Feeling the heat in JJ’s
JJ’s tonight. And not a bad night… Not much I can say, but no doubt something will come…
I arrived early-ish on in the beginners’ class and joined in straight away… Lots and lots of beginners. All the usual beginner problems… Stiff arms and spaghetti arms, anticipating, back-leading, holding on, thumbs – and that was just the intermediates! 
Just kidding!
No, it was good… A few really promising girls, a few that you wonder if we’ll see next week. (Of course, someone will post a comment on how they or someone they know was a hopeless beginner, but turned, butterfly-like into the most marvellous dancer. I don’t doubt it, but I’m sure when they were beginners some insensitive idiot was thinking the same thing as me. Sorry, I’m just in that sort of a mood tonight… )
I made sure to dance with a few beginners during the freestyles – maybe I was feeling guilty about what I was thinking… Dancing with beginners can be rather nice – especially the smiles you get when you lead them and they successfully follow a trickier move that they didn’t know. 
Intermediate class…
Arm-jive swizzle round the world. Beginner variation… This is the one where you duck under the swizzled arm, go round to back to back, and round until you’re in a mirrored swizzle. Then unwind. Nice, but I’ve found it hard to lead and make the girl stay put while I duck under her arm, rather than thinking this is a tea-pot walk around thing. Maybe I need to make sure I’m more walking around her rather than her around me.
Cha cha steps (?) – This is the cha-cha New Yorker, MJ-style. Rock-step to the side L-R, cha-cha-cha, rock-step to the other side R-L, cha-cha-cha, rock-step, cha-cha-cha spinning the girl off CW, turning ACW and meeting back up (catching R-R) for a return. I found it funny the contrast between a classic cha-cha move and the “step in for a return, and step back” MJ style. Never tried this in freestyle. I’m worried that when a cha-cha comes on, I’ll be rock-stepping when I should be cha-chaing, and visa versa, even though I can clearly hear when I should be doing them. (This only makes the potential for embarrassment worse!)
Secret swizzle – classic move. Yo-yo style move, offer L below for two-handed yo-yo, but on the turn back in allow the girl to keep turning until you’ve sort-of swizzled her, her facing away from you. Unwind and turn to have R-R low, and L-L high. Did this a few times in the freestyle, but it’s not really so different from the double-handed yo-yo…
Man’s accordion back pass. This is just a back-pass with your R-R hold, but your L-L hold is more like a step-across, finishing with the girl being led CW a little to spin her back ACW from your L-L hold. Catch double-handed for the arm-jive… Think I did this once or twice in freestyle, but I’m more used to coming out of accordions with my R-R hold high…
I had quite a good night of dancing. Not the best ever, but nothing major to complain about. Was nice to get a dance with a few folks I haven’t seen for a while – even though I managed to punch one of them in the eye! Oops! 
Found myself doing some more moves I hadn’t done in ages, plus found one or two nice wee variations on some of my “signature” moves. didn’t manage to use any of the new cool moves I’ve been learning on these Sundays, but maybe I’ll try some of them out tomorrow at the GUU, if I go along…
Cheers folks, hope you all had a good time tonight. 
(Oops, just realised I haven’t explained the title – it was quite hot in JJ’s tonight, with the air-conditioning blowing warm air rather than cold air. It was bearable, but boy was I thirsty!)