Swing lesson 20 & 21| Brunswick

(have you emailed me yet?)

(Monday nights at Bridie O’Rielly’s, Brunswick)

Double lesson!
The ever handy Swing Patrol website made mention that Brunswick Level 2 would be doing Balboa basics from the very beginning, and Balboa is a rather strong magical word, so my brother, his wife and I stuck around for the Level 2 lesson after our Level 1 and of-course got it for half price! (Or in our case, half a dot on our discount cards 😉

Level 1
Em… So much of what we did in Level 1 tonight didn’t really have a name… or any kind of real name I think. It was all 30s Charleston stuff I think, though it certainly was different from what we usually do.
– Starting in cross-hand position, we back-replaced then pulled follows around to a kind of semi-tandem position, but with leads slightly to follow’s left side and almost with a hip connection.
– From here we did ‘skating’, where we hopped to the left on our left feet four times, then to the right four times on our right feet, again to the left, then on the second set of right hops, leads released the left hand and turned 90 degrees to the right under the arms, placing the follow’s right hand on our right shoulders, meaning we’re now in semi-connected reverse tandem position.
– From here we did normal walks (or pump-lands) alternating from right to left feet.
– Before we returned for the second time to do a pump-land on the right foot, leads turned and linked their right arms with the follows’, and did four pump-lands again but of-course walking around in a circle. Of-course on the fourth pump-land we turned and linked left-arms, walking in the other direction.
– At the end of the fourth pump-land circular walk, we actually went into the opposing hand-to-hand Charleston kicks that Daniel and I originally learnt at Werribee. Part of this phrase was not catching the follow’s hand and doing spins with pump-lands, then coming back to catch their hands again, back into hand-to-hand kicks.

Nice!
Almost everyone nailed it pretty quickly and everyone had a whole stack of fun.

Level 2
Balboa basics!
– Shoulder to hip connection! It’s an intimate one this! Leads with right hands around the bodies of follows, hands in the middle-back, follows with left hands over follow’s right to rest either on the shoulder or on the leads’ back also, lead with left hand out to the side, elbows bent and hands just bellow shoulder height, follows with right hands in leads’ left.
– Start with feet together.
– Tiny steps!
(Leads)
– Left foot steps back.
– Step back with right foot to be equal with left.
– Hold left foot, tap, or shuffle forward and return – 1 count.
– Right foot steps forward.
– Left follows.
– Right foot holds, taps or shuffles back and return.
– Begin again!
(Follows mirror all moves – i.e., when leads first move the left foot back, they move their right foot forwards)

It’s a very close, shuffling kind of dance, but I’ve always loved Bal – it has so many awesome moves that are really about subtlety, grace, and above all good connection. Of all the dances, Balboa has the strictest lead-follow movement, and when it’s done well, it looks and feels great.

So on top of basics, we learnt Long Beach switches. They happen on the hold/shuffle, where for instance in the first case, instead of shuffling the left foot forward then returning it, you shuffle forward, then kind-of kick the right foot up, planting with the left, which lets you then kick forward with the right as normal.

Next Serpentines!
Do a half-basic, then in bring right foot forward, then rock on left foot and step forward again with the right in a half-twist, using the hip-connection to turn the follow. Bring left foot forward, rock on the right, left forward again and move forward (or backwards) with this swaying kind of walk.

Crab walks!
These are easy;
Leads – left foot back, right foot step in place, left foot to step forward, right foot step in place again, all the while moving to the (lead’s) right.

Follows mirror all footwork in each phrase.

I can dance Balboa basics! The strangest thing about that though is that I still haven’t even done Lindy! Good god when on earth am I going to do Lindy-Hop??? Ah well, it’ll happen soon enough I suppose – I’m still really enjoying everything we cover in class with the exceptions of when we don’t move quickly, but tonight’s double class was really great, and I got to dance for two hours straight and some of the time at quite a goodly pace with some of the faster songs (once we were competent enough to practice to music). We’ve just had the Melbourne Swing Festival, and I’m at no skill-level at all to start dancing full-on social at this stage, but I do honestly think that by this time next year I should have enough moves to go for it!

By the way – Thursday week, the 14th, I will have been doing Swing for two months straight, three times a week! (Four times in Fun Pit weeks!)
Swing forever!