Hyperreal

JJ’s tonight… Was quite a good night, but I found myself quite tired right from the start.

I’ve probably had nights when I’ve had less energy, but done better. I think it’s a state of mind thing. I went feeling tired and distracted, with this in my mind it wasn’t a surprise my dancing was tired and distracted.

I tried to battle it, and there was a point later on in the evening when I felt much more “in the zone”, but not quite there…

My dancing has been a bit like this since I had the ‘flu – think I need to have a really good night when I’m not tired to get me back into the way of things…

Anyhow… let’s talk about the night in more detail – even though I arrived late into the first freestyle, I was out-hotshot-ed by the random redhead who didn’t turn up until half way through the intermediate class…

Talking of which…

• Catapult walk-around. Simple enough. All about getting tension in the connection with your arm behind your back to get a smooth release.
• Back-hander. It’s not a move I’m especially good at. Unsurprising that last time I demonstrated it to someone they ended up on the floor… Too much going on, and find it doesn’t flow well in a class situation for me. In freestyle it tends to work better, but it always comes out a bit scrappy when I try to do the change-hands thing…

These two moves were then combined to go straight into the back-hander during the walk-around. Found most of the time this was a bit disastrous, but I won’t go into the hows and whys here… Still another two moves to discuss…

• No-idea what this one is called… Didn’t really like it anyway. Involved the girl behind my back. Don’t really do such moves.
• My Move. Don’t think it has a proper name… R-R travelling return lead across thing, with optional block. As I said, My Move.

These two were also combined – the one I didn’t like finished with a ACW turn for the girl, so that goes in place of the travelling return in My Move. As I said to The Random One, it doesn’t work very well when you don’t have a partner that gives you good connection. In a later discussion of the moves with TRO, one lovely taxi dancer, and our respected teacher, we agreed pretty much the same thing about the combination of the first two moves we did also.

Anyway, enough about the moves… Let’s talk more about the freestyle…

Interesting music selection tonight. Not bad, just interesting… Lots of fast and slow songs, not so many falling in the middle. One or two songs that I would not have ever thought to dance to. I guess they worked well enough though.

In particular, Emma Bunton’s rather dull cover of Downtown. Dull in that it is little different to the one Petula Clark did more than 40 years ago. Maybe the Element Remix would have been more fun to dance to. I would say though, that her version of “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” is refreshing compared to done-to-death Doris Day’s version. (The Cake version is also fun. )

Had a dance to “Pump It” by the BEPs. Pretty cool, though a bit fast and I couldn’t find much interpretation on my first dance to it (though it has potential, as there’s quite a bit of stuff happening that I didn’t expect.)

Anyhow, I’m certainly tired now if I wasn’t before.

Cheers folks, see you all soon.