a-dozen people who were seriously interested in coming to a class, and if that’s repeated over the 20 or so people who were there, then that could be as many as one hundred new victims for the cult of Ceroc.

Naturally by dancing in the street we managed to attract a bit of a crowd, but I was surprised that we were getting rounds of applause at the end of each dance. I’d never have dreamt 12 short weeks ago I’d be dancing in the street and getting applause for it. (More likely arrested! )

We lasted almost 3 hours in the sun, before adjourning to a bar for some much needed food and drink and a chat. No major injuries, though some people got a little sunburn, and apparently Danielle was bitten. :flower: (But who by?!? :confused: ) In the bar we heard some good news for forum people from Franck, which I’m sure he’ll tell you all about pretty soon.

I had to leave to go buy some shoes (thanks, ladies for helping convince me to buy those ones!) but I’m already looking forward to the next chance I have to go dancing in the street. It was more fun than I’ve ever had on a Saturday afternoon in Buchanan Street.

So we can now talk about the party…

The only problem with dancing in the street all afternoon is that it can wear you out a bit which isn’t good when you also plan to dance the night away only a few hours later. I didn’t think I’d make it all the way ’til the end. After I got home from the busk I had tried to have a wee kip to get my energy up, but I was still buzzing from the afternoon and couldn’t close my eyes without visions of flyers and dance moves crowding into my head.

Made it to the party in time for Franck’s fun class, which apparently had a Mambo theme. As I don’t know my mambo from my cha-cha, I’m not sure what it all means, beyond that I now have yet another side-to-side variation which I can confusingly lead. See [url=http://www.cerocscotland.com/forum/showthread.php?p=120270#post120270]this post and sequels[/url] for more details.

Despite my and other people’s fears I did manage to last the whole night. My top tips are don’t try to dance every song, keep topped up with water (it was so hot in there, right from the start) and make sure you’re having fun!

I danced with so many girls, each a pleasure in their own way. Danced with a few notorious “hijackers”/”active followers”. It is actually fun to dance with these people, though I think you have to be a very good follower to get away with it. No-one actually tried to steal the lead from me during the party – unlike during the busk when a certain lady decided she needed to lead me at one point. :really:

In both the busk and the party I found it took a few dances to get into the swing of things – the first couple in particular were really pants, but after a couple of hours at the party I was cooking near to my maximum safe setting.

I received so many compliments about my dancing I’m almost embarrassed to mention it. :blush: (But it’s never stopped me before. ) I was told I had good eye contact, that I had a good, but gentle lead, that my catapult lead was one of the best experienced (or something like that) and that I had improved so much over what must have only been a few weeks – the technical description was “whoosh”, I believe. Of course, this is all in the context of a relative beginner, with lots to learn and loads of room for improvement. I saw maybe four or five guys last night that stood head and shoulders above the rest and way, way above me.

I really appreciated all these positive comments though, and now I’m worried that I didn’t tell my partners sufficiently how much I enjoyed their dancing, whether it was in the aspect of following, eye contact, looking like they were enjoying themselves, or just generally being fun to dance with. :flower:

So, to make up for it, let me say now that I liked your style, your enthusiasm, your patience, your cheekiness, your indefatigability and your smile. :waycool:

I really liked the location (apart from that it was too hot, and the bar ran out of water later in the night). It has a good floor (that unfortunately my new shoes don’t slide on very well) though was it my imagination or is there a bit of a slope towards the stage? From a glance at their web site, it looks like the Henry Wood Hall will be unavailable from next year. That’s a shame. (One of the other things I really like about this location is it’s less that 15 minute’s walk from my flat!)

At the end of the night I hated that it was over, though I think my legs and arms were rejoicing in blessed relief. Had a lovely bit of cake (for Mr Fitz’s birthday – happy birthday again) (oh, and compliments to the chef!) before I left and wandered off into the cool night.

So thanks again to everybody who helped make it such a great day. :hug: Especially to Franck, Tiggerbabe, and Ceroc Jock for all your hard work. :cheers:

(Hope I didn’t miss anyone, or forget anything? Sorry if I did. :blush: )

See you all next time! :hug: :flower:

Hey! Week 12!

Well guys, this is going to be the last week I post my “impressions”. I think we’re all getting a bit bored by it, especially as I’m now more in the swing of things.

So let’s run through the usual process – start with some background; then through the evening; and finish up with a few choice comments on how I feel at the end.

So we’re back to the usual teacher this week. Missed her. Franck was good, but it’s always nice to go back to what you’re used to. There were a few new things – got one of the free Ceroc CDs and was given the opportunity to buy some DVDs. Might think about that for the future.

Onto the class. Beginner class was a bit different in that we did the Ceroc Essentials– in the middle of doing the arm jive swizzle. We also did an octopus, a first move push-spin, and wee variation on the back-pass.

