Swing lesson 11 | Yarraville

(Thursday nights at Acquae Vino, Yarraville)

I must say that last night was the least-enjoyable swing night I’ve had since I started four weeks ago. I don’t know if it was my mood, but my impressions of the night were as follows:

– The class kept rudely talking over Loz and Andy (the instructors).
– This minimised how quickly we could move through phrases, and only covered two on top of basic 8-beat Charleston.
– The people were more drunk than usual which may or may not have contributed to;
– Almost none of the follows took it seriously and were a cackling mess of failed attempts at the phrases.

Am I taking it too seriously? We tend to move quickly in Werribee and we all still have a laugh and have fun, but we don’t talk over the teachers when they’re giving instruction, and we honestly do our best to nail the phrases.
I don’t know if it’s because it was Oaks Day (Ladies’ day) at the races and people think conducting their life in an inebriated state is fashionable, or if it’s just the flakey Yarraville atmosphere, