Dance! - The Road to Heavies: lesson 62, April 24, 2015. Just a little bit of 'rocks'...

Practice has not been what it should have and stretching is also something I like to postpone.
It's good though that I go over the Light Jig in my head and that's why dancing it goes pretty well. I still struggle in keeping up with myself at the hop-back-hop-2-3-4, which I like to speed up. I also end with the wrong leg once in a while, but I do catch up and continue dancing.

The Single Jig is not being practised today, to my disappointment. I do like that dance to be honest. The Slip Jig and Reel are being done and go well.

A new move: Rocks (And now for real)

On our heavy shoes, the rocks are now on our list. I unfortunately struggle with the steps before the rocks, which is why I have such a hard time timing them and I also start with the wrong leg in front. That makes practicing them harder.
I now also notice how spoiled I have been in Haarlem. 1 Wall that was almost 1 big mirror and 2 sides of the room offered a bar for support. Although we have a mirror here, there's nothing to support us while we practice our rocks.
That's is why we practice them 'wrong': not by standing on your toes yet, but switch feet by keeping your heels on the ground. This confirms what I thought: it's far harder doing this on heavy shoes than on my sneakers.

Repeated steps in every dance, except for the Saint Patrick

I try to write down some of the steps, but don't really get the time to do so properly. The next week I won't be able to practice what I should because of this and especially the rocks are a thing for next class.
What really confuses me: I got so used to the repeated pattern in the first 5 dances I learned. If, by accident, you forgot what you had to do with your left leg that usually isn't such a big deal, because everything you do with your right, is repeated with your left.

The Saint Patrick, a so-called Traditional Set Dance, breaks that cycle. The first series of steps (the lead-up) is the same for left and right, but the steps after the lead-up (the set) are quite a lot of the same movements, but do not feature any point where you completely repeat with left what you did with right first.

There's more to come, but I'm still busy translating the older entries to English. Please, be patient and check back for updates on the matter