Straight-forward. Pretty much everybody seemed to be doing OK – didn’t actually seem to be many new-starts – at least all the women I danced with during the class were doing quite well.

During the first freestyle, I hardly got a chance to get the drink of water I so badly needed, I was in so much demand. Sometimes being in a minority is a good thing.

I don’t think my performance matched the level of demand… I did all-right, but it’s always difficult for me to get my brain in gear for the first few dances. Had to stick with very simple moves until then. I think I upped my game by the third or fourth dance though.

On to the intermediate class. The demo looked like it was hundreds of moves, but allegedly there were only four.

First was a side-to-side variation with a wrap where the girl had to use the other hand!!! It was pretty cool. Maybe my move of the week – it was certainly the easiest. Had a bit of a giggle with a girl who just couldn’t get used to using her left hand. Even just after we had been taught this move she was getting it wrong, and then much later on she came round again and she was still trying to use her right hand. We managed everything else pretty well though, so we just had to laugh about it. :rofl:

Next up was a shoulder slide push spin. (Hey, got the full name!!! ) This I couldn’t do particularily well, as I couldn’t get a convincing push as the girl stepped back. Quite often I’d miss completely!

That led into a first move walk-around lean. (Not sure of the name.) Pretty good, but I prefer the lean that we did last week – it was easier! Quite often I wasn’t in the right place for the lean – not good if the girl wanted to just lean in before I was ready!

Next was some accordion-type thing. Have I done an accordion-type thing before? I remember the name, but I didn’t recognise the move. It had a couple of tours of the girl going round my front and back (actually, now I think about it, I don’t think I was moving as much as I should have been ) before a wee spin off, and a return.

And that took us back to the side-to-side…

I enjoyed the class, even though I wasn’t convinced I could do any of the last three moves particularly well. :whistle:

So with the class over, onto the freestyle! I wasn’t in so much demand this time, but it was just as well as I was tired and thirsty and needed all the breaks I could get. Still danced a fair bit, maybe five or six times, adding up to over 10 for the night. That’s probably a record for me, though I’m sure it’s a tiny number compared with some folks, but I’m happy with it. :nice:

I got to practice a few of my intermediate moves, in particular the side-to-side and the lean things we had just done.

With the side-to-side because we had just learnt it, every girl I danced with assumed that every time I did a “let go”, I wanted to do this move and catch her left hand rather than her right – and I really have no idea how I would indicate different. :confused: One lady I danced with though would catch with the left hand, but was expecting me to lead something other than the wrap. I couldn’t figure out exactly how my lead was meant to tell her to wrap in rather that anything else she could have done instead. So two puzzles there. :confused:

While I was resting I had the opportunity to watch some of the dancers – one guy I know who hangs around here was there, and I’ve got to say, he’s a really good dancer. :worthy: Sorry I didn’t get the chance to say hello, but you did seem to be dancing non-stop!

Another guy I watched seemed to be making a meal of every dance he did – I think the meal was porridge the way he was stirring it. (I don’t want to say any more though in case someone chastises me for being critical again – though he certainly wasn’t a beginner.)

During the class and the freestyle I met lots more nice people, want to say a big “Hi!” to them here, even if they aren’t reading this. Hope to see you again soon! :nice:

I left at about quarter past ten, very tired, but much happier than I’d been for a few weeks. Last week I asked you all to give a mark out of 10 on how much I enjoyed the class. I’d say last week was maybe just about a 7, and this week was at least an 8.5, bordering on a 9.

But that’s enough about the night…

As this could be the last opportunity in this thread, I’d like to thank absolutely everybody who has helped me through these last 11 and a bit week (12 classes + 2 workshops)…

To the person who introduced to me to Ceroc, that’s something I’ll always be grateful to you for.

To the taxis – you guys are superb. :waycool:

To the other dancers, thank-you for the dance, for the patience, for the smiles. :nice:

Total respect to the DJs. It’s such a hard job, and they tend to get little praise when the music’s cooking and so much flack the rest of the time. :clap:

And to the teachers without whom, etc, etc… :worthy: :worthy:

Biggest thanks though goes to all you people out there in forum land. I’ve been amazed at the warmth and generosity of you all, giving me the help and encouragement I’ve needed when things haven’t gone well. I simply wouldn’t still be dancing if it wasn’t for you guys. :flower: :hug: :flower: :hug: :flower:

Maybe see some of you on Saturday, otherwise, see you round the forum!

Hi folks!

Is this my 11th or 12th class? I can’t remember anymore. Either way, maybe you want to know how it went???

I normally start off with a brief statement on how I felt the night went. This time I want you to rate how you think I felt on a scale of 1 to 10. (Hey, why should I do all the work here?)

So turned up nicely early but still lots of people coming in late. Bad people. They missed the fun “Ceroc Essentials” at the start.

I haven’t talked about this bit before – I think this is one of the recent innovations of the beginner’s class which takes the place of the warm-up that we did anyway but didn’t have a trade-mark name.

