Into the Groove

“And you can dance. For inspiration.”

One of the many challenges to taking dance lessons is not feeling your best. This is the time of year that I’m perpetually congested and the air just dries out my nose making it hard to sleep. And then there are the wonderful headaches that can pop up from time to time.

It just is what it is but ballroom is a very physically demanding activity and it is hard to do when you are at 100%. And, the run down feeling didn’t help with my current issues with confidence and just not feeling like things are coming back.

But what had all the makings of a bad lesson actually turned into a good one.

And I can’t tell you why. There are just times when something just clicks and what you were struggling with suddenly makes sense. It is like those pictures that look like a random jumble of things but if you stare at them in the right way, something jumps out. Takes a bit to get it and I couldn’t explain how but I just figure out what to do and look the right way and, bingo, there’s the image. Plus, once you get it the first time, it is almost automatic every other time.

We did Waltz and Tango last night. Waltz was a struggle because I just couldn’t find a way to commit the steps to memory. I don’t know if they are there yet but I can visualize them so we are closer. I had to get reminded by OwnerGuy to drive more on one step and that fixed a lot of issues. Again, something I’ve been told before but tend to forget over time.

For a variety of reasons, I can get too tentative. Mostly because I don’t want my partner over. Of course, that is actually the wrong approach because being tentative means your lead is unclear and it is more likely that something goes wrong. Driving more kind of takes away options from your partner and makes things flow more smoothly.

Plus there is the whole momentum thing. Ballroom requires a lot of energy to do some of the moves so you have to initiate it somewhere and a driving step will usually start the ball moving and set you up for success later. After Waltz, we moved into the Tango and that went a little smoother because I was more familiar with the steps.

It was the first time I’ve felt a surge of confidence in a couple of lessons. The first sign that maybe we can make these new patterns work and maybe get back to where I was before the forced break.

OwnerGuy has given us some instructions on how to run our next lessons. Eventually, he wants us to get back to doing rounds which would be good prep for this event that comes up in less than two weeks. Going into last night’s lesson, I was thinking of ways to bail out. Now, it seems more doable.

The one downside is that I’m nearing the end of the effectiveness of the injections I had last year. It has been almost a year and that’s not bad. But I woke up last night and had to go ice the knee because it was just hurting too much to sleep. I’ll have to remember to do that when I get home from my lesson tonight. I don’t need another thing making it harder to sleep.