fun verses good dancing

[gsh]

I was at Glen Echo last night, fumbling my way through some tango steps, when I decided to dance with vvalkyri, whom I can usually dance better than average with. I did some crosses, then some oucho's (probably not spelling those correctly), then started some grapevines. I'd dome grapevines before in the context of folk dancing when I was in college (grumble, that's been 20 years now), so I could do the grapevines pretty easily. Vval and I started going in circles faster, and I suddenly realized that I had no idea of where we were in relation to the beat of the dance going on. So no matter that I was having fun doing what I was doing, what I was doing was BAD DANCING.

Comments

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

More hm.

Gsh, while you might have been doing grapevines, I couldn't move through them /around you/ properly at that speed. Which could well have been a problem with my technique rather than the speed you were moving.

[gsh]

*nod* I find I have a tendency to try to move too fast while doing the dances. I need to learn to signal *before* the move more. There are tmes when we get it *right*, and times we're close, but not there, and there are times it seems we're WTF. When I hit WTF stage I like to stop for a count of four or 8 beats, and then start again.

You are fun to practice tango with. :)

[vvalkyri.livejournal.com]

aye. i need to know where i'm going before i commit my weight. That's why with swing, for example, one leads the move just before/as the girl is picking up her foot for her next step.