Too Much Dancing? Part 4

20070609
Happy Birthday to Me!

Morning team practice at Atomic: I'm 7 minutes late and miss the first run-through of Jeep Jockey Jump. And screw up the second by missing the switches and going into boogie-backs early. Whoops. We're performing twice next Saturday: Richard Simmons aerobics studio and at a high-school in Long Beach. Don't know any details except we're meeting at the Studio at 9am Saturday to carpool to Beverly Hills to take the aerobics class then perform.

We move on to learning the Atomic Routine, so I guess Mark, Liz, and I are ahead of the game. But I still forget to run-run. Grrr...

We stay for Swing 1 now, as does Liz, since she's ahead of the game on the Atomic Routine. Stealth promotion? Recognition that she's taking classes? All the extra dancing helps a lot, I think (and she is dancing a lot more these days; she was social dancing on a monthly basis, now it's weekly).

It's just Gerald, Liz, and I for lunch, which is very welcome. I can't imagine staying the third hour for Swing 2 practice. These classes are much more intense than the group classes during the week. I mention that it's my birthday, but that I kept silent about it so as not to have to do a birthday dance.

After lunch, I call Liz and ask her if she'd be interested in carpooling to Pasadena Ballroom Dance Associations Saturday night dance. She was once a regular there, and agrees to go.

What a cool night! It's quite large, between the sizes of Atomic and Lindy Groove, with a pretty cool live band for the night. The vocalist's audio is messed up, which is unfortunate. New crowd, slightly older, but very cool and with good dancers. I hold my own and preen at the "really? Only 3 months of dancing?" praise. They throw in a sprinkling of ballroom and latin dances for the crowd, but the vast majority of stuff is swing (15:1).

I manage to avoid a birthday dance. Whew!

20070610
I decide against adding OC Swing classes on Sundays. I'm burning out on those long days. Even tired at night classes at Atomic.

Technique with Jenny is pretty chatty tonight. We do some footwork variations and I suggest my kick-cross, tap-ball-change on 7-8-1-2, which Jenny likes. I get some praise again at the "3 months?!" which I bring up somehow. Jenny praises me on the progress of my social dancing especially. I take any and all praise. Thank you, thank you.

Atomic Routine works through to the tap section, focusing especially on the stuff right before that.

No Stomp-Stomp, which is good, as I'd arranged to bail and eat dinner with the Remys.

20070611
Top Cats Monday night Jam
I meet up with Cassie again. We dance quite a bit. She has a pronounced squat when doing swivels, which throws me off a bit. She's coming in a lot better on 3 of a swing-out though. I've decided that savoy kicks in Charleston aren't socially lead-able. Neither are the switchy-switchy thing either. But I still like doing them. Wait, Francis did it last week on Monday night! But she's one of the best follows I've ever danced with. She asks me to dance again tonight, and I don't give her as much variety. Her footwork still throws me off a bit, as do the breaks in the music. Afterwards, I tell her I'm not there yet, but I will get there. She's outside my comfort zone of skill gap, but I should be pushing myself.

Hmmm... Lead switches? Maybe I'll try that next time.

I chat with Alan in the parking lot for over an hour! Nice guy. He's trekking down to San Diego on Thursday nights to do some Jack and Jill competitions. He and Sky are good friends, which is probably where Sky got his background on me.

UPDATE:
It would be incredibly geeky for me to wear a heart rate monitor to these things and uploading a graph of it.


Oops. Spike in the middle is the dance with Francis.