Skating and dancing update

I started ballroom dancing with Hawkeye Ballroom when the semester started. However, owing to the fact that I've been incredibly busy with work and life, I've only made it to 1 social and 2 lessons.  Still, it is quite fun, and I hope to become more involved with them next semester and maybe compete.  It is a lot more affordable than the studio close to me (same instructors though...) but sadly all the way across town.  It is also mostly college students, though there are enough grad students mixed in, and I look young, that I don't feel out of place.  Anyone can join, so it doesn't matter that I no longer work for the university.

Thus far I've had a cha-cha, tango, foxtrot, and east-coast swing lessons. We do 50 minute lessons, working on 2 dances each lesson.  You rotate partners the entire lesson, so you dance with everyone, and are only partner less (there are a few more girls than guys) every few rotations.  It's a fun system.


Today was Columbus Day, and also the skating rink manager's birthday.  Why do these two things matter? Well the first meant I didn't have to work. The second meant ice skating was free today.

So I went.

Here's my thoughts: thank goodness it was free!  Thousands of dollars of skating lessons have been washed down the drain.  I'm a pretty solid "ready to enter freestyle" level.  I've got very tenative crossovers, decent forward stroking, good in place turns- but not so pretty while I am moving.  I did not try any jumps (still a bit nervous about the neck....) and I have a decent beginner backspin (that foot is no longer crossed, and it is wobbly, but on the outside edge) and an okay first scratch spin (I can cross the foot, but it is slow with only a few revolutions.)

The biggest issue was my feet HURT.  My boots are way too stiff for me now.  I upgraded to the Premier's because I was getting better, but it is way too much boot for me now :(  I still like the blades though- they still make pretty edge noises when I lean on them in crossovers.  I only managed about 30 minutes (a bit less) before I had to leave.

Group dance classes

So, my ballroom adventure is prematurely on hold. I was rear ended at a stoplight on Monday and have a fractured vertebrae (the transverse process of T1). There is probably no surgery needed, but I have to spend time in a cervical collar to let it heel. This means 1) I can’t drive, so I can’t get to class and 2) I can’t really hold my arm up well to hold a ballroom frame.  Thankfully the dance place let me put the remaining 3 lessons on hold, so at least I don’t lose the money, just the time.

But, I did take one group class last weekend and was really excited about it.  There is a dance studio in our town, but they had no groups this month, so I was going to their branch in a city about 30 minutes from here. They also didn’t have beginner classes this month but I was told to take the second level class. I’m glad, because this class is really basic that I can’t imagine how slow the beginner class is.

The class covers East Coast Swing, Cha-Cha, and Salsa.  In our 40 minute class we covered some swing and cha-cha.

For swing, which I’ve done before, we learned a left under arm turn.  Like I said- very basic.  For cha-cha, which I haven’t learned before we learned a step I can’t remember that opens up to the sides, and then a right under arm turn. Since I hadn’t really done cha-cha before, I also learned the basic step. I just pretended I already knew it, and followed along J

The groups were neat.  In this class there were the same number of men as women, so that was nice.  We learn the new steps in two lines facing each other (leads/follows) and then pair off. But rather than stay with your own partner, we would do the step once (sometimes with music) and then rotate to a new partner. I thought this was really nice because you got used to doing the steps with someone else’s style; but also if (for example with the cha-cha basic) I wasn’t real comfortable with the step, but the guy was also not comfortable with it; I rotated to a new partner, where the guy could help me out a bit, so by the time I got back to the first partner (there were only 3 guys) I could help him out; rather than us both fumbling through it.

I’m really looking forward to picking up classes once I’m cleared to have the brace off.  Even more I’m looking forward to sleeping again and for the pain (which isn’t too severe, but still sucks) to go away. But also dancing!

First Waltz

Last Friday I took my first ballroom private lesson. A grad student who dances with Hawkeye Ballroom and who was captain (?) of her college’s ballroom team when she was an undergrad offered me lessons. She isn’t a pro- but that means her lessons are a lot lower in price than the pros at the studio. Much more in line with what I paid for skating.

I had previously done some waltz when I took an 8 week ballroom class at Kirkwood, but other than 1-2-3 and a box step, don’t really know much about it.

So I told her that I was more interested in the route of competition dance, not social dance (even though I doubt I’ll actually compete) and that I wanted to learn the technical side of dancing. I think that made her happy because she (let’s call her E.) only competes, and doesn’t do social dance.

