This Week's Lessons... Wednesday ... Cha Cha, Samba, Rumba...

Hi All! I hope you all had a happy and safe new year's celebration! I had no lessons to report last week as the studio took a well deserved holiday break... longest week of my life if you ask me, but all deserved the week off. :)

Tuesday I picked right up for a lesson with Buddy. We started with some Cha Cha, we've been working a lot on that, I'm trying to get some newer steps, and some older spins down. I'm fairly confident that I can hold my own on the club floor... but I'm convinced my Cha Cha will NEVER be competition ready. There's something about it that just doesn't click yet. I'll have to practice practice practice... I really like this dance so I want it to be something I continue to work on regularly.

Then, after some discussion about our recent holiday adventures Buddy asked "Isn't there another dance you want to learn?" To which I reply "I want to learn all kinds of things!" and he came back at me with "How about Samba?"... uh oh... the internal battle begins... the desire to want to learn Samba, fights with the self conscious side of me that does not like the idea of what I look like doing all that hip motion. Buddy started by pacing me through the basic, it felt really bouncy...which I know isn't right. I quickly figured out how to control the bounce a little, and then we did some turns... I like the timing on those, it seems to make sense. I had been through some hip motion with RT before it's a figure "8" and an "infinity" sign at the same time but I think if I figure out the knees right, that seems to be easier for improving my overall hip motion. It certainly wasn't long before my calves started to feel Samba, and my core felt a lot more engaged. My top line on the other hand, was ALL over the place... I even ran right into Buddy because I couldn't feel the lead. All in all I think it was a pretty good solid introduction to the Samba, I soon hope it makes a regular appearance in my lessons.

We also worked on some Rumba steps, not so much on Cuban motion, but actually a new step... referred to as the Rumba version of the grapevine, one of my favorite steps in Foxtrot, at one point the step comes to a close and the follow is supposed to put her hand on her leader's chest... well, be being the mildly defiant student that I am decide to push on Buddy, ask me to do one thing, and if I'm in the right frame of mind... I'll do the opposite. So we went back to my hand meeting his. I have no muscle memory of this step, but hey... it could be fun!

The lesson was coming to a close and we had about 3 minutes left, and I asked "Can we get a little East Coast in?" Just like that we started our triple steps, YEA! If you've read anything about my lessons before, you know I love my East Coast Swing! Sure we were keeping to the time in Buddy's head, because the song on the player was a Bolero, but that's ok... still a ton of fun!

All in all an EXCELLENT lesson... I'm really excited about a lot of what I learned!