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.