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Mar. 8th, 2010 12:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
infryqI spent last weekend down in Tysons Corner, VA, at MADJam, a totally completely wicked awesome West Coast Swing, Hustle, and Hand Dance event. I somehow managed to split workshops, social dancing, sleeping, and competitions about equally, although I did run out of steam significantly at about 12:30AM sunday morning and again around 1:30, 2PM. It's a lot of people and a lot of sound. And William, I specifically decided that calling you would be useless since I wasn't going to have any in-between time anyhow. And I didn't -- I barely kept in touch with Paul as it was. :)
Paul came with me; we left early enough on Friday to have dinner with his aunt at her house a few miles down the road there. She's delightful, Dutch, a pretty stupefyingly good gardener, and models her yoghurt pot on the system of dikes that creates arable soil from the swampy areas that constitute much of the Netherlands. Opinionated but imperturbable. I want to be like her when I grow up.
Friday night was strictlies, and all the pittsburgh couples made finals, and Mitch and Katherine won the novice division! I took a nap from 1:30AM to 3AM and then danced until 5:30. Was up in time to register for my competition, took a workshop on couples styling from Jessica Cox and wound up leading, and took Stephanie's workshop on body isolations and wound up being her demo follow and leading in rotation (knee pops are hard while you're walking!). Competed in the Jack&Jill (that's with a randomized partner) where I paid attention to technique and was too worried about lines to have much fun, made semifinals, decided that having no fun was not what I wanted to do, let loose a bit, and didn't make finals. Such is life. I do, apparently, clean up well though -- this was a trial run of actually wearing makeup and westie-style flashy clothing for competition instead of wearing something comfortable and merely tidy.
Was Aaron's follow dummy in his private lesson with Parker, in which we learned about kick ball changes (which, to my surprise, I normally modify into a kick-ball-kick-step -- now fixed) and some other flashy footwork, and putting sharper edges on moves to improve their definition. Very nice. It should help A simultaneously draw attention to himself for comps so he can progress, as well as create more space in his dancing for follows to improvise and really shine, which he's been trying to figure out forever.
Was Joe's follow dummy in his private lesson with Kyle, in which we learned a way to think about posture that allows you to be lifted but remain relaxed and supple instead of stiffening, and how to stagger rolling the feet on a triple so you complete each foot's motion after the next foot's begins, giving a much smoother and less choppy look, and staying with the whole relaxed theme.
Had some great late-night conversations with the other folks in my hotel room, and got to touch base with Steph a bit -- I miss having a regular time to see her. They're very good people.
I have a note to myself to do some soul-searching on a bunch of stuff -- being a teacher in Pittsburgh and feeling like I have a solid understanding of dance fundamentals, but being stuck in novice divisions in competition; the prevalence of the performance axis in west coast swing competitions (as opposed to lindy or blues); the role of networking, fame, and favoritism in west coast swing competitions (as opposed to lindy); the different components of a dancer's experience that lend him or her authority, and the associated skill sets that make a good dancer a good teacher; my reluctance to interact much with pros in unstructured settings and whether that has an effect on my credibility. Sleep deprivation sortof compounds the tendency of road trips to make one introspective. :)
Paul came with me; we left early enough on Friday to have dinner with his aunt at her house a few miles down the road there. She's delightful, Dutch, a pretty stupefyingly good gardener, and models her yoghurt pot on the system of dikes that creates arable soil from the swampy areas that constitute much of the Netherlands. Opinionated but imperturbable. I want to be like her when I grow up.
Friday night was strictlies, and all the pittsburgh couples made finals, and Mitch and Katherine won the novice division! I took a nap from 1:30AM to 3AM and then danced until 5:30. Was up in time to register for my competition, took a workshop on couples styling from Jessica Cox and wound up leading, and took Stephanie's workshop on body isolations and wound up being her demo follow and leading in rotation (knee pops are hard while you're walking!). Competed in the Jack&Jill (that's with a randomized partner) where I paid attention to technique and was too worried about lines to have much fun, made semifinals, decided that having no fun was not what I wanted to do, let loose a bit, and didn't make finals. Such is life. I do, apparently, clean up well though -- this was a trial run of actually wearing makeup and westie-style flashy clothing for competition instead of wearing something comfortable and merely tidy.
Was Aaron's follow dummy in his private lesson with Parker, in which we learned about kick ball changes (which, to my surprise, I normally modify into a kick-ball-kick-step -- now fixed) and some other flashy footwork, and putting sharper edges on moves to improve their definition. Very nice. It should help A simultaneously draw attention to himself for comps so he can progress, as well as create more space in his dancing for follows to improvise and really shine, which he's been trying to figure out forever.
Was Joe's follow dummy in his private lesson with Kyle, in which we learned a way to think about posture that allows you to be lifted but remain relaxed and supple instead of stiffening, and how to stagger rolling the feet on a triple so you complete each foot's motion after the next foot's begins, giving a much smoother and less choppy look, and staying with the whole relaxed theme.
Had some great late-night conversations with the other folks in my hotel room, and got to touch base with Steph a bit -- I miss having a regular time to see her. They're very good people.
I have a note to myself to do some soul-searching on a bunch of stuff -- being a teacher in Pittsburgh and feeling like I have a solid understanding of dance fundamentals, but being stuck in novice divisions in competition; the prevalence of the performance axis in west coast swing competitions (as opposed to lindy or blues); the role of networking, fame, and favoritism in west coast swing competitions (as opposed to lindy); the different components of a dancer's experience that lend him or her authority, and the associated skill sets that make a good dancer a good teacher; my reluctance to interact much with pros in unstructured settings and whether that has an effect on my credibility. Sleep deprivation sortof compounds the tendency of road trips to make one introspective. :)
