Welcome to our first term 2013

A warm welcome to our 2013 Semester 1 class.  Thanks for choosing Audacity Dance as your partner in learning West Coast Swing.  We aim to provide you with fun classes and a most enjoyable Tuesday evening.  Once a month we have socials on a Friday night at the Turner Southern Cross Bowling Club.  There is a great Burmese restaurant there and the chance to enjoy a beverage or two together.  So book the 1^st March in your diary.  The week before that date we will consolidate our first four weeks of lessons with a fun revision class.  You will be surprised how much you have learnt over four or five weeks!

I highly recommend that you consider writing a few notes each week about what we cover in class.  You might also like to arrive 15 minutes before class and get in some warm up practice.

In this post, I plan to summarise some of the things we have covered over the first two weeks:

Handhold: we aim to make our Follows comfortable, around hip height or handshake height is what the Leader aims for.

Options: so far we have covered the Normal Handhold and the Handshake handhold when leading the dance

Lead: the Leader moves the Follow two steps forward every time – it is one of the few ‘rules’ of the dance

The Slot: Follows define the slot.  They own it and it is up to the Lead to get out of the way in a Left Side Pass or a Right Side Pass.  If the lead doesn’t get out of the way, it is a blocking move.  We call that move a Push.  We will teach you two Push variations next week.

Footwork patterns: We have been concentrating on the 6 beat pattens to date.  We call out – ‘Walk, Walk, Tri_ple_Step, Tri_ple_Step’.  The Lead walks BL (back left), BR (back right), LRL, RLR which is 8 steps in 6 peats.  Follows walk FR (forward right), FL, RLR, LRL.

Our dance is a conversation: The lead is offered and the follow accepts the lead.  The conversation is the interplay between partners and the music.  The top instructors refer to dancers as being the human instrument in the song.

International Guests, Dinner Dance and Workshops

We have other exciting news.  I have been negotiating with two international WCS champions to come to Canberra in April.  We are close to finalising the deal and if it comes off, they will teach workshops and we will have a dinner dance on the weekend of the 12th April.  More on this soon.