Hyperreal

Wednesday… GUU…

Wow, what a change! The place was packed! Lots of the regulars back from where-ever they were, plus lots of people I didn’t recognise. I’m told there was a lot of “LeRoc” people there tonight, so maybe that’s where they had come from.

On the forums you mainly here about the LeRocers of Bristol, and I’ve never heard any talk of the Scottish LeRoc world. I wonder why not…

I wish the change in the GUU had been reflected in my state of mind since last night, but alas not. Someone once told me that intense tuition in dancing actually tends to make you a worse dancer – temporarily. What happens is that your dancing suffers as you struggle to apply all the new stuff you’ve learnt, until it becomes ingrained.

I think this has been happening to me this week. I came away from the workshop on Sunday with my brain ready to explode. Yesterday I was complaining I couldn’t get things right because I was trying to remember and apply the stuff from the workshop, plus the stuff from that night’s class.

You won’t be surprised to hear that tonight was more of the same. It’s like my brain has been draining away until I’ve only got the dregs left. Those dregs being the half-dozen of so moves I’ve got so hardwired into my muscles, I could do them not only in my sleep, but probably even in a coma.

So tonight early on in the main freestyle I decided to stop thinking and just dance. I’d like to say it made all the difference, but it didn’t beyond that I stopped making as many mistakes as I was doing mainly simple moves. Which allowed me to at least get some enjoyment out of my dancing.

But overall it was a knock to my confidence I didn’t need. Plus I (felt that I) got much fewer requests to dance tonight compared to an average Wednesday night. Maybe it’s because there were lots more better dancers than me. So once or twice I sat and watched these great dancers and felt my confidence slip further away.

I know what you’re thinking – don’t let it get you down… you’re getting there… you got to give it time… everyone has off nights/weeks/months/years/centuries.

Sure, but the human mind doesn’t work that way, or at least mine doesn’t. It’s difficult to separately evaluate how things are now compared with how things were in the past, and even more difficult, how things will be in the future.

So, please let me wallow in my bout of self-doubt for just a while, please?

Anyway, maybe some people are interested in the night moves, yeah?

Beginners’ class: arm-jive swizzle (no return); octopus; first move push-spin (catch R-R); back pass.

Intermediate class:

• arm-jive swizzle around the world and back – after the swizzle, duck under out-stretched girl’s arm move to the right and bring the girl’s left arm over your head to get to an mirror-image of the original swizzle. Reverse the motion and on coming back to the start point, spin/turn the girl fast twice anti-clockwise.
• open neck-break – neck-break intro, but turn to face as you do the switch of hands, into a double clockwise fast turn (girl wraps in on herself) and return.
• back-pass turn comb (?) – simple back-pass, but when the girl’s right arm begins to pass your left arm lift it up for a arm/arm (wrist/wrist?) fast turn (a bit like a half-windmill, but arm-to-arm.) Still L-R, do a left-handed comb, but turn all the way round to face away. Drop hand from left hand on right shoulder down to right hand and step away. (This comb, drop, thing is just like a shoulder drop really.) On the step away offer left hand clearly in front, right-hand side.
• reverse catapult – from where we are we have already done the start of the catapult and can now do the pull forward with both hands, turning girl clockwise as you let go of R-R handhold. We are now pretty much facing opposite directions, holding left-left at a fair distance. Turn in ACW, bringing right hand to meet left, and right forearm to meet girl’s left forearm. Switch to R-L hold, keep turning and throw her left hand away fairly sharpish to make her turn CW, back-to-back with your ACW turn. Coming out of the turning, take hold L-R, and do a return, taking up a double-handhold for the arm-jive again…

Wow! No wonder my brain broke down!!! Talk about complex!? I’m amazed I can remember them so well.

Didn’t like the arm-jive thing – felt a bit wishy-washy to me. Open neck-break was fairly easy. I don’t currently have any neck-break moves in my standard repertoire, but this might just make it – it’s not as complex as the standard one.

On one of my DVDs they teach a move called the “Kissing Break” where you kiss the girl on the way out of a simple neck-break. Bet they never teach that in JJ’s or the GUU!

The other two moves were a little too complicated for me tonight. I managed to get through them in class, but I don’t see me doing them freestyle any time soon. I’ll no-doubt have forgotten them by the morning.

And that was pretty much that.

As I said before, once I stopped trying to think I enjoyed my rather limited dances much more. I found some of the things I had been trying to learn on Sunday paying off in fact. I hit every break in “Make Me Smile (Come Up And See Me)”, though not always in time to do anything clever, and my partner didn’t seem to expect the sudden stopping of my lead and was never sure what to do… On a couple of other occasions I didn’t catch from a spin, and instead just stopped to enjoy the music, maybe clicking my fingers or some other subtle body movement, again allowing the girl time to do stuff, but again both my partners were unprepared (kind of like “OMG, I don’t have a hand to hold, what shall I do?!? ”) and so not much style came out of that…

I think overall I was more aware of the music, allowing it to dictate more the choice of move, and certainly influencing how I danced. I didn’t get caught out by any false endings, ever recognising the evil tune I mentioned recently with the really killer false ending. I wasn’t dancing to it at the time though, but I think I’d have got it. It’s The Madison Blues and it should be banished from dance floors across the world!

So now I think about it, I have something to show for the workshop, and hopefully as my brain recharges I’ll get even more out of it, and I might even be able to do some of those fancy moves we were taught.

Isn’t it nice to finish on a high point?