Playing catch-up

July 2, 2007

The isolation portion of the class is quite physically taxing. I wonder if there are any others like it in England. Some instructors incorporate isolations as part of the warm-up but lasting only about 5 minutes. I have seen such warm-ups with Ivan and subsequently in workshops run by Joe Davids and Tony Lara, but they don't match the intensity or length of these Monday sessions. In England the only class which could be considered equivalent is one-hour body movement class in London with Irene Miguel. I imagine Irene Miguel would try to make her class appear distinct from Frankie Martinez. There are no pretensions of trying to look different from Frankie Martinez here - it's not an exact copy but this is probably due to limitations in ability and time (Frankie's isolation classes are 90 minutes long - we're doing maybe 50 minutes at most right now).

Sometimes I feel like I am flailing around looking pretty ridiculous. This especially true when the exercise involves moving in a way I am less used to. Simply changing the rotation of shoulders - say from backwards (which I am more used to) to forwards (which I have practiced considerably less) creates unexpected amount of difficulty. My left shoulder is much better than my right shoulder - I blame it on softball. I'm quite awful with chest movement and generally anything that involves movement of vertebrae. Much of the time I am not concentrating on making the movement look good but just trying to keep in time - I imagine I will be flailing about for weeks until I get used to the movements. Moving hip, knees, ankles were generally easier for me - presumably different people will find different things easy or difficult.

I was somewhat tired and not particularly in good spinning shape so it was probably a good thing that not as much double turns were done today. Sergio tried to throw in a shine - there was only one tricky and fast part to it, but he seemed to spend too little time on the difficult bit and seemed to give up too easily and too willing to change it. With partner work, I thought we tried to go too fast and too slow at the same time. After returning in June, we have done the following - cross body lead, cross body lead with inside turn for follower. I don't think the next logical move was preparation for turn (as if leading a double turn although it was so clear to me that a preparation for a single turn at this juncture was useful). Also Sergio went back into that odd routine of trying to explain moves in On1 timing before going to On2 timing once again - I had told him that this was not very useful when he did this back in March. If there's a technique to be corrected, do it On2 and hope that people will apply similar principles for On1. I'm not sure how much of Spot turn and Copa stuck on people's minds.

We are still working with the crappy sound system in the studio. I have no idea if this is causing additional problem or if this is more of a problem with some people not being very good at picking up beats in unfamiliar music. I wonder if using Cha Cha more would help also. As for live practice, it might be useful to take account of the fact that leads need to adjust a little bit to not doing his steps on follower's timing.

I stopped by Club Salsa briefly afterwards. Rajiv went too. It was very quiet - Aside from Danie, I did not know any of the girls by their name.