Dance! - The Road to Heavies: lesson 19. April 13, 2012
Let's face it... Since I got a job again, practice has dropped to zero. After spending 7 hours on my feet without a break, I hardly have the energy to start practicing for 30 minutes to an hour.
Shoulders back... way back
Posture remains a problem during dancing. My shoulders should be even more back when I dance. While I remain in 5th position, the teacher pushes my shoulders back. It feels impossible to move a muscle this way, but even so, I do try.
Ik promise to be aware of my posture and for the rest it's 'business as usual': first the Beginners Reel and than the Single Jig. In the last dance, I still don't manage to go the right and left when I need to do so in the side-step. I'm quite glad that I manage to dance all that I know and can recall the steps I got so far.
The teacher also shows an incredibly hard practice, one I fortunately enough don't have to be able to copy for now.
With one leg straight pointed and slightly raised in fromt of him, he jumps on his other leg and when he is in the air, he quickly folds the leg underneath his body, to straighten it quickly to land back on it.
This trains the muscles you need in a jump and probably many other steps. In Irish dance, you are mainly on the leg/foot that's placed back, and most of the time, you also jump from it.
Rocks, but now for real
It gets even better when one of the girls has to practice so called 'rocks'. While I'm doing my dance, I see her trying the specific steps. Ever since I clearly saw that particular movement on the telly, I'm fascinated by it, as, without a doubt, it's the most painful looking move in Irish dance.
I can't help but stop with my own practice to just look and watch. Now I see this for real, I want to know what the 'magic' behind the movement is, because when you see it, the only question that comes to my mind is how the dancer is keeping his ankles from spraining.
The rocks 'explained'
Let me get one thing straight: I'm NOT a teacher, so perform at your own risk...
The teacher sees that the move got my interest, so he shows it very slowly. It proves to be more of an optical illusion (as with more steps in Irish dance). It goes so fast that it looks very painful, but in reality, it isn't that complicated.
The position of your feet before during 'rocking' is mainly just that you swivel on the one foot first, and in changing feet, you just swivel/turn on the other foot.
This doesn't mean that you should start trying this without a bar or other kind of support straight away. It requires flexible feet and strong ligaments. Evenso, I can manage to do it after some instruction. I do use the bar though. As gracious, fast and - most importanly - without bar-support, is out of the question for now (and probably months).