Bobby McGee's

Jonathan Stout and his Campus Five played Bobby McGee's this afternoon with no admission fee.  Wow.  I'd always heard the old-school Bal dancers did Bobby McGee's every other Sunday, but hadn't made it over.  D'oh!  It's 100 meters away from my apartment, has a free fruit and appitizer buffet, and pretty cool dancing.  I was told the crowd turned out because of the live band, but it's tough to go wrong with free food and dancing. :-)

After a couple hours, I ran home to grab my vitamin supplements and came back to see the jam session.  I recognized Nick Williams, Tip West, Jacob Wigger... ah geez, I wish I brought my camera to video everything.  Tracy tried to bully me into jumping out onto the jam.  Screw that!  I need some performance stuff before I'm willing to let it all hang out like that.  Introduced myself to Shaheed Qassim, who I chatted on the phone with a few months ago.  Really nice guy.  Watch him dance a bit too.  He has a lot of dynamism, which I'd really like to add to my dancing.  A lot.

The evening was a lot of fun as the pace of the music, the atmosphere, and the crowded floor pressured me to do mostly Balboa.  Now I'm far from an expert, but I think I've gotten a lot more solid lately.  Last Friday at Atomic, I was doing Bal with MichelleM, when I realized I didn't quite know what kind of footwork I was doing.  It wasn't standard Bal footwork, but some kind of sideways flaring of my feet.  It was in rhythm, but I couldn't figure it out.  Sometime after the fact (last night?  Today, even?), I realized I was doing a "fall off the log" without really putting any lean or motion into it.  Works just fine.  Dancing with MichelleM again, she remarks on it and I explain.  I try to put more motion into it, which works a bit better.  In retrospect, I see I can do a "fall onto the log" as well in this situation.  In fact, that was part of the choreography in the Bal/Shag routine.  Well, we never did that routine enough for me to anchor any of it into my social dancing.

What else am I doing?  Oh, sometimes out of cross-breaks, I'd throw in a tuck turn, then be at a loss as to how I could work that back to Bal.  Sometime in the last couple of weeks, I started doing the tuck-turn with Bal footwork, with a down-hold on four.  Now I'm confused as this make the 6 count tuck-turn into an 8 count move.  Oh, I'm making the 7-8 a spike-out.  Then the return is a Sioux into a come-around back to Bal.

Was going to go to Atomic for Swing and Soul Sunday, but just ran out of gas.  Food with some friends at Islands, than retreated to the Fortress of Solitude.