B-Lesson, Spin Turn in Quickstep and Voltafogo in Samba

I was pretty homesick in the first few days after getting back to the States-- missing the convenience, chillness and constrain-free of life, family, and especially the friends in my dance studio and the lessons. I felt more comfortable with the harsh training and analytical breakdown of moves in my lessons; the preference probably has something to do with my serious personality and anxiety of becoming a good dancer who start dancing almost after puberty.

However, dance here becomes more and more like a side dish now: the reality of finding a job and handing out good scores for the law school strikes me too much. "Take easy, and learn more from the private lessons after going back to Taipei." I told myself. I think I have found a more comfortable way for me to learn to dance.

Anyway, besides those seemingly negative ideas, good things dawned and greeted me. Luckily, Joseph asked me for partnership after we danced some standard casually before the welcome event in the league. I have enjoyed the partnership with Joseph a lot so far: we are both pretty chilled about dancing for this semester, and he is graduating this winter, so we hold an unspoken consensus to have a good time but not to stress out.

We also luckily passed the tryout and found our names, followed by a letter "P" for provisional, under the B-team category. But this did not excite me as I expected; Mom was under a surgery at the exact same time of the tryout, and that distracted my from worrying anything about tryout. The result was good, but deep inside I know my fatal weakness and somehow can sense the missing part in my partner's dance, which is good to realize.

The welcome greeting from Steve and Susan in the very beginning of the class rang a bell: they considered it as a watershed of dance level. And from now on, what is looked for is not to dance "normally" but to level up and bring out the aesthetics of dancing. I was pretty calm for the standard lesson, but I got nervous in the Latin lesson. I know I am weak at Latin, and after dancing almost by myself for a year, I am also weak at decoding the leader's lead and partner connection. To be fair, connection still, fundamentally, has to do with the quality of individuals' basic steps. Nevertheless, since neither of Joseph and I am good at basic, Latin is a big challenge.

The foot pressure of the outside foot in Voltafogo was repeatedly addressed during the class, and I wondered besides a smaller step, what muscles and other body movement created a good foot pressure. It was not discussed, but I will find out anyway. There is my criticism to my own dance: I saw myself still had a lot of problems in the upper body and lower body coordination, centralizing the energy in the center torso, and channeling the foot pressure to the upper body. Besides that, my dance was not grounded; it was very floating and not precise. All those root in poor basics. As for Joseph, that's his job to find out, and so far I don't think I have any authority to comment. Plus, I might say things that is not correct.

The last words that my Taiwanese teachers left me is very useful: "It's a partner dance, so think of how you can make the other better. Be considerate."

So after this many serious words, even I feel they are serious, I laugh at myself that even after two years abroad, that very hardcore Chinese solemnity never changes.