OCSwing in Irvine

I canceled my training session with AL to take part in the class that OCSwing does for the city of Irvine. Took about 45 minutes even in the rain with the primary slowdown on the I5 South from the Orange Crush to the 55. After that, the I5 opened up. The class is at the Heritage Park Community Center, and was $40 for four sessions (you can come and start on week two if you'd like, by the way. There was an additional $5 for non-Irvine residents).

Each part of the dance was broken down into tiny, understandable chunks. We started with a rock-step, then did a triple step in each direction, and put it all together for the "6-Count Basic:" rock-step, triple-step, triple-step. Here's a video of the 6-count basic:







However, in our class, we learned it with the aformentioned triple-step:






No idea why we were taught that way.

Next we walked through the building blocks of the Tuck-Turn, which looks almost exactly like the first video's "Sendout with an outside turn." Whatever.

From that ending position (end of the sendout with turn, only connected by a single hand), we did another turn (inside?) where we ended up in open position, 180-degrees rotated from the end of the sendout, still only connected by the one hand. Don't know what it's called, but the teachers referred to it as "switching places." It was the only thing I didn't like. If you're going to teach me the dances, teach me the jargon for them too, even if it's only the local name.

The last pattern had us returning to closed position and circling around on the triples. "The Circle" doesn't sound like an actual swing name, but that's what they called it.

Thinking about going to the Atomic tonight to take more classes and get some practice in during the dance.