Hyperreal

… since I’ve been dancing at the GUU. What with my Grand Tour, and then it being closed last week, it’s almost a month.

So it was good to be back and remind myself again why I like this venue so much. It is, of course, all the magic women there.

Again, I though I was in pretty good form tonight. Well, for some of the time. As the evening wore on I began to fall to bits a bit. I think it may have been triggered by a surprisingly bad dance with a rather good dancer. I later found out it may be because I’m a “doom-doom” and she’s probably a “shoogy-shoog”. (I hope I have those technical terms right! )

But tonight, like last night, I felt a much greater connection with the music during my best dances. I was dancing not just with the beat, but with the guitar, or whatever instrument was taking the lead. Hey, I like to think I’m fairly in-tune with music all the time, but these past couple of days I seem to have found a way to make my dancing fit better with what I’m hearing, and I’m better able to move the way the music is making my body want to.

Anyway, enough of all this fancy talk, let’s get down to the moves!

Some difficult moves tonight!

• Hatchback lady-comb lock – yo-yo style thing with spare hand behind, lead girl round with RH going over your head and turning the girl into a nelson position with her LH. Comb R-R. (This move up to here I do lots.) While trying to make sure she doesn’t turn(!) duck under (go around) her right elbow undoing the nelson, but ending up with a bit of a choke-hold round her neck. Once you’re round at the girl’s LHS, straighten her left arm and raise it over her head turning her to unwind the choke-hold and ending up in a cleaver position.
• Cleaver – the last move took so long to do we didn’t learn any other way into the cleaver, we just learnt an exit of a wee sway back, letting go of R-R and dropping your RH down to catch her RH again in front of her and then turn her out into a return (this is all behind where you were in the cleaver)
• reverse catapult something? – Normal catapult entry, but offer LH back on RHS, stepping back for connect, lead her in front for a double-handed return, letting go R-R to end up with L-L hand-hold, not so-much facing each other as facing opposite directions, but looking at each other to the left. Turn in ACW to bring your RH to your LH, keep turning and the girl should (somehow?) be led to turn CW back to back and so you come round to face with a L-R hold. Done this move before.
• open first move – first move, but open so that most of the lead is only done by the RH on girl’s hip and back… lead her first out (stepping back), then forward and in-ish, then for a CW spin, catching R-R, ready for the hatchback!!!!!

Wow! I found that hatchback stuff really tricky the first few times I tried it, but got it on the fourth or fifth attempt. Only did the full thing once in the freestyle to show a girl who had missed it what we had done. The hardest part was stopping her turning CW with me as I tried to move behind her. Did the reverse catapult a few times, but usually any time I tried to drop the R-R hold, if the girl didn’t know the move she’d also let go L, and offer R so I’d end up in a normal L-R hold. Which was cool, as then you didn’t have the other weird exit to worry about. And in fact when I did end up L-L once or twice i think I found more conventional ways out of it.

There were lots of good dancers tonight. There was (like yesterday) a beginner who’d only done two weeks but was doing incredibly well, and could follow pretty much everything I threw at her. I still wish I was good enough to be able to allow her to follow everything I could lead, which many of the really fantastic dancers that I watch seem to be able to do.

Music… Ended up dancing to “All That Jazz” by mistake. Too many breaks, not enough flow. Also didn’t care for the music that was playing when I had the really bad dance I mentioned up at the top. Seemed to me that most of the song had a rather well disguised beat. We danced the next song though (”Jump”) and even with its strong beat the dance didn’t get much better. Which is why I’m thinking she’s “shoogy-shoog”, rather than “doom-doom”… Or there was some other incompatibility that I’ve yet to figure out…

One of the best tracks (or at least the dance done to it) was (I think) “It’s a Kind of Magic”, which was played quite early on when I was at my best, and it really was magic.

Cheers everyone!

(Wee addendum to yesterday’s entry… Somehow I managed to get my hand tangled in a girl’s “make poverty history” white arm-band. No idea how that happened, but we had to stop to get my hand out from it! I’ve had problems with scratches from jewellery before, but I never expected a rubber arm-band to be a problem! )