So we learned the basic box step, and I also learned how to use my feet in it.  First- feet always come together, and are in parallel. Despite having horrible turnout for ballet, every time I looked at my feet, I could see them slightly turned out or with a gap between them.  Oops! Need to work on parallel.

I also learned how to lead with my heel on certain steps, or toes on other.  And a bit about the rise-fall, and having a long stretched out floating step on “2”.

We did box steps for awhile, and then in hold, and then adding in more specifics of feet, and then took it to travel across the floor.

At the end of the lesson we started working on what I think she called a “whisk” which is the step needed to turn the corner. Apparently you can’t just step on your partner’s foot, say sorry, and then face the other direction. I don’t know- it’s always worked for me before J. Anyhow, the whisk is a step out of the basic step, where you cross over and shift your weight (I have problems shifting) and then chasse forward (also have isssues here) and then you are facing 90 degrees from where you started, so you can continue down the next side.

So mostly, what I came away from this half-hour with was “waltz is hard.”

We are going to wait until finals are over and set up lessons for the summer. E. has a year left with grad school, so then I will have the same issue I had with Carson- but she is applying to med schools, so hopefully she gets in the one here!

Adventures in ballroom

So with skating gone, scuba being only for vacations and rowing not seeming to be happening (now I have an arm injury!) I decided it was time to once again try to find another hobby.

I miss dancing as much as skating (I do miss skating, but it just isn't working to be doing it anymore), but didn’t want to do the ballet classes again. The adult classes don’t seem to go anywhere, and I’m a bit tired of hanging out with kids (part of the reason I’ve grown slightly less fond of skating- the other is that I was always getting hurt.)

I decided that I would try ballroom.

Um, how did I manage to find an activity that costs more than skating?  The group classes are somewhat reasonable: 50 dollars a month for 45 minute classes. I paid $45 a month for 30 minute skating classes.  But the privates- OMG! It is $85 for a 45 minute lesson.

I’m not sure if my husband will social dance with me (he tells me if I really like it, he’ll give it another try) so competition dancing seems to be where I’m going with this. I would need private lessons.  BUT OH MY GOSH! I thought skating was too expensive. I’m a bit worried this isn’t going to last too long…

Anyhow- my only previous experience with ballroom was through the community college. Kevin’s friend wanted a group of us to sign up for it, so Kevin and I did. It wasn’t a great experience. The class was huge, so there was no personal attention. The music was AWFUL (how many times can you listen to Mack the Knife in a single day? And then again and again every class of the session).  And our dancing wasn’t that great.

This time, I decided to try class at a studio closer to my house. They do a free 45-minute private lesson, so I did that yesterday. I met with the instructor and we did basic steps for Foxtrot, Tango, Quickstep, Cha-Cha, Rhumba, East Coast Swing, and Samba.  Samba is out- that bounce is HARD! (He only showed me that because I said Samba and Quickstep are my favorite dances to watch. They don’t teach either of those in their group classes.)

From that little intro, I realized 1) If dancing with someone who is leading me well, I know these basic steps pretty well, but not much else. And 2) Rhumba is totally different than I remember it being in the community college class. There I just remember it being a disaster…  I also had never done tango before and it was fun- I like the little lungey moves.

Also, the closed hold was way easier to do in ballroom than ice dance. Unlike the number of times I stabbed Carson with a toe pick, I never kicked the instructor J

So, I had hoped this lesson would let me pick between the Ballroom and Rhythm classes, but I couldn’t decide which I liked best, so I decided to do both for the first month. Here’s the awful part: Group lessons are at 9:00 PM!!! I’m usually in bed by then. Uggh… but I’d really like to try it, and not through Kirkwood, so I figure I’m just going to have to stay up late. It’s like when synchro got their ice time changed to super late. It was worth it though.

So starting Monday I have ballroom (Waltz, Tango, Foxtrot) and Wednesday Rhythm (Rhumba, Cha-Cha, Swing) classes for the month of May.

I bought a pair of dance shoes, because while they say you can just wear any dress shoes and don’t need specialty ones, well, I have exactly ZERO appropriate shoes in my house. I own a single pair of heels and they have no backs.  They say they take a week to get in, so hopefully I’ll have them for at least half the classes. 

I’m excited to see where I go with this.