Atomic Friday 20070413

4/13/2007

Chat with Mark earlier in the day about swing dance. He's joining Atomic's Absolute Beginner team, and I try to reassure him about the process and point him towards video of the choreography on YouTube.

Friday evening at Atomic Ballroom: I'm going to start describing the social, non-technical dance parts of the night first, so that those who don't care about the lessons don't have to read them.

Social Dance:
See/greet Nicole again, and introduce myself to the guy she was with last night (at Lindy Groove), Henry. They're both friendly, and like Nicole, Henry is a good dancer. I dance with Maleka (sp?), the pretty young thing with the perpetual bored look on her face. My instinct tells me she's frustrated by not dancing that much, but it's a downward spiral, as guys can feel the negative psychic energy. Or just see the blank face and interpret it as disinterest. She must be younger than I first thought (High school? Possibly?) as she's come to the dance with an older friend.

John: Is that your friend?
Maleka: What? No, that's my mom.
John: Oh!
[John makes a big production of keeping 18 inches away while dancing. Hilarity ensues.]

My new conversational opening (which I run into the ground) is ask the follow if she's a regular. It works ok, though I find myself explaining my 6 weeks of dance lessons story over and over. Several times, I tell a youngish looking follow about Tuesday nights, only to have her tell me, "Oh yeah, but that's a school night." Yikes.

The mini-class Jerry and Katie teach is on the Charleston basic, but they do go over the Switchy-Switchy variation Jerry likes, where after the kick on 3, we switch right and left legs back and forth until we (leads) land on our right foot on 7. Yet another variation to make my dancing not-boring. I do this with the pendulum and kick-throughs as my Charleston variations.

I duck out around 12:30am, and good thing. For the second night in a row, I make it home fine, but then fall asleep in the car in my parking space. Yikes again.

Lessons Earlier on:

Swing 1: Balboa Basics
I don't remember this class at all.

Swing 2: Dance Amalgamations
Jerry admits this is just another way for him to say Social Patterns. Ha!

Swing 2: Flying Lindy
Up-holds (scoot step) in place of a triple step during a swing out. Then the same variation during a Tuck Turn. Jerry and Jenny put a lot of time into my Tuck Turn technique. We work on this for what seems like 4 or 5 minutes. This level of attention isn't available to me anywhere else, and represents the best part of my experiences at Atomic Ballroom classes. I joke that my summary for the swing 2 class is "swing out and a tuck turn."