Live Teaching Aide

There’s been a lot of ballroom to talk about so I won’t make this one as long. We are starting to work on our Argentine Tango routine that will debut in October. This is consistent with my current goal which is to get the big award for doing nine routines in the same level. Only two more to go. One in October and one in November at the two fall Showcases I plan to attend.

I’ll admit that what the coach showed us is a little difficult and it is taking me a bit to wrap my brain around it. But even though it is a struggle, I’d rather have a challenge than something that is too easy. I really should take this as a compliment because he wouldn’t have demonstrated challenging stuff if he didn’t think we could handle it. Same thing applies to our Country Two Step routine.

We’re in the middle of our lesson and there is another instructor working with a newer couple. He has a habit of using me as a demonstration model to illustrate certain points. I’m guessing he figures that it carries more coming from another student. Instructors are supposed to know what they are doing but a student had to learn it so maybe that carries more weight.

Anyway, he just wanted us to do a box with an underarm turn in Waltz and he specifically told me to let PJ drift away from me. I got his point because I think it is something a lot of people struggle with. When you start off, most of what you do is in frame and there can be that panic moment when you do something that gets you out of frame. Like your partner is going to drift away into the vacuum of space unless you close the gap and quickly.

I say a lot of people and I include myself in that. It takes a bit to just let things happen and let your partner come back to you. I mean you are still connected with one arm so they aren’t going anywhere. There’s no hurry and nothing that says you need to jump right back into frame. As a lead, you can shorten your steps a bit and then they’ll just settle right back into frame.

So I think that was the point he wanted to illustrate. He had us do the same thing in Rumba but then we went back to dancing so I’m not sure what point he was trying to make.