Hyperreal

My second full WCS class (that’s why I did the “TWO” in caps.)

Different from the first, but I don’t really know why…

Managed to get my transport sorted out this week, but a 7 o’clock start means I’m still dashing to get a train which gets me there half an hour early… Not ideal… But anyway…

I think I’m the new boy there… I guess most other folks have been doing it longer than me, or have a greater dance heritage or ability and so have fewer problems than I have… I’m getting more attention from the teacher, which makes me a little concerned that I’m slowing things down for other folks…

I did manage to do all the class though – the beginners and improvers sessions were sort-of just run into each other (with a wee practice-session half-way through) and with a few spare ladies there I never really considered not doing it all.

I struggled with a number of things – though I found that some of the later stuff I could do better than the beginners’ stuff. But there is some sense to all this – let me explain…

Here’s what I had difficulty with…

• Remembering the sequence of moves.
• Triple “back-together-forward” step sequences.
• Fancy walking patterns.

The first one is simply about memory. As I said last time, I am bad at remembering sequences of moves in classes. I’m really bad at remembering long sequences of moves. The beginners’ stuff seems to be based around a mostly-fixed sequence of moves that are done each week. The regular attendees will remember it – I struggle to get it into my head.

Then in the later sequences, although they can be nice and short, I still forget – are we doing a sugar push or a whip now???

The next two problems are also a memory issue, though they’re more about muscle memory.

I can do triple steps. I can do triple steps with my eyes shut. I can do triple steps with my eyes shut without even counting. But I’ve never been asked to do a “back-together-forward” triple before. I don’t instinctively know how to do them – to know when I’m on the right foot, to just let my feet get on with it. Something to practice!

And the fancy footwork stuff… In one of the whips we did, we separate from our partners, stepping back into a “back-together-forward” and then into a “point and cross” stepping thing… Having messed up the bit just before it, it was rare for me to be on the right foot to go into this. Because these steps are not in my footwork vocabulary either, I tended to stumble over them.

The thing about these steps being done on your own is also relevant. In a class situation having a partner who knows what they’re doing can help a great deal – when you get lost you just follow her. But when you’re doing steps on your own, it’s twice as difficult.

There was some other “fancy footwork” stuff, but I didn’t do them, as I had enough to worry about elsewhere…

Putting this stuff aside, I was able to lead all the moves to some degree of proficiency – enough to make me happy anyway…

The stuff we did at the end I think involved no special footwork – just some tricky turns and blocks and stuff. The kind of thing I can do in Ceroc without breaking out in a sweat – just with a few triples thrown in…

Also by that stage I’d settled into the class, and got my WCS head on, which must have helped make the end seem easier than the start. Oh, and there’s always the possibility that I’m actually learning stuff and getting better!

So, despite feeling a lot more useless at times this week than last time, I think I enjoyed the class more. I did the whole of it, rather than just half, and still felt like I could do more at the end…

Actually dancing WCS is something worth talking about… Two interesting things happened to me at Southport last weekend…

1. I was asked to dance some WCS with a follower who had a fair amount of experience of the dance. I gave it my best shot and was surprised at the result. Rather than just stick with the basic moves I know, I improvised a bit based on stuff I’d seen, based on some MJ I know, or based on the input of my partner.

   I don’t know whether the result was actually 100% West Coast Swing – often I varied greatly from the standard 6 or 8 beat patterns and my anchor steps were sometimes left dragging along the bottom of the sea… But I gave what I thought was a not bad dance – it felt to me to be mostly WCS, and I think my partner enjoyed it.

   On the other hand, later in the weekend I was asked to do some WCS with a novice who’d only (I think) done the intro workshop on the Saturday, and while I gave it my best shot, the whole thing fell apart as I had no idea what I was doing. (That it was maybe around 5am might have also been a factor!)

2. Dancing with a MJ dancer at another point in the weekend… I could hear triple steps being called out for in the music and threw them in. My partner asked me if I was switching over to WCS. Well, it wasn’t intentionally, but I even did a few anchor-step type things where the music said to, rather than just posing or going straight into the next move or whatever.

   That said, my MJ dancing has had a bit of the WCS style to it for a while now – especially with slower music – where a lot of what I do is moving the girl up and down a slot, getting out the way to let her past as required. Adding triple steps isn’t a big jump…

So I enjoyed the class, and I’m enjoying learning WCS. But if I can apply bits of WCS to my MJ dancing, and dance a WCS-style dance with a MJ dancer, isn’t that the best of both worlds?

As the Tango guys on the forum say… “The journey continues…”

Thanks to the teacher, his demo, and all my partners for their assistance and patience.