Hyperreal

JJ’s tonight. After a poor night last week, and no dancing since then, I was a touch apprehensive about how tonight would turn out…

I needn’t have been.

I had a really good night.

I turned up early – really early – like before the class had started at all!!! I guess this is what happens when I get a lift from a taxi…

As with the few last weeks, I spent the time during the classes practicing with my partner. (When we weren’t being interrupted by friends wanting to chat – not that I minded, really. After all we’re not there just to dance with each other, and Ceroc is about social dancing.) We went through some things we wanted to particularly practice tonight, but I also got a chance to try out some other related moves which led in to the rediscovery of a cool move I used to do maybe even more than a year ago but I abandoned because it was hard to lead safely. (I’m calling it the “Ducasi Twister”, even though its origins are a move I was taught at the GUU long, long ago… ) Hopefully together we can refine my lead for it to make it safer and lead-able with other dancers besides my partner.

While playing around with that, I also found a nice catapult variation which I liked. So suddenly I had a bunch of new moves to play with!

Freestyle dancing was good. We had an excellent selection of music tonight. Only a handful not-so-much to my taste. (Only one I actually danced to – that %^#$%$#^& Temptation song. I need to get a hold of it to learn the intro better so I can avoid it! )

Best dance of the night was with my partner to the McFly version of Queen’s Don’t Stop Me Now (which is almost the same, but not as good, as Queen’s version and so pretty redundant.) Also enjoyed Christina Aguilera’s Ain’t No Other Man, and another song with a similar style a few tunes later (can’t remember what it was though.)

Most of my best dances were with dancers I’m very familiar with – local favourites. With some other dancers, I sometimes find that I (automatically?) (need to?) simplify the types of moves I do, which sometimes frustrates me and can make me feel a bit bored of my dancing. I don’t know the answer to this besides dancing with more unfamiliar dancers, and putting up with some less enjoyable dances in the hope that there’ll be better ones in the future.

Quite a good crowd in tonight, though I’m still missing some folks who I guess are on holiday… Summer has its downsides. Was good to see a couple of visitors from Inverness who’ve been doing a mini tour of venues around Scotland.

Only one other thing to talk about… Seems that JJ’s had a Summer Seaside party at the weekend. Some interesting decoration left around, but also a find dusting of sand on the floor. Gave an interesting feel to the floor, and made it a bit fast in places. Also acted as a scouring pad on leather shoes, literally sanding them down a little, cleaning off accumulated dirt. Cool.

So, that was a good night for me. Hope it was for you too. Bye!