bjarvis | Monday night Mainstream class

Last night's Mainstream class was the first full session since

kent4str and I took over teaching.

Up to this point, they had four two-hour classes. They lost one week to the Presidents' Day weekend, another to Warren's illness and a third to his memorial service. They're going to lose another Monday session in April as we've just been informed the church in which we dance will be closed for Easter Monday. With nine classes worth of calls still to process, we actually have only seven Mondays available to us.

We really want to hold to the calendar weeks as much as possible so the class will have the full Mainstream list under their belt in time for the Chesapeake Squares' fly-in in Rehoboth, DE, on the first weekend of May. To make this deadline, we're judiciously picking up the pace as much as possible; we may add a Saturday session or two as needed.

So far, I'm pretty optimistic about the faster pacing. Our newly adopted dancers are total dance sponges: they were absorbing everything we were throwing at them last night and possibly could have taken a little more if time had allowed. True, we were picking the low hanging fruit still this early in the program, but the review went wonderfully and they quickly picked up (in no particular order) wheel around, right & left thru, double pass thru, box the gnat, couples trade, wheel & deal, rollaway with a half-sashay and trade by.

In the review,

kent4str mentioned a variation of grand square which begins with the girls initially turned to face the boys' right side. Later in the class, the students asked us for a chance to try it! And they did it almost flawlessly! (The only snag was with one of the experienced dancers angelling this session.)

Next week: review, then introduction to ocean waves (pass the ocean, swing thru, extend), California twirl and first couple go left/next go right. If they still want more, we'll throw touch 1/4, run and/or zoom.