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Wine and West Coast
Sep. 8th, 2007 11:22 pmToday Robin and I went to a wine and west coast workshop at Go Dance, where we've never been before. There were two one-hour workshops. One had some pretty good steps, the other not so much. The teaching was mediocre. The students were all great. The building was great, though the dance floor could have been bigger.
"You're doing a coaster during all the anchor steps." Oh. I had decided that when they said "anchor" they meant coaster. I guess not. "When you step back just stay back. When you step forward, you can't do anything from there." Okay.
"You need to have compression and expansion. You're doing only compression." Yes, I'm doing only compression, which is a less popular style. It is not wrong. Nevertheless, I tried doing it their way.
Preceding each workshop was a 15-minute wine tasting. People brought wines and so you could taste all different ones. This was of no interest to me. There were snacks, too, though, that were nice. Fruit, cheese, bread, hummus--all the food groups.
Afterwards was a dance of all west coast. Watching the other folks dance, Robin and I got completely different impressions.
My impression was that those people were all much better than us. On a whole different plane. I could recognize their dancing as west coast, but there's no way I could have followed most of that stuff. Not that I tried. Most of it looked leadable, but so alien to me that I would have been standing there wondering what to do.
I tried to figure out what it was that made them so awesome. They were doing so many things. They were matching the music--if there was a dramatic pause in the music, they were dramatically pausing. If there was a slow sensuous part, they were making slow sensuous moves.
In comparison, my dancing feels formulaic. Wooden. Mechanical, even.
I saw two couples dancing like us (just one dance each). One had a lot of the moves we have, plus a few I didn't recognize. The other couple was made up of two women who were very deep into their conversation and thus clearly just doing the easy robotic steps.
Finally I came to the conclusion that this is more like the way I first learned Argentine tango than like the west coast I know. The way we dance west coast, whenever you do a coaster step, you have some room for interpretation. This would also be true for anchor steps. However, they have lots and lots of places for playing around with the music.
While I was downstairs talking to a beginner, who I later saw doing things I can't do, Robin was upstairs dancing with everyone he could. He specifically picked out people he had liked from the workshops who seemed good.
His impression was that about half of them were better dancers than him and half were worse. Some of the better ones were much, much better, but many of the dancers were not very good followers. He did decide that one of the dancers was not getting enough freedom to play around like she likes to, and he didn't know how to give her that freedom. I asked if she did a lot of interesting coaster steps. Yes, she did.
Robin thinks a lot of the moves look unleadable and therefore memorized. He thought the reasons they looked so good were that they had learned a lot of long routines and that they were on their home turf, so they knew the music quite well. They probably have figured out which routines work perfectly with parts of the songs they like.
Robin's inspired and wants to take lessons here. I felt the opposite. I had thought I knew maybe 20% of steps in the dances I'm good at, and now I see that it's no more than 1/2 of 1%. After almost two decades of lessons. And this is our best dance. I felt deflated. I had trouble even having fun anymore. Hey look! I'm 44 years old and I'm still writing on that lined paper with an extra dotted line in the middle to show you how high your lower-case letters should go! And look how pretty my textbook letters are with no personal style whatsover, except little hearts over the i's and j's! Ugh.
I'm sure I'll get over it. Later.
"You're doing a coaster during all the anchor steps." Oh. I had decided that when they said "anchor" they meant coaster. I guess not. "When you step back just stay back. When you step forward, you can't do anything from there." Okay.
"You need to have compression and expansion. You're doing only compression." Yes, I'm doing only compression, which is a less popular style. It is not wrong. Nevertheless, I tried doing it their way.
Preceding each workshop was a 15-minute wine tasting. People brought wines and so you could taste all different ones. This was of no interest to me. There were snacks, too, though, that were nice. Fruit, cheese, bread, hummus--all the food groups.
Afterwards was a dance of all west coast. Watching the other folks dance, Robin and I got completely different impressions.
My impression was that those people were all much better than us. On a whole different plane. I could recognize their dancing as west coast, but there's no way I could have followed most of that stuff. Not that I tried. Most of it looked leadable, but so alien to me that I would have been standing there wondering what to do.
I tried to figure out what it was that made them so awesome. They were doing so many things. They were matching the music--if there was a dramatic pause in the music, they were dramatically pausing. If there was a slow sensuous part, they were making slow sensuous moves.
In comparison, my dancing feels formulaic. Wooden. Mechanical, even.
I saw two couples dancing like us (just one dance each). One had a lot of the moves we have, plus a few I didn't recognize. The other couple was made up of two women who were very deep into their conversation and thus clearly just doing the easy robotic steps.
Finally I came to the conclusion that this is more like the way I first learned Argentine tango than like the west coast I know. The way we dance west coast, whenever you do a coaster step, you have some room for interpretation. This would also be true for anchor steps. However, they have lots and lots of places for playing around with the music.
While I was downstairs talking to a beginner, who I later saw doing things I can't do, Robin was upstairs dancing with everyone he could. He specifically picked out people he had liked from the workshops who seemed good.
His impression was that about half of them were better dancers than him and half were worse. Some of the better ones were much, much better, but many of the dancers were not very good followers. He did decide that one of the dancers was not getting enough freedom to play around like she likes to, and he didn't know how to give her that freedom. I asked if she did a lot of interesting coaster steps. Yes, she did.
Robin thinks a lot of the moves look unleadable and therefore memorized. He thought the reasons they looked so good were that they had learned a lot of long routines and that they were on their home turf, so they knew the music quite well. They probably have figured out which routines work perfectly with parts of the songs they like.
Robin's inspired and wants to take lessons here. I felt the opposite. I had thought I knew maybe 20% of steps in the dances I'm good at, and now I see that it's no more than 1/2 of 1%. After almost two decades of lessons. And this is our best dance. I felt deflated. I had trouble even having fun anymore. Hey look! I'm 44 years old and I'm still writing on that lined paper with an extra dotted line in the middle to show you how high your lower-case letters should go! And look how pretty my textbook letters are with no personal style whatsover, except little hearts over the i's and j's! Ugh.
I'm sure I'll get over it. Later.