how are your lessons going? thread II

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First of all @lucia_l, I am so happy for you that you had a good time. You've been working carefully and diligently and you deserved it.

lucia_l said:
You won't recognize me because I'm way older than my photo. (I need a new one! Heh.)
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Most comps have a photographer... it's worth it to go over to their booth and look at the photos they took of you. They usually have it set up on laptops and you can scroll through them (they will have everyone's in a separate folder). I've unfortunately spent a lot of money this way but if you spring for just one...
 
Lessons today with New(er) Guy. We found the same mistake in three different places, which is kind of nice. "Wait, I know how to fix that!" First time took some analysis to figure out what I was doing wrong (trying to turn before I was fully on the correct foot :rolleyes:). Second time, I asked to redo something and before we did it I realized I was probably making the same mistake. Third time, realized it pretty quickly. Also took something we had worked on in VW and used it in an applicable place in Tango and it helped. And I successfully implemented something in FT from a lesson with Pro last week and NG was stunned by the improvement. "You can't just spring something like that on me!" (Well, fortunately, I can. ;)) Mixed in with all of those successes, we're working on a few things that I figure I'll get sometime in the next 6-12 months if I'm lucky. Plus, I managed to hit NG in the head, though fortunately, not very hard.
 
Good rhythm lessons so far this week. starting rounds in prep for next comp. but still working on getting the details in. I had to "cardio" before the lesson last night - 2 minutes of basics for all 5 dances before a round. i hate cardio. was still able to perform my routines, so that's good. still hate cardio.
 
wooha! actually had a decent latin lesson!! the first half was jive, which is much easier for me to do, although the new routine is complex. we did rumba and i had us stop and focus just on the basic step again and i was actually able to make a major change to how i danced it - and i was able to replicate it. now to be able to do it again at next weeks lesson!
 
I'm on a post competition wind down! we've temporarily switched off from pre-competition and working on choreographing for a showcase. I told my pro we should pick from my rythim dances other people weren't going to do (for variety). So we are doing Mambo (no surprise) chacha and East coast swing. Turns out lots people wanted to do WS, rhumba and (surprisingly to me) Bolero.

It's a fun break to be working on more show-case type performance. (Although, actually, the pro is keeping in mind that we might want to keep some of it for my next comp, so he's mostly sticking to the syllabus.)
 
Standard lessons are feeling more and more like practices... while I'm loving where my dancing is at and heading, I find myself doing a lot of thinking about what's next. Mulling taking my pro exams, which I've been low-key working on for a bit as a future goal, but not sure I'm ready to make that switch. (But for a partner, would make the switch tomorrow!) Kinda bummed that we're not heading to Ohio for financial and terrible-open-schedule reasons, because I could have used the short-term goal.

Latin lessons are also coming along. Maybe eventually I'll be able to hide the fact that I am (primarily*) a standard dancer. I'm at that frustrating stage where there are fleeting flashes of "oh, that was really good"... then like, 1 second later, I do something awkward and get the "ohhhh, no." :rolleyes:

* I have been informed that as a 10-dance title holder, I am no longer allowed to call myself a standard dancer. Even if one style is much stronger than the other.
 
I had my pre-comp meltdown on Friday. :) They generally aren't major and Pro, sweetly, said he's so used to them that he would worry if it doesn't happen. I always get over it.

In terms of the actually dancing Tango was good. There's one fix from last week that I wish was a tad more solid, but we probably won't work on it more before the competition next week. Waltz has an exciting improvement in it that I'm pretty sure will come through at the comp, so that's fun. It's not completely natural for me yet, but I think it will be soon. There's one other place in the waltz that I miss the lead often enough that I will ask to work on it during our last lesson. It doesn't help that for some reason I close my eyes during a syncopated underarm turn and "look" down (as it, I would be looking down if my eyes were open and I could see. :rolleyes:) I have no idea why I do this and it would likely help the whole situation if I would stop it. Foxtrot, good. Once more, there's one place that I sometimes miss the lead and I would like to figure out why. I think I know how to fix it, but would like to check. VW, sigh.... least solid and not as good as it has been. Perhaps it will spontaneously improve again. :p Actually, everything else is in good enough shape that we should have plenty of time to go back over a few places.

