This week in my dancing I'm working on...

Getting used to my new shoes. For several years I have used shoes with hard, leather soles; but, in an effort to copy my local role models, I have bought a pair of plastic soled plimsoles.

On their first outing this week, I was surprised how tiring it was dancing in them - I found I needed to pick my feet up; and any bad foot placement was more apparent. It is obviously going to take some time to get used to them...
 
Wha'ts a plimsoles?

And this week (probably for much longer) I'm working on shoulder movement during my daily basic practice. I can get the shoulder movement right for very brief periods at home alone with the mirror. My goal is to be able to keep the shoulder moving properly through one entire song.I'm at maybe 30 seconds now before I lose it.

HalfMan said:
Getting used to my new shoes. For several years I have used shoes with hard, leather soles; but, in an effort to copy my local role models, I have bought a pair of plastic soled plimsoles.

On their first outing this week, I was surprised how tiring it was dancing in them - I found I needed to pick my feet up; and any bad foot placement was more apparent. It is obviously going to take some time to get used to them...
Click to expand...
 
The basic. I've been working on it for the last two years and I thought I finally got it right at the end of the Sunday party of the Hamburg congress. I've been trying to reproduce the way it felt since then... the quest continues.
 
Shoulder and rib cage coordination. I want to feel the shoulder-hip connection better. I'm still far to stiff in a closed basic and I think this will help.
 
I think on my own time I will work on remembering moves I used to incorporate in my dancing but that for some reason I lost them. I have issues with retention sometimes.

In my private class this week, I think I will be working on dancing with smaller more precise steps. I dont dance with huge steps as a beginner would do, but I could stand to bring it in a bit. Certainly I have noticed that in crowded venues (when I went to New Orleans) there just isnt much room to dance, and half the stuff I like to do, I dont feel I have room for.

The hard part about it is that to do things in a smaller footprint/area, I am having totally re-configure my lead in some cases. Its tough.

Then in group classes as usual I will be working on some longer routines, which I am terrible at. I have retention issues. If a move gets past six eight-counts, I fall apart. Honestly I just try to retain my favorite eight-count from the sequence so that I have any chance to integrate something new.
 
Now working on spontaneous, creative dancing. Lately, i've been relying too much on old moves too much and going on auto-pilot. I wish I could enter some sort of a "bullet time" where I could slow time down and figure stuff out, then whenever I wanted to, push a button and resume normal speed :)
 
Ciaran Hegarty said:
How are you working on being spontaneous?
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Good question. I have a bunch of canned moves that I do, which I kind of randomly insert into a dance. I am getting bored with using the same material over and over. I am trying to break out of that habit by becoming more spontaneous with my moveset. I can achieve this sometimes when I get into a nice groovy zone and start to get more creative, but I am hoping for that to occur more often.
 
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