Social Dance: 11/4 Edition - Beginning Bal & Wearing Heels

Last night the November classes started, and I'm taking two of them; Lindy 102: 6 and 8 Count Transitions along with Balboa 101.

Lindy is going pretty well; we worked on promenades, which went pretty well. My biggest issue, and this relates to almost all parts of lindy for me, is taking too big of steps. My instructor is always getting after me for this one! I really have to focus and remember to take small steps; when I do it makes a world of a difference, it's just been challenging to build that habit. We also worked on our pulsing and getting the timing perfect with the music.

Right after lindy I have balboa. There are only three of us students, so there's a lot of one on one time with the instructors. We started of with close position and the basic footwork. And then the footwork that you use before going into open position and lolly kicks. There's something really fun about saying "lolly kicks". I'm not sure what it is, but I think I like saying it more that actually doing them. Ha! After my first ever bal class I have come to the conclusion that:

A) Dancing in heels is going to take a lot of conditioning before my feet don't hurt. I don't wear heels normally at all, so my feet were in a decent amount of pain after the hour class. Slowly but surely I'll be building up my heel stamina.

B) That I'll be practicing the foot work every waking moment that I happen to be standing. My co-workers are going to be so confused at first, but hey, gotta get that step-step-hold-step pattern cemented in my brain as soon as possible!

My feet are forever grateful that there is a half hour between when the Balboa class ends and social dancing starts. Not sure if I would have survived past midnight otherwise!

Social dancing went really well. I'm finally starting to get comfortable with my swing outs (*cough*smaller steps*cough*) and since I'm getting more comfortable with those, I'm finally starting to remember to throw those swivels in. Slowly but surely. But I definitely feel like I'm starting to improve a lot with my lindy.

So there were a few times when I'm off casually to the side practicing that bal footwork on my own, you know, gotta get that pattern suck in my brain. Apparently doing that declares to the room that you wanna dance balboa, as I kept getting asked to dance that. Though that definitly wasn't my intention, getting to practice it on the social floor several times was good practice, even though I kept fumbling as I barely knew what I was doing!

Another awesome part of the night was that I got to witness my first jam circle which was so much fun to watch! I can only imagine how crazy those are at big events; watching a bunch of our local dancers show off there best stuff was pretty fabulous!