Hyperreal

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!