I've been busy.  Since I last wrote, I found employment as an administrative staff member at a local marketing company.  On top of that, I went to visit my family down near Columbus one weekend, we had a group of friends in town another weekend, and David and I took a joint private dance lesson from Mike "the Girl" Legett and Dan Rosenthal.  Also, this coming weekend we are attending Mile High Blues in Denver.

The job is going well.  The people I work with are really fun and the office is very open and surrounded by windows, so there's lots of sunlight.  I feel pretty comfortable with my work; it's similar to my last job in a lot of ways, and I'm getting a fair hand on the parts that are new and different.

Visiting my family was really nice.  I went down to volunteer for Rick and Rose's Destination Imagination competition. DI is a creative problem-solving competition that helps kids develop skills in creativity, problem-solving, teamwork, time management, and project management.  Rick's team placed first in their division, and will be going on to the state tournament next month.

Elizabeth also volunteered for the tournament (every team had to bring a volunteer).  She and I got to spend that evening back at her place where we curled up with some cups of tea and pretended for a couple of hours like we still get to live near each other.  It was so wonderful to see her; it makes me sad that we don't see each other as often now that I'm in Cleveland.

And we celebrated Rose's ninth birthday at Coco Key - the local indoor water park.  Elizabeth joined us for the party as well. The party was on Sunday night, so the girls were able to have the place mostly to themselves.  (It is so incredibly weird to realize that Rose is nine.  And Rick is nearly eleven!  When did they get to be so old?!) 

The weekend David and I hosted a group of friends who are also local-ish dancers was bucket-loads of fun. We hung out at our apartment and talked, drank, and watched movies (Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Despicable Me), which is something we don't often get to do since we are typically too busy dancing. We also went to Wooster's new monthly dance, which was particularly neat for me because I went to school there (when there was no swing club and definitely no blues dancing).  Fenna also attended the dance and took some incredible pictures.

And she took photos at a dance that David and I attended in February.  

 Which brings us to David and I taking a lesson together.  It may have been the best thing that's ever happened to our dancing as a couple.  Something about the way we danced was fighting each other, and Mike and Dan worked with us both separately and together. We started out with David and I working with both Mike and Dan, and then I went with Mike and David worked with Dan.  Then we switched instructor/student pairs so that I was working with Dan and David with Mike. At the end, we came back together and worked as four again. The result is a clearer connection that is more comfortable for both of us.

I have a theory, of which I am rapidly growing more and more fond, that the key to improving your dancing is direct feedback and an open mind.  Because I am about to slam large group workshops, I want to be very clear that I am NOT saying that private lessons are necessary.  All you need is someone or someones to work with, with an open, stated understanding that constructive criticism will be given and received.  There are a lot of ways to achieve this, but I am very certain that workshop classes don't cut it.  Instructors cannot (or will not) say to a specific person that they are or are not doing something, and group criticism generally won't do the trick.  More often than not the result of a mass correction is that people who needed the criticism think they're doing it right and don't correct it and people who were doing fine start to over-correct.

BUT - if you take what you learned in said workshop and bring it to your friends with a "let's see if we're doing this right" approach, you can work through it and make sure that the move/ connection exercise/ stylization/ alignment/ whatever is turning out correctly (or at least in a way that is not uncomfortable for anyone involved).

This, then, is why David and I had such an incredible lesson.  We gave each other feedback, Mike and Dan gave us feedback (both from watching us dance and from dancing with us), and between the four of us we worked through several major issues in our dance. 

On that fabulous note, David and I are going to head out this weekend to Denver for the Mile High Blues exchange.  More words when I return.

Whoa...

So I was looking over the previous entry, and yikes! it's long.  I'm going to offer both my apologies and the excuse that I was sick when I wrote it, and therefore perhaps not in the best frame of mind for self-critique.  It's a nice overview of the weekend, but in the future I will offer up bits and pieces at a time. 

On Mondays I've been going with a friend, Kaitlyn, to the OSU Swing Club meetings, which involve two lessons and a social dance, all free and open to the public.  They're a lot of fun, although the attendance does tend to peter out quite a bit after the lessons, leaving a much smaller group for the dance. 

It's neat, and a tiny bit horrifying, to watch the brand new dancers.  Neat, because there's so much enthusiasm, and it's really great to watch people laughing at themselves and having fun as they work to learn this new skill.  It's a little bit awful, though, because as one watches, one becomes unavoidably aware that EVERYONE starts out looking awkward, with bad posture and poor lead-follow connection - so at one time, that was me.

The active members of the group do a great job with the club.  In addition to organizing some interesting classes, they are now making an active effort to make newcomers feel included.  In fact, as a regular attendee, I was turned down for a dance by a friend because he felt like he should dance with the new people.  I am particularly appreciative of this because when I first showed up to dance in Columbus, it was the least friendly scene I had approached.  Everywhere else I had danced - Oberlin, Cleveland, Pittsburgh - had been very friendly and not only had folks asked me to dance, but they went out of their way to say hi when they saw me again and made some effort to remember my name.  The entire Columbus scene took months and months to learn my name, and they never asked me to dance.  So if the club is going to make an effort to reach out to newcomers, I am fully behind that, and I don't mind being turned down in support of it.

A Beginning

My first voluntary exposure to partner dancing came almost two years ago, in December of 2008, but I didn't consider myself a dancer until the following March, when I attended my first dance exchange, Steel City Blues Festival.  That weekend was when I realised completely that I was going to be dancing for as long as I am physically able and "dancer" became part of my identity.

At the time of Steel City 2009, I was a "baby dancer;" completely green, having had three nights of dancing prior to being diagnosed with appendicitis and having my appendix removed February 16, a mere five weeks before the exchange I was already committed to.  Still in pain from the incisions made in my core to remove my diseased organ, I carpooled with two friends to Pittsburgh, PA and participated in two days of workshops and three nights of dancing.  We closed out the late night dances every night, leaving between 4:30 and 5:30 in the morning. 

Appendectomy aside, it was the most physically intense weekend of my life (to that point).  My calves felt like they were made of wood, and each morning when I woke up, I had to remember how to move my body in a walking motion.  It was glorious.  I could not have been happier. 

In the year and half since that exchange, I have done a lot of things.  I've attended several dozen exchange weekends, I've attended countless beginner workshops, and worked one-on-one with a number of instructors and in small groups that offer honest critique.  My dancing has improved enormously, and my physical ability has transformed me to a different person.  Dancing is part of my every day, and I love it. 

(It's important to me that I remember that dancing is not the ONLY thing that is a part of me.  The time I spend with my family, with my friends, attending local events, and reading on my own is just as valuable to me as the time I spend dancing.  I know a lot of dancers who are surprised when they realise that I have non-dancer friends.  Often, when the subject comes up, they get a lost sort of look on their face and say, a little dazedly, "I had non-dancer friends, once, too...."  This is usually followed by a moment as they try to resurrect the part of them that remembers life before dancing.  While I love that dancing is so much at the forefront of my life, I have no intention of giving up nights making dinner with friends, afternoons curled up in my favorite reading chair, or trips downtown for ice cream with my little brother or sister.)

The point of this blog, aside from indulging my narcissistic side, is to allow my friends and family, particularly those who do not dance, to follow where I go, figuratively and physically, as I continue to dance.