Floortime

I recently saw quite a few social media posts critiquing higher level wcs dancers for various aspects of their connection. Some of this can be chalked up to ignorance or jealousy (not that there aren't other potential attitudes too), but I think that a lot of misunderstanding comes from a limited point of view. There's a saying I like: "there are none so righteous as the newly converted." That is, the first time you learn something that you're excited by or are exposed to something that creates a solution to one of your problems, you're likely to go a little crazy for it and maybe proclaim it as the One True Way. This is prevalent all across our dance (and our lives in general)--you'll encounter west coast swing dancers who are zealots for a certain type of '1' for a follow, for a certain handhold, a certain pitch, certain type of settling action or footwork on an anchor, a certain type of footwear... the lists go on. And the most vocal propo...

West Coast Swing is an incredibly difficult dance to master. Just in terms of a functioning lead-follow partnership: being able to understand not just your own body's movement but another's as well, well enough to signal or read signals in a largely open and free-form framework of connection. Learning to function with the variety of different partners sprung from a non syllabus dance with many different schools of thought... it's staggering to comprehend what champion wcs dancers are capable of doing.  There are a lot of factors that affect each individual when it comes to how easily they pick up the dance, too. I'll try to explore and write about as many of them as possible in the future. But one of the ones always mentioned is "dance background". That is, having done other partner or solo dances before starting wcs grants you an enormous advantage.  A few times, someone has told me that "it's easy for you, you're talented" (because...

Just a few weeks back, I tore my right shoulder. Embarrassingly enough, it was while doing a basic stretch. I then decided to compete in my jack & jill the very next day... and I didn't final. This hurt me a lot more than the actual injury. Maybe it was that I'd simply grown accustomed to making finals regularly, or maybe it was my ego or some sense of entitlement that I should be able to final even while injured. Either way, it sucked. I've had a pretty broad range of experience with making--or not making--finals. In novice, with the exception of my very first competition I made finals every time until I pointed out; and quickly got used to it, getting a bad attitude and being bratty about not placing when I did final. In intermediate, I placed every time that I made finals... which was less than 1/3 of the times I competed. Not only was the record inconsistent but I had an unhealthily large ego and a lot of insecurity at the time. Then, in advanced I took my time; d...