Saturday, December 01, 2007

Adventure #1: Blues Dancing

First thing's first...this Wikipedia article attempts to explain what Blues dancing is. Trying to explain it myself made me feel like a dork. There's a certain degree to which you just have to see the dance. (If you decide to YouTube something, you shouldn't automatically assume I'm dancing at the same distance as those people...Just thought I'd clear myself right now on that one.) Last Tuesday I went out blues dancing with some people from the Swing club. It was pretty awesome. It took about a total of 5 hours, from leaving from UP to returning.

When we got there, there was about an hourlong lesson followed by about three hours of dance.
I got to dance with some people I hadn't ever even met yet, which was actually not the best experience in the world. From one of those dances, I'm convinced that I'd rather have someone say they don't want to dance with me if they don't want to, because I had someone agree to dance, and then make it really obvious that they weren't 'into it' (my phrasing) which made it not really fun for me either. So yeah. But there was another person I danced with a couple of times and she was pretty chill.

I was however appreciative of the people I came with, as far as dancing goes. I learned, a little bit, how to "dip" a follow, which was cool. I'm still not very practiced at it, but I'm all for learning new moves. I also pulled off a move I didn't quite expect to pull with someone from Swing club; I'm not sure quite how to describe it here, but if you're reading this there's a good chance I'll... Oh yes. I just remembered I have MS Paint on this computer.

Okay, hopefully that gives you a better idea. On the left is the connection (two-handed connection) I started with, the right is where I went with it. It might not look like much but I think it might be a little harder to communicate than it looks, or maybe I just felt really hardcore for nothing special. Whatever.

Anyway, I learned a lot, and it was a fun experience, and I am definitely glad for the people I went with because it's easier to try new things with people you know than with people you don't.