Final Stretch Part 1

I blogged my first paid swing lesson, followed by bust and boom at the Atomic Ballroom, and the decision to put myself through a swing dance boot camp, as many lessons as I could take for Atomic's flat-fee month. The month is over and I've really lagged on blogging it during the final stretch, so I'm going back to reconstruct my thoughts on the various classes.

3/30 (Sunday)
As previously mentioned, I re-upped for OC Swing lessons, but on Sunday instead of Thursday (as it was starting immediately). The beginner class was just that, but it's enjoyable to take and was tough to resist signing up for at $20 over the cost of the other two classes I really wanted to take. 3pm is the Charleston kicks class. We go over the inside-out kicks which we learned last week (but I forgot about in the blur). Starts with the left foot kicking in front of the right. Then we pivot on our right foot to the left and kick out to the left and finally step on the left foot. Then the right foot kicks in front of the left, pivot on the left foot to the right, and kick the right foot off to the right, then step on the right. So each foot kicks "in" front of the other then "out" in the opposite direction. We then incorporate this into the partner Charleston by making a left-to right hand connection and pushing off the partner's hip on the second double-kick to help the pivot. A styling note is that it's cooler to over-rotate the pivoted kick. Shesha and Nikki demo this, and it looks amazing.

We also learn to do this kick variation with the follow offset in rotation from the lead, so the lead does the first inside out kick, then stays off-set and repeats the outside kick while the follow pivots back. Then the lead pivots back in while the follow pivots out while the lead pivots in. I've completely failed to find a YouTube clip of this.

Intermediate class was kind of blah. No strong memories of it.

In fact, the rest of the day passed like a blur as well. The Atomic schedule tells me I did a class on the See Ya Later Alligator and Rip It Up routines as well as a technique class, but again, no strong memories of it.