how are your lessons going? thread II

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Good lessons this week. Closed smooth was a bit light, i thought, but apparently I am using my body in the right way, so i'm no longer wearing myself out as much. lots of little tweaks. rhythm was good as well - rumba is almost solid, which is good, since i'm performing it tomorrow, and we worked on the hot mess formerly known as open mambo. getting better at keeping my core "shortened" and lifted so that my rotation is happening in the right way. Also had a fun showcase coaching, getting some choreo pieces to stitch together in a fun little show number.
 
Lessons with New Guys. There had been a class on cha cha lock steps earlier in the week and Rhythm New Guy continued to work on that. In the course of that, I finally came to understand some fundamental aspects of movement in rhythm. I had discovered earlier in the week that I could no longer decipher my notes on a waltz step so I asked Smooth New Guy to work through it with me. He was very demanding. :rolleyes: I had been going for a fairly basic version; he wanted me to actually dance it reasonably properly on my own....
 
Life (in the forms of vacation and work) intervened the last couple weeks, but I'm back to lessons. We are continuing to work on foxtrot, samba and east coast swing, and it was just so much fun getting back to lessons - even if they were hard and even I was really bad in spots. I was only going 2 weeks (and I practiced on my own), but I missed it amazingly much!
 
Worked with female pro on bronze tango, paso and rumba as a leader. With male pro worked on some choreography for a showcase piece.
 
Pro is back! Spent about 30 minutes getting used to each other again... then settled in. Where I was chided several times for "dancing on the beat" :eyeroll:

I know what he meant, but it was still funny to me that dancing on the beat has become a bad thing... because doing that consistently used to be the goal! Also may have pointed out to pro that he asked me to work with counts while he was away, and I did... but I had warned him that tends to make me too methodical and mechanical. We agreed that particular (failed) experiment is over, and I can go back to singing the rhythm in my head.

Also, pro wanted to try continuous reverse wave in FT... to test something he learned while away taking training . It may have worked so well that it made the 2 of us giddy, and me declare something like: "Yes! That's exactly the feel I have when I dance it alone, and is what I've been meaning by the "more" I've been asking for there." Pro's response: "I'm glad you like it. You have no idea how much that cost me."

(Lesson then degenerated into stupid laughter and a ridiculous competition over who had spent more to learn their really-pretty-simple fix from coaches visited during travel.)
 
Lessons with Pro. Working on some basics of movement in smooth. Current goal in Rhythm is to take all the stuff I can do really well in isolation and put it all together.

Excited, excited, excited about coaching with Eddie Simon later this week! I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of terrific coaching, but the ones with Eddie have all been particularly pivotal in my dancing.
 
Worked with Female Pro on bronze waltz and jive as a leader. With Male Pro, finished the choreography on our showcase routine.
 
We're continuing to work on Samba, and it is just so hard for me to do even the most basic movement in this. Every step (and I mean literally every single step), we stop and review what I'm supposed to have done and then do that one step over and over. I think my Instructor realized I needed a break from this, so we also worked on Swing and Cha Cha, where we can at least work on maybe 8 (or even 16!) counts of movement at a clip, which at least feels a little like dancing.:)
 
One of those days when I was just too fatigued and in a fog...modest improvements...mostly just pushed myself to stay focused and give it my best under the circumstance
 
Four over the last week, making up for the weeks of no lessons. Good, in-depth work on all 5 dances... lots of little tweaks, mostly to make things work better with a partner - because apparently, this is partner dancing :eek:

General themes and odd things:
- I'm on the right track with what I've been working on. Aside from one spot in QS (where I wasn't exactly sure of what was happening so was tending to stand up), I'm maintaining the "new" shape and using my head and back more.
- The working the standing leg is starting to show up consistently... now to get how connected I am with the floor in waltz to show up everywhere else.
- Reverse in VW continues to be my better turn... despite not having practiced it for an entire month to focus on natural. Le sigh. (Though it was acknowledged that the discrepancy isn't as large as it used to be.)
- The spot in tango where pro and I used to basically beat up on each other is actually working - and working well! Except now, when I survive that pivot, I end up in promenade going "whew, made it!"... need to remember it's not over there!
- Some of the other dancers at the studio have been spying on my lessons and practices, and have expressed that they are looking forward to seeing me compete in a month. Dudes, no one's ever told me that before! I must be doing something right :D
 
With Male Pro worked on Half Natural in Quickstep with me as Leader, and then tried to "play" with mix-n-matching bronze figures in Quickstep with me as leader. Then we worked on the alignments that we'll need to use for our showcase routine. Switched to Female Pro who gave me some survival figures to use as a leader in American Smooth for social dancing - and she warned me that I shouldn't expect followers to close their feet, even for bronze figures.
 
Had a good latin lesson today worked on stamina in jive, spot turns and keeping my head up in cha cha and walking on walks in samba and basic action. I was annoyed that 3 mins before my lesson I got a text saying his wife was taking my lesson not him and then showed no interest when he turns up. I book lessons with him for a reason mainly he is the right height his wife is quite short so it can be hard to do ballroom. Now no lessons for a month.
 
good lessons recently, and a great coaching. detailed all my open smooth routines, went through a lot of rumba with the coach, fixed a trouble spot in open cha cha. Mambo and v waltz opens felt better yesterday, but there was much mocking of my chest "pops" or whatever you call those isolation things. so much mocking. feeling good, a little more solid than i have been, which is good.
 
Last night's lessons were with Male Pro. We worked on Reverse Role in Bronze Waltz, Rumba and Paso, and some social-dance-survival figures in American Waltz and Tango (he does such pretty arm styling in Underarm Turns!) Then we switched to our showcase routine to pinpoint what we need to do in certain transitions.
 
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