I might actually be excited about the comp if I didn't have a cold and if my ankles didn't hurt at the moment.
 
I haven't posted for a while, mostly because I didn't dance much for a while. Last winter, my ballroom "life" kind of fell apart -- two bad comps followed by my Pro leaving the studio. I worked with a couple different Pros in the studio, both good dancers and nice people, but even after a couple months, I still hadn't clicked that well with their teaching styles. Between that and not having any goals at that point (not only hadn't the comps gone well, but at that point I had no routines with the new Pros to even try), I ended up stopping the ballroom lessons at the old studio. I've tried a couple other studios, and found one I like for group lessons. Meanwhile, I started taking salsa lessons, which really helped me get back into dancing (at least I enjoy it a lot). So, I finally started taking ballroom lessons again because I missed it. We've got routines now in all 10 dances and I'm thinking of competing again next summer. Ballroom lessons are slow - there's a lot to learn/dust off, but at least they are moving. And I'm still doing the salsa, which is more social.
 
Dance Redeemer said:
I haven't posted for a while, mostly because I didn't dance much for a while. Last winter, my ballroom "life" kind of fell apart -- two bad comps followed by my Pro leaving the studio. I worked with a couple different Pros in the studio, both good dancers and nice people, but even after a couple months, I still hadn't clicked that well with their teaching styles. Between that and not having any goals at that point (not only hadn't the comps gone well, but at that point I had no routines with the new Pros to even try), I ended up stopping the ballroom lessons at the old studio. I've tried a couple other studios, and found one I like for group lessons. Meanwhile, I started taking salsa lessons, which really helped me get back into dancing (at least I enjoy it a lot). So, I finally started taking ballroom lessons again because I missed it. We've got routines now in all 10 dances and I'm thinking of competing again next summer. Ballroom lessons are slow - there's a lot to learn/dust off, but at least they are moving. And I'm still doing the salsa, which is more social.
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good for you!!!!
 
Lesson yesterday less than stellar. Pro kept saying I was in my head worried about upcoming comp. He's right. It didn't help pro kept pushing these elaborate moves, then fussing about my footwork afterward. Finally we moved onto another dance, which I kind of zoned out on, but surprisingly, the dance stayed continuous even though I again did some dubious footwork and timing. Then pro springs another dance on me, which I've danced maybe twice before, but I pick up on that right away. Go figure.
 
Most recent lessons have gone well again (hope that is a good sign, and not setting me up for a fall), both for Showcase (this weekend) and comp (couple weeks away). Dress rehearsal was solid as well. Due to an overpacked schedule, partly Halloween related, I do not have any lessons this week. We will see how that pans out, may the incubation effect successfully kick in.
 
Last lessons before competition. Turns out there is no VW in the multi-dances, so I have become weirdly relaxed. We still worked on it for the singles. There's one VW step that I hadn't done with him in a lesson for ages and it turns out to be stunningly easier now that I've upped my following a notch or two and can "just" do what he's leading. ;) In Foxtrot we somehow only worked on one part; really, we meant to go back and do the whole thing and I didn't realize until this moment that we hadn't. In the part that we did work on, he used an analogy that my very first teacher who I only had for 3 months had once used. :) One might have thought that I would have completely mastered something from that long ago, but apparently not! Didn't touch Tango and Waltz was good, though I'm afraid that I did (cheerfully) tell Pro that I was sure that a lot of what we are working on will be nice and solid in November 2019.
 
Good lesson working on samba. The samba character, with the rolling bouncing motion especially incorporating the upper body, has always been very difficult for me. My rib cage, hips, knees and feet just aren't connected and all move at the own speeds, so my overall "look" is very uncoordinated and not smooth at all. The lesson focused on basic steps and movement, building each movement and then incorporating another part of the body, very slowly trying to build up to moving 3-4 parts at once (so to speak). We've done this before, but it's like a house of cards that falls apart after a couple concepts are added. It's finally starting to come together a bit more. I still can't see my way to a final product, but I have faith that this process will help.
 
We worked on Waltz today. We are focusing on frame and doing thing correctly to get a holistic sway. (I don't know another way to say it. But the sway comes from the way I move my lower body mostly, not me wigging my top.)

Waltz is hard.
 
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