We drove nearly 9 hours from Ann Arbor to the camp at Hilton Hotel, which is 7 stations from downtown DC.
(And Glenn Weiss, the champion of champion, just walked by and greeted my with a nod.)
At the first night we went out to the downtown, but unfortunately it was pouring for a whole evening. But we still got a chance to take pictures of the National Memorial for the Vietnam War and have some Chinese food in a famous but sketchy-looking restaurant Fu-Kee the Chinatown.
The first day of class:
| 10:00 - 10:20am | Ballroom A | Information and Welcome Session | |
| 10:30 - 11:20am | Ballroom A | DanceSport Endurance | Todd Borzych |
| Ballroom C | Yoga - morning warm-up | Stanley Kuo | |
| 11:30 - 12:20pm | Ballroom A | Waltz - "Basic action" | Glenn Weiss |
| Ballroom B | Foxtrot - "Open choreography" (Advanced) | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| Ballroom C | Cha Cha - "Basic action" | Karina Smirnoff | |
| Ballroom D | Jive - "Basic actions" | Marcus Johnson | |
| 12:30 - 1:20pm | Ballroom A | Foxtrot - "Heel turn basics" (Beginner) | Anna Mikhed |
| Ballroom B | Tango - "Basic action" | Victor Fung | |
| Ballroom C | Cha Cha - "Making the connection work" | Marcus Johnson | |
| Ballroom D | Paso Doble - "Open choreography" (Advanced) | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| 1:30 - 2:20pm | Ballroom A | "Dance as body language" | Taliat Tarsinov |
| Ballroom B | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| Ballroom C | Rumba - "Basic action" | Wendy Johnson | |
| Ballroom D | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| 2:30 - 3:20pm | Ballroom A | Quickstep - "An introduction" | Glenn Weiss |
| Ballroom B | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| Ballroom C | "Exuding confidence on the dance floor" | Marcus Johnson | |
| Ballroom D | LUNCH BREAK | ||
| 3:30 - 4:20pm | Ballroom A | "Frame: Strong yet flexible" | Glenn Weiss |
| Ballroom B | Foxtrot - "The secret of timing" (Advanced) | Victor Fung | |
| Ballroom C | "Biggest faults in Latin dancers that slow progress" | Karina Smirnoff | |
| Ballroom D | Samba - "Basic actions" | Marcus Johnson | |
| 4:20 - 4:45pm | COFFEE BREAK | ||
| 4:45 - 5:35pm | Ballroom A | Quickstep - "A Beginner's guide to chasses and locks" (Beginner) | Dan Calloway |
| Ballroom B | Tango - "Sit back or not?" | Victor Fung | |
| Ballroom C | "Improving your skills in Latin: 3 types of weight transfer" | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| Ballroom D | Samba - "Isolation: Controlling upper and lower body" (Advanced) | Karina Smirnoff | |
| 5:45 - 6:35pm | Ballroom A | Waltz - "Connection: Moving together" | Anna Mikhed |
| Ballroom B | "Closed and Promenade positions" | Taliat Tarsinov | |
| Ballroom C | Rumba - "Using your back" (Advanced) | Marcus Johnson | |
| Ballroom D | Jive - "The finer points" | Wendy Johnson | |
| 6:45 - 7:35pm | Ballroom A | Viennese Waltz - "An introduction" | Anna Mikhed |
| Ballroom B | Tango - "Articulate feet" | Dan Calloway | |
| Ballroom C | Performance (Part I) | Wendy Johnson | |
| Ballroom D | "How to practice alone and with a partner" | Marcus Johnson |
All the classes are amazing. The classes in bold and italic font are the one I participated in.
My first impression of the camp was that there was always things to learn, even though Steve and Susan had already taught a lot. It's always nice to have a third opinion, just as Wendy Johnson says that whatever we hear from her is her opinion for dancing. In the camp, the dance level of the class is wide and there are not too many champ or pre-champ couples. But we are all practicing and learning hard.
I went to many classes teaching basics to see more technique, rather then getting confused and frantic about learning steps in higher level classes. The technique classes were absolutely fantastic-- the instructors broke down the moves and talked about which specific part of body muscle to use. They teach us how to play with timing and make the basic steps sharp and competitive.
The first dance endurance session was truly impressive because they used ballroom dance mixed up with taebo to work out. After the 50-minute class, everyone was sweaty and panting, but for sure we were all waken up for the first day of class.
Anna Mikhed, Victor Fung's partner was adorable. She looked very shy and scholarly without the ballroom dress. After her heel turn class, I felt I could do heel turn with no problem. See, the good part of the camp classes is that the masters can always give you just a little key point and totally transform your dance.
Glenn Weiss gave us a pretty challenging choreography in the class of introduction to quickstep, which Alex said that the steps were taught in B-team lesson, defintely not an introduction. I danced with Jehangar in that class and almost all the other standard classes since that. He is a physician from DC and he dances in gold level, and he is absolutely a gentleman and a comfortable person to dance with.
The quickstep choreography is (if i remember the figure names right):
natural turn, spin turn, (I think there are some figures but I don't know their names) a syncopated chasse (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVTKejqx3kU) , two slow hop with turning, 2 slow hops and 2 quick hops, and a backward lock step finish.
I was happy to learn some new steps just as happy as to learn the techniques. I still consider the latter and basic are more important, but sometimes new steps just add more fun to dance, which is "mundane and tedious, and requires a high disciplined dancer" commented by Marcus Johnson and Karina Smirnoff.
In Victor Fung's tango class we did:
spin, rounde (lady first then the gentleman), twist turn into promenade, fallaway, snip turn, reverse turn on heel, and counter check into finish.
I always messed up the snip turn. Victor Fung is one of my favorite dancers, and it's awesome to know him personally. He is young, has great sense of humor, hearts Transformers 2, and has awesome partnership with Anna. All these seems so reversed to my impression of him performing elegantly on TV. In fact, the pros that we meet in the camp are all friendly and humorous.
In Marcus Johnson's "How to practice alone and with a partner class", he gave us a routine for practice sessions to follow: practice 1 dance in one practice day; always practice to music; not always practice to the mirror (to avoid shiness); break down your focus into six sessions and conjugate the focus with your partner: posture, rotation, feet, timing, connection, and free expression (which is basically don't think anything BUT IT'S NOT THAT YOU FORGET WHAT YOU FOCUS ON PREVIOUSLY). Each focus needs to go over 5 times, so it's 30 times in total. If you practice to a routine, then finish the routine everytime. After you finish, have a present posture as in a competition, and don't talk to your partner. The reason of no talking is because once you start talking, under the high stress of practice it's natural that people start blaming on partners and quarrelling. So no talking helps you to focus on your own dance efficiently. The practice can be very mundane, but it is very effective for progress. I think whether it is mundane or not really depends on how one think of dance. Dancing is not always fun; in fact, it is mostly hardworking, frustrating and stressful. But if one considers it as only a social activity, then it is fun, but the quality of one's dance is expectably not impressive. And he recommended us to read Walter Lairds' technique book.
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