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Friday, December 02, 2005

Cookies on the Bloglines blog: Links to the Deadly Squirrels and the Guy Who Bought a Car By Blogging. This is to free up space on this blog to talk about

Lindy Graduation


Note: The following key may help those uninitiated with Lindy Hop. Readers like goldfish can just skip the whole damn lot. Or read through and see whether I made any mistakes. ^_^!

Lindy 1, 2, 3 = classes of varying levels in the school, with Lindy 1 as the basic class and 3 the highest
triple step = one of the basic steps in Lindy. In music, it's like a ta--- ti- ta---
8 step = a series of steps based on 8 beats in the music
6 step = a series of steps based on 6 beats instead
Leads and Follows = men are the ones generally leading the dance, giving direction to the follow [the lady] by way of various hand and body gestures to indicate which moves or routines he would want to go into.

And for those interested, read more at the Jitterbugs Website.

One last turn, one last spin, with an extra flourish added at the end, and with that, Jules and I 'graduated' from Lindy 1. ^_^ It's been a great 8 weeks of lessons, ploughing through the basics, triple-stepping, and trying not to injure yourself and your classmates in the process. [as Jules did with his elbow to my ear once]

And after our teachers declared ourselves 'graduated', they opened the door to another crowd of much-experienced-looking dancers, and gleefully told us that this would be our dancing partners for our last dance in Lindy 1. Much to much aghast on the face of the male leads in our class, since they were now expected to lead dances for dancers much more experienced than they were.

I wonder whether that was responsible for the low transfer rate to Lindy 2. It seems that most of the dances with the Lindy 3 people were, well, not exactly smooth trippin'. The guy who danced with me led me into strange routines and counts that I had not done before [wait, what're you tryin' to do? Is this the 6 step? Spin? You mean now? Whoa!] and the Lindy 1 guys confessed that during the dance, their follows did mostly the opposite of what they wanted them to do. ^_^! "I wanted to lead her into a 6 step, and she went and did an 8 instead!"

So maybe after that harrowing [and very humbling] experience, I think most of them decided they needed more practice before attempting the faster music in Lindy 2...... ^_^! what a waste...

And thus, after that dance, only Jules and I and another lady were daring enough to try our hand at Lindy 2 next week. ^_^! Here's to next week, and hoping that I don't triplestep into anyone's feet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

oh man! that's so sad, that the lindy 3s turned off the lindy 2s.

two things were possible - the lindy 1s didn't lead it properly e.g. looked like they were going to do 8 count and the lindy 3 followed suit. alternatively, the lindy 3 should have been waiting for the lead and not rushing to do 8 count... as for leads leading things you haven't been taught, it's quite normal for them to try (i'm sure you've kena-ed at swing fling), but i do think if the follow doesn't get it after a few repetitions... just stick to what she seems to know lah...

but ultimately, the only way to really get better is to dance and take the classes! cause practicing by oneself won't fix as many things as being in the class will. and lindy 2 assumes you haven't' NAILED everything in lindy 1, it just means you're prepared to take it further and learn more things, which will make the lindy 1 material feel easier actually ;)

ok i'm off the soapbox. i'm VERY happy that you guys are doing lindy 2, keep going! enjoy yourself :) it just gets more fun, seriously.

PS lindy 5 is actually highest, but i haven't seen them run those classes for awhile. so at the moment, lindy 4

on an international scale, it would be like this:

beginner - lindy 1&2
intermediate - lindy 3
intermediate/intermediate-advanced - lindy 4

hugs
fffish