Posted by I stopped into my old work place for a bit yesterday. I was part of a large group of lottery people. When one of the three big lotteries we can play gets up to some obscene amount of money, our designated guy gathers $5 a person and buys a stack of tickets. Even though I no longer work there, I’m a five minute drive and the last thing I wanted was to hear about them winning a big pot so I said I’d continue for a bit and yesterday I had to drive up and pay the man.
I think everyone used to dream about quitting on the same day just to watch them freak out. But since they’ve done two big purges in the last two years, I don’t think it would matter that much to the powers that be. I actually had a different kind of fantasy if I won. I didn’t plan on quitting – at least not right away. I thought it would be fun to just cop a major attitude and see what they would do. I mean what office worked hasn’t dreamed of standing up in the middle of a meeting and saying something like “this is all just a big waste of time and I’ve got better things to do” and then walking out. I tell you, it would have been great.
Yesterday was also double dance day. Got to the studio to find out that JoNY had listened to both versions of “People are Strange” and preferred the Echo and the Bunnymen version. There’s some snaps in there and it has a slightly more funky feel than the original Doors version. I’m all about the funky and strange so that works for me. She talked with OwnerGuy and he said it was a West Coast Swing. This seems to be his default position for everything and it would mark probably the fourth time I’ve done a West Coast Swing routine.
She doesn’t have any choreography yet but she does have a bit of a intro. Starts with our backs to the audience, heads down and arms out at an odd angle. The we do two sets of step/tap which could include some snapping to match the music. Have to decide if that is strange enough. Then, we look up to the ceiling and spin around. At this point, it gets a little conceptual and weird. There’s a line in the song that says “faces look ugly when your along” and she wants us to cover our faces with our hands, start looking away, rotate towards each other, take our hands away (like discarding a mask) but rotate back to look away. Then, I give her a spin like thing and at the end do a little head snap to the audience and then we start with West Coast moves. We worked on some basic West Coast stuff to see what I remembered and what I liked. Work in progress but it only has to be about a minute and Showstoppers doesn’t require polished routines.
DH was teaching the group class. (Decided to rename new guy even though he won’t be around much longer) The silver class was Bolero which is an unusual choice but follows up on the Mambo they did last week. Like that they are giving some of the other dances some love. I mean how many Rumba group class do you actually need? This was a variation of a Silver II pattern and I had done parts of it. Started with a basic into a Contra Check. At the end of the Contra Check, I rotate onto my back foot (this was something DH explained a lot better than OwnerGuy by the way). I’m only now this morning realizing that this part of the pattern was something OwnerGuy had showed us but it was different with DH teaching it. I won’t go into the rest of it except that towards the end, there is a step where the guy is supposed to lunge to create space. Fortunately, the lunge was on my left leg which is the better of the two. Still …
We finished and did our demo for the rest of the studio and as I’m walking away, this older guy is talking with Z (they had a lesson) and he’s talking about how the Bolero needed to be more sensual. Eventually, he comes over to tell us the same thing. He’s actually pretty cool and does know a lot about dancing although I think he mostly enjoys coming out to take lessons with the younger attractive ladies. My partner got a little mock offended and said that we were close when dancing. Granted, we didn’t get all up in each other’s space but with my Victorian streak, that’s not going to happen. I know dance is all about the illusion but its a group class – we aren’t trying to steam up the dance floor.
I did a little home exercise today so I went to the refrigerator to get some water from the water in the door dispenser. Rocco the wonder dog was right there and started to get all excited. Then I realized that we often fill a water bottle for him before taking him on a walk and, even though it wasn’t the same water bottle, I was getting water and therefore I was taking him for a walk. Dog logic is undeniable.
Well that’s a recap of yesterday. I better wrap this up because I’m supposed to have my weekly call with the outplacement person today. “So what have you done this week”. “Well not a lot because I really don’t want to work to hard finding a new job” “OK, well try harder this week”. “Sure” I guess the next step is to get a draft of the resume but I’ve been avoiding that like the plague.
Facing Diagonal Wall 