Sunday, May 22, 2011

Dance the afternoon away....

At last month's Nationals, we took a workshop with Garry Gekhman, one of the judges for the competition.  "Every Man's Dream" was a workshop on leading and following.  In that one-hour group lesson, we learned SO MUCH basic information.  It resulted in a fundamental change in our dancing.  Since Garry is located only 2 hours from us, we asked if it would be possible to get a coaching/lesson with him.  That was what we did today - a 2 1/4 hr dance lesson with Garry Gekhman.  What a wonderful experience!  Exhilarating and humbling all at once.  It was only AFTER the lesson that I thought about the fact that I'd spent a significant part of the lesson time dancing with a World Vice Champion dancer.  OMGosh! 

Another round of fundamental change in my dance frame, which is going to take quite a while to replace what is already in muscle memory.  And I found out that I've been dancing the spin turn wrong - no wonder it was so hard for us to get around....But I think I understand, at least intellectually, what he was asking me to do, so practice will tell. 

Changes to dance frame and hold, head position, natural turn, spin turn, promenade link in Tango, chase, turning lock, chasse to the right, oh, just about everything we tried.  And that was just dancing waltz and tango.  We learned a trick to get to promenade position when you get interrupted - cool. The one positive thing was that we tend to use heels and toes properly....

Well, we've got a lot of practicing to do before we schedule another lesson.  But not tonight - my feet are going to rebel if I put them back into high heels tonight, LOL.

will be dreaming of dancing tonight....

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