Ballroom Dancesport A Combined: Week 3

July 16, 2008

The nightly M11 closure for 2 weeks should stop wreaking havoc soon enough. The difficulties with Ballroom on the other hand may prove intractable for much longer.

The Latin part is in some ways easier although this may be ignoring some fundamental problems. It seems to me that most of the leading technique is similar to Salsa. The connection through the fingers, hands, arms and ultimately the body is used for leading like Salsa. This is true for Rumba, Cha Cha as well as Samba and even my least favorite dance Jive. While I do not feel as in control as in Salsa classes, I think I generally could guide more difficult followers in Rumba and Cha Cha fairly effectively and at least be aware of follower going off doing unexpected backleading, etc and try to come up with solutions – even if the ideas do not turn out particularly useful.

With Modern, I am quite lost. I think more parts of the body gets used for leading – legs, shoulders, torso, you name it. With the social classes at beginner and improver level, I don’t think I have been made sufficiently aware of this. Thus I feel as if I am in no man’s land. I can’t lead poorly trained followers, and I don’t know how to lead more properly trained followers.

I guess it’s like a chicken and egg problem all over again – as it may be the case with all partner dancing. It is difficult to get any good without large amount of practice preferably with people who know what they’re doing, but it’s also difficult to get any kind of practice with people who know what they’re doing. Generally speaking people who know what they are doing have better things to do than to spend time with people who don’t. To get better quickly, taking merely one class a week isn’t going to be any good. One probably wants multiple sessions a week as well as some practice time (perhaps social dancing) on top of it. I on the other hand has never even gone to a general dancing, and it would be difficult for me to do this – at least while I’m still in Cambridge and Vish is still operating CS. Although having gotten pretty good with a different partner dance (Salsa in my case) is of some use (aside from probably needing to unlearn conflicting elements between Salsa and Ballroom dances especially Modern dances), it would take a serious commitment to get even to a reasonable level with Ballroom dances – reasonable by my standards, which I suspect is quite a bit higher than what I might have considered reasonable if I were starting a dance of any time for the very first time.

On more than one occasion Ivan talked about Ballroom people coming over to his Salsa lessons thinking that it would be a piece of cake (how wrong they were!). I never thought Ballroom dances would be a piece of cake, but it is probably fair to say that I never found it more daunting than I do now.

If you are already quite good at something else and know you can and are getting better with more practice, how easy is it to abandon it for something very different and more difficult with your labor not expected to bear much fruit for a comparatively long time? What if the prize for the new challenge is no bigger or even smaller? Reckoning by number of people involved, isn’t Salsa much bigger and popular in Cambridge or London or the UK or the USA?

Knowing what I know or what I think I know, I could think of many reasons to think continuing this class may not be the best use of my time. Maybe I could stick with this level for most of the Latin dances, but I think I probably would be better off with working on more basic fundamentals for Modern dances. Probably the most efficient way is to get a private lesson. Bruce seems quite good. However, I don’t think this is much good unless I were to have plenty of practice outside (GD, etc), and I don’t see where that time would come from. Another option and one that would require less time commitment would be to take something like Dancesport Improvers (or perhaps even Beginners). However, no such courses are offered during the summer. So it’s between a rock and a hard place.

Enough already. Let's see if I can remember the class material. As usual it's no more than a brief outline.

Samba

- Volta to left (x4 syncopated steps) starting with R foot - syncopated steps (R, L&R, L&R, L&R L&R)
- in place basic (L normal position, R back position holding body still?, L syncopated in place then mirror image with R first)
- Bota Fogo with lead and follower exchanging places under L-R (x2)
- exchange places and Volta (x4 syncopated steps)
- exchange palces and Volta (x4 syncopated steps again)
- Whisk to L then Whisk to R as follower is turned around full counterclockwise with R-L connection made and kept low and L-R over and under into wrap position
- unwrap follower (clockwise turn) and side L steps for leader and pseudo-wrap her again (counterclockwise turn) but disengaging connection briefly and establish L-L connection and free R on pseudo-closed hold (leader only does two steps here leaving weight on L so that Government walk is started with R first - same as follower
- Government walk (x4) forward slightly to L
- Bota Fogo (of different kind) leader starts by going to R first (R to R, L cross behind R, R in place syncopated - then the other way around)
- Government walk (x4) forward slightly to R this time
- Bota Fogo again (similar to the last one rather than the simple version) but ending with follower turned around 1/2 clockwise to get back face-to-face ready for another Volta

Tango

Improver level steps later done with syncopated timing and with a lot more detail…

Running out of time... I'll have to finish this later. Right now, I'm not sure if there's going to be a week 4 for me.