Bend Me, Shape Me

I’ve gotten sucked into a new video game. It is an RPG where you’ve inherited your Grandfather’s old farm and have moved to a little village full of odd and quirky people. While you work to restore the farm, there are other challenges and things to do each day.

Its a simple game but I guess it just appeals to that part of me that enjoys dreaming about life in other places. Kind of the same appeal of YA or other fantasy type stories. Just a harmless little distraction from a world that continues to go crazy.

Anyway, now on to ballroom.

On my last lesson, I was working with another coach and we decided to let her take a shot at choreographing the Viennese Waltz we want to do. After watching us dance, and giving me a few pointers, she got to work.

What we ended up with was something that will be challenging for me but in a much different way than other routines. The choreography is not extremely difficult but it really puts an emphasis on shaping and movement that hasn’t really been there in other routines. I mean it is always a component but when you are trying to master more flashy steps, that tends to come before making it look pretty.

We had our first lesson since that session yesterday and we did get all the way through what the coach dreamed up. We need a little more to finish it up but it was nice to know that it wasn’t as difficult as I first thought. But the challenge is the polishing to hit the various shapes and lines that got thrown in. We have three months until Showcase but this will be a routine we do a few times so there is plenty of time to shine it up.

And we also have the finished Swing routine from OwnerGuy. I know they are different dances but it is always interesting to see how different people put a routine together. Parts of the swing looked totally chaotic when I first saw them but there is order to the chaos. So know we have two new routines to spend time on all while not letting the other dances go too far to seed. Should be a fun time.

Just one last little note. I think I mentioned that the studio recently hired two new instructors which brings the total to nine including Z and OwnerGuy. In all my years there, this is the most they’ve ever had so it must mean the studio is really doing well.

But they just let the newest instructors teach group classes over the last couple of weeks. Not sure if that is a permanent change or just a way of getting them more integrated into the studio. I should mention that both of these two have years of dance experience (I think outside the Famous Franchise world so they might have to learn the terminology). So, not only do we have the most instructors but most of them are truly talented dancers which also hasn’t been the case in the past.