Back to the Floor

Once social dancing stopped (or we stopped social dancing, anyway) due to the virus, I took a break from dancing. I'd never really taken a break from dancing before, in 5 years of west coast swing--maybe a little over a week at the most. But I felt burned out, tired, and it seemed like as good a time as any to stop for a bit. I decided to wait until I really felt hungry for it to dance again.

So I waited.

And waited....

And I didn't miss it. Didn't miss the socials, didn't miss competing, didn't miss the lessons, didn't miss dancing, period.

And I waited some more.... 

Then about a week ago it hit me all at once. I wanted to dance again! In fact, I wanted nothing else. I was watching videos constantly, reading old posts, looking at all my past lesson notes, and I wanted to talk about dance, too.

Single spaced summary of training that got me into advanced. After that I stopped taking as many notes. 

What I still didn't miss was the week to week socials. Honestly, over the last 6ish months before the break, I'd been feeling differently. Struggling with ongoing depression and anxiety despite my medications, I just didn't have the energy and the socials started draining me rather than restoring me. Local socials should be relaxed, fun, inclusive, friendly, low energy.... But I was coming in already without the energy to talk to anyone. I felt used up and taken advantage up when people asked me to dance, I felt pressured to welcome new people and make small talk, and I was getting complaints about not 'dancing around' enough, which made me feel even more pressure, but I just didn't have it in me to fix my RBF and be super giving more than a very few dances each night. For some people, dancing 'down' is a relaxing affair--not so much for me. Sure, dancing with higher level follows is more technically demanding and involved, but less of a mental drain for me. 

At events, the energy is just different and social dancing doesn't have that effect on me. Maybe it's the near-constant availability of the dance for those few days, that enables me to access it when I feel best about it... maybe it's the 'special' factor that gets me excited; since I haven't been going to events that often. But I've never felt drained by social dancing at an event. Nonetheless, in February I decided not to go to Rose City Swing because of my place with my depression. It was the first time that I'd skipped a planned event, ever. 

In a way this timing was perfect. Something had to give; if the community was just making things worse and I couldn't even get myself to an event. So stopping entirely and not dancing, not listening to music, not even thinking about it, was exactly what I'd needed. Some people have enforced breaks due to school vacation, demanding work or travel schedules, etc. and I never had so maybe I'd just been due for it for a while. 

Best recorded practice video before the break

How long did I stop for? About 8 weeks. That's a long time to not do something that you've never taken more than perhaps 10 days off from in 5 years. The first few dances back felt fine, but looking at the videos and comparing them to older ones... I'd lost a good 6-8 months of progress. 

Like any skill put on pause, though, it came back rather quickly--after about a week in of some daily practice, I'd say I'm right back where I left off, maybe a little ahead in some minor partnering ways. I did do a little solo practice but it was mostly just social dancing with my fiancee Fae (she's better than me) and trying to put the pieces back together. 

From here? I think it'll be full steam ahead as long as Fae puts up with my desire to practice. As per usual--I don't really break things down much practicing unless it's an entirely new concept; and right now I'm only working on one of those. Solo practice happens only occasionally for me, I find that if I do it too often (for more time than I spend with a partner) it starts developing new habits that don't carry back to dealing with the weight and movement of a partner. I'm probably not doing it exactly right... I've found that I generally have better solo practices after actually dancing first, since I've warmed up with a partner, but I'm rarely motivated to do that.

What I haven't done in a while is dial back my strength work and overall fitness training--which over the last year has been mainly a lot of very heavy kettlebell ballistics--in order to devote more energy to dance. I think I'm going to start doing that again for faster progress. For dance, all I need to do is minimal strength maintenance work and some correctives to keep my shoulders and hips healthy to prevent overuse. Maybe someday I'll have some aesthetic goals to change the look of my movement, but not at present... especially with the medications I'm taking.

Thus, practice will be pretty straightforward--partner improv always focusing on a few aspects of my base level movement, my basics, my connection, and my partnering abilities. I'm extremely lucky and privileged to be dancing with a very adaptive follow who's patient on the rare occasion that I do need to really break things down. Just keeping it simple for the most part, we'll see how this goes....