Wednesday Night C1 Dancing
Dec. 7th, 2006 11:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bjarvisLast night's C1 workshop was a special treat, but for unfortunate reasons.
Doran McBroom has been calling our regular Wednesday night C1 sessions but his father suffered a stroke and subsequently passed away over the weekend. John Marshall stepped in to call for us rather than have the group cancel dancing for a third consecutive week.
Dancing C1 has always been something of a workout but this time was an exceptional mental challenge. John ran us through a number of figures and tips and pushed us on a the usual concepts: stretch, concentric, magic columns, blocks, O and butterfly formations. I think it went well: we were clearly defeated by some figures but John gently guided us through and offered a number of pointers which should help our future success rate.
Idiot that I am, however, I forgot to turn on my tape recorder to catch some of the figures for later analysis. I made a point of bringing it as well as extra tapes, but they remained in my backpack in the trunk of the car. Doh!
By the end of it all, my feet hurt and my head felt full, but I wouldn't change a thing: this is the sort of mental exercise which I love most about square dancing (at least in the upper levels) and I'd vastly prefer to crash a square in this workshop than on the dance floor at next February's AC/DC.
I really have to get off my lazy butt to try composing some of my own C1 choreography: I've done some of the early --and admittedly simplistic-- analysis but I'm not going to get anywhere if I don't start at all.
Doran McBroom has been calling our regular Wednesday night C1 sessions but his father suffered a stroke and subsequently passed away over the weekend. John Marshall stepped in to call for us rather than have the group cancel dancing for a third consecutive week.
Dancing C1 has always been something of a workout but this time was an exceptional mental challenge. John ran us through a number of figures and tips and pushed us on a the usual concepts: stretch, concentric, magic columns, blocks, O and butterfly formations. I think it went well: we were clearly defeated by some figures but John gently guided us through and offered a number of pointers which should help our future success rate.
Idiot that I am, however, I forgot to turn on my tape recorder to catch some of the figures for later analysis. I made a point of bringing it as well as extra tapes, but they remained in my backpack in the trunk of the car. Doh!
By the end of it all, my feet hurt and my head felt full, but I wouldn't change a thing: this is the sort of mental exercise which I love most about square dancing (at least in the upper levels) and I'd vastly prefer to crash a square in this workshop than on the dance floor at next February's AC/DC.
I really have to get off my lazy butt to try composing some of my own C1 choreography: I've done some of the early --and admittedly simplistic-- analysis but I'm not going to get anywhere if I don't start at all.
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no subject
Date: 2006-12-08 02:18 pm (UTC)I've heard some people say that it helps to dance the level above whatever you're calling, so that you don't make mistakes that the next higher level dancers would hate.
Yup, I've heard the same, and it's a reasonable rule of thumb. Alas, I'm a long way from getting to C2 but there is a more immediate need to call C1 in at least a minimally competent fashion. To be sure, the path ahead is strewn with "proceed with extreme caution" signs.