how are your lessons going? thread II

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lucia_l said:
(2) Recognize that I need to land on a straight leg and organize the order of bending knees, landing straight, shifting weight and so on. (This was ridiculously hard for me.)
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What IndyLady said. I don't get this either. Mambo is an American rhythm dance, and generally you land on a bent leg. Maybe you're talking about moving immediately to a straight leg after you land on a bent leg, but I'm not sure. [/QUOTE]
 
Ok... I couldn't find decent basics videos. But this is what I mean. The first turn, the lady does sort of a "flick"
 
You said you've only been doing mambo two weeks. I'm not sure how much information your teacher could have given you in two weeks. My experience has been that teachers keep it pretty basic in the beginning for new students. The visual that comes to mind is a teacher having new students do the basic with Queen's "We Will Rock You" going in the background. While the song isn't a technically a mambo, it does have a pronounced back beat that is easier to keep time to.

While it is true there is a lot of detail you can get into regarding movement, i.e. bent leg and straight leg, articulation of the ankles and feet, use of the knees, use of the hips, Cuban motion in general, timing, etc., all of these are probably too much detail to start with.
 
Yes. He doesn't go into huge amount of detail. He tends to focus on something I need to do no, and sometimes I know some times we temporarily do an exaggeration which will get modified soon. (In fact, he's discussed this. He is aware I think to much and I tend to have a "need" to think.)

On Fridays we do my husband's lesson. I have my own, but we focus on him. He likes to dance with me, so I go to be partner. I was thinking about the conversation here during that lesson, and I actually sort of think I "get" what's going on and what we are focusing on and why my description sounds wrong or confusing to people. But if I try to describe further, I'll probably be even more confusing.

Anyway, thanks to people here. But I'm going to avoid more thread-jacking and not try to post my confusing descriptions!
 
Yesterday's lesson on AT and WCS went ok. Foot is slowly getting better - yeah! - because the injury makes some of the AT footwork hard to execute and kind of painful. So we're working around the injury as much as possible. WCS is more continuous at a slow tempo; I am starting to feel more comfortable with what I'm doing. I signed up for WCS workshops in a couple of weeks, and I plan on taking individual coaching as well, with the idea to move this dance along.
 
latin lesson was exhausting last week, physically. it's going to be forever to get routines made at this point with this pro - takes too long for him to teach and choreograph at the same time. so other pro will do a couple of them, so we can move forward a little faster. It's just hard in general, lol! rhythm going well, feeling confident for comp next week, with a few butterflies.
 
i have a little cold, hopefully it won't affect lessons. also, thinking about if i suck at the comp next week and don't make the finals...well the whole studio drama was moot :p
 
latin lesson and rhythm coaching last night. both went well. I thought I'd improved my impulse action with the latest feedback but i still got called out for it by the coach :/ ughhhhhhhhhhhhhh but otherwise the coaching was helpful. latin lesson was hard but good.
 
The studio has a workshop on "frame" with the lead teacher and two other running it. It was really helpful to spend an hour and a half just focusing on positioning-- lifting upper correctly-- and 'how to move feet so it's dancing'. (I'm sure I'll say this all wrong if I say more. :) ) Doing this while not worrying about learning steps at all was terrific. My husband and I both agree that trying to learn both at once just overloads or brains!

Lots of student came-- pretty much all students in the "serious-ish social" and pre- to intermediate Bronze level students. At least one of the ones competing Silver Waltz came. It was enough students that in September, they are going to substitute one "group lesson night" with a "work on our frames" night. The teacher said it will be mostly repetition of what we covered and no actual "new" stuff beyond what he covered in the workshop. But I know I need that! I'd told my teacher I'd had trouble remembering and sort of "feeling" to practice on my own. Repetition with teacher there, but not in the fully private lesson will be great for me going to fit the bill just right!

I've got to admit: I won't mind that lots of leads also seem interested which should improve the frame of the leads on Friday night practice. (I'm sure they won't mind the follows frames being better too!)
 
ran rounds yesterday, last lesson before comp on wednesday, woohoo! went well, things are settled in. wish i could squeeze one or two security blanket lessons in on monday, but alas pro leaves for the comp that day. solo practice it is!
 
Comp pro was out of town for a couple weeks, so finally resumed those lessons again last week. Spent the entire time on waltz. I mentioned at the end that since we have a comp coming up in 4 months, we really need to start working on dances other than waltz, foxtrot, and samba, and we need to do rounds. He was receptive, but I have to admit, it's very slightly perturbing that I have to take the reins like this to make sure we cover all our bases. So that I don't end up at the comp with him asking "why are you doing [x]?" (in a dance we've barely touched) or noting that I don't have enough stamina.

Also, I'm going to try to keep an open mind about this, but the location of said lessons changed (with same day notice) from a pretty nice ballroom studio to a (mostly) kid's ballet/jazz/tap/hip hop dance studio. It's a very nice studio (I actually took an adult hip hop class there years ago) and it was empty the day of our lessons (no scheduled classes) plus the space was huge, but it doesn't have a traditional wood ballroom dance floor surface. It's the same distance from my office so no skin off my back wrt travel time, but I'm just a little wary about this.

Lessons at my other studio: still on break from Showcase routines to refine cha cha technique.
 
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