Hyperreal

I’ve had my best (class) night’s dancing at the GUU in ages.

So glad I made it along this week. I’d heard last week was a bit quiet, so I was a bit put off, but I knew there’d be a few ladies I’d want to dance with – the Dirty Half-dozen on tour…

I made it there during the first freestyle, just had time for a couple of dances before the class…

I was back to wearing glasses (due to my own stupidity) but despite that I was determined to have a good time. (There’s two things I find when wearing glasses… 1:- I’m likely to bash them at least once per dance. 2:- I don’t give as much eye-contact. Oh, and a third thing:- the glare from the lights is worse with glasses.)

When my first dance of the night was a bit of a stormer itself, I knew I was in for a good night. Maybe one of the magic ingredients of a really good night is starting it off with a really good dance – this means though that you might have to be careful in your choice of partner.

Had another one or two good dances, and then the intermediate class started…

• Sway into catapult comb thing… Start with a sway, but instead of a normal step back, bring the girl’s LH over her head to turn her CW, as you step back, resulting in your LH being over your head, and your R arm being in front of the girl. This moves on into a catapult-style end, but instead of spinning the girl off, you raise your LH to turn the girl and take her into a L-L comb. Use your RH to push the girl away ACW. Catch L-R, travelling return to go double-handed.
• Weird wurlitzer thing… Wurlitzer start, but don’t spin the girl – instead turn her ACW under your R-L hold as she comes round, keep the handhold high and step through the arch. Either by virtue of the move so-far, or perhaps deliberately (opinion varies), you’ll both have the connected arm bent back up towards the shoulder. Now “cast-off” fisherman-style to lead the girl into a ACW spin in front of you.
• Catapult dip. Catapult start, but wind/spin the girl in ACW to go into a seducer dip. This move was combined with the earlier one by putting the wind/spin thing in, instead of the cast off. From the dip, up and spin off, catching R-R to go straight into the sway…

Nice stuff, apart from that cast-off thing, though the uncertainty over how it should be done was probably what caused the problem. They way in appeared to be taught involved actually bringing your hand (and the girl’s) back up to your shoulder after over-shooting it as you ducked under the arch. The demo though said it was a continuous movement, and not the jarring one that most folks in the class seemed to understand. Unfortunately the night was over and the teacher had left before we discussed this, so we weren’t able to ask her…

Of the moves, I fancy trying to see what I can do with that sway turn thing… The catapult dip is OK, but I don’t seem to go in for dramatic dips like this.

Back to the freestyle… I think I maybe (managed to) sit out a couple of dances, otherwise it was pretty continuous… There were a lot of people there – many more dancers that I particularly wanted to dance with – unusual for the GUU lately… I had a couple of very good dances with two second-time beginners, who seemed to be able to follow pretty much everything I tried – I usually avoid some of my trickier moves with beginners. I don’t seem so good at leading sways with beginners though – in fact sometime I manage to confuse very experienced dancers with my sway lead. Something else to work on…

Despite having so many dances, I don’t think I had a bad dance all night. Been a while since I was able to say that about the GUU.

Oh, we had a famous person with us tonight - even though people kept saying “who?” to me when I told them he was here…

I’m really curious whether that increased the turn-out… Do women phone or text their friends to let them know there’s a particularly good dancer in the building, and it’s worth getting the car out?

Or maybe they’d just heard a rumour I was going to make it this week, after being ill last week (thus the low turn out then.)

Just kidding…

Cheers folks, hope you all had a good night too.