I think it’s quite useful, gets everyone going, gets my limbs moving. I’m really hopeless though at doing things with hands and feet at the same time. Why is why I normally go through this bit with my hands in my pockets… :blush:

Oh, I didn’t mention, but if you’ve been following you’d know we had Franck as teacher again this week. Surprisingly he didn’t seem to bring the crowds of fans I expected – maybe my theory was wrong. :confused: We did get lots of new beginners again this week though. :waycool:

So the beginners class taught us: first move; shoulder slide; yo-yo; ceroc spin. Not quite mastered the ceroc spin yet, but I think a lot of how you do that move is in how your partner does it. If you’re just going to just stand there and look at me when I’m trying to lead you into a block, it’s not going to be easy to spin you… The other problem I found was quite often I’d catch with my left rather than my right after the shoulder slide. This must be the an aspect of the left-handed thing that surprisingly few people have been interested in discussing so-far. (http://www.cerocscotland.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5244)

It was funny how different partners reacted to it. I knew I could switch hand easy enough, but one or two partners seemed unnecessarily alarmed that I had used the wrong hand. Hey, let me deal with it – it’s just my problem until it matters for the next move and if I don’t get it sorted before then, you can then stop and tell me I’m a big fat idiot. (Or words to that effect.)

I guess it can be off-putting for beginners, though should they really even notice?

Enough of this, hope I haven’t gone too far into the criticism of beginners territory again. :flower:

First free-style went pretty well, got asked to dance by folks, asked other folks to dance. (I’d wanted to take the chance to say “Hi!” to Franck, but couldn’t find him the few times I was free.) Can’t remember how many dances I had or with who, but it was all pretty good. Was trying hard to avoid repetitive first-moves and seemed to do not bad. Still got that “travelling” return problem, especially when I’m on my right hand. (Another left-hander issue???)

Onto the intermediate class. I think Franck must have taken pity on me after last week, as I found this week’s moves much more manageable than last’s. (Not that they weren’t still pretty tough, so maybe it’s just that last week was an off week for me.)

I kept missing the names of the moves again, but the first two moves were variations on the first move…

The first one had an extra wee turn bit which led into a lean (a baby lean?) I’ve always wanted to learn this lean thing since I saw it in action way back in January. (That’s before I started – if there’s one move that brought me to ceroc, that’s the one!)

I didn’t do so bad at this one. I need to get better shoes for dancing in as I sometimes found it difficult to get my feet into position for a safe lean. I’m exploring my options this week. This though is my move of the week!

The second variation on the first move we combined with the first one, but I guess can be done on it’s own. I wish I could remember the correct names!!! It stopped the move as the girl came back round to the front and you’d lead a slide-kind-of-thing as you stepped away sideways from each other.

Not so good at this one. Franck spent a lot of time talking about how to do the footwork involved, but I was too busy getting the hands in the right places to worry much about my feet!

Next up was some sort of accordion. Can’t remember the exact name again, but you’d turn the girl one and a bit turns to your side and block and then reverse it. Repeat as desired.

This was pretty easy really. A move I’ll have to think about using again.

Coming out of that we went into an arm-lock walk thing. Would swivel round, lock arms and go walkies!

Not so bad, but I could never get the arm lock done right.

And that was it!

Freestyle started and although I’d planned a wee breather, and was still hoping to get a chance to say “Hi” to Franck, girls kept dragging me up to dance! Eventually I hid behind a table so I could have a wee pit-stop and get some water in me. That worked!

And then Franck came and said hello! It was good to meet you and have a wee chat about things. I got a mini master-class where my returning problems were diagnosed and hopefully I’m on my way to fixing them. As part of this I had to dance following his lead to see my error from the other point of view. Have to say that being led by Franck was an illuminating experience. What I’d give to have his technique! Ladies, you don’t know how lucky you are! (To dance with him, and (separately) to not have to worry about leading.)

After that I didn’t dance so much – only with a couple of beginners. With one of them I was trying out lots of returns to see if I could improve them, to perhaps some effect, but not much yet – definitely room for improvement.

The other was a first-timer and didn’t want to dance any moves she hadn’t just been taught, but as she got bored of them I introduced a few others. Because I’m still only a “beginner-intermediate” I wasn’t able to lead her the way experienced dancers can, and so instead went into a sort-of teacher mode talking her through some of the harder-to-lead moves. In retrospect, I don’t think that was very useful – sometimes it’s easier to learn by just doing.

And by then I was tired and so left for home. :nice:

So, marks out of 10 for enjoyment? Let me know what you think!

What else can I say? Missed seeing some people I’d hoped to see, enjoyed meeting new people instead. Met someone who lurks on these forums but hardly ever posts – and I know there are quite a few others of you out there.

So, strawberries to all the cool people who were there, and raspberries to all the sad people who could have been there but weren’t.

Better take cover behind that table again! :really:

Bye for now! :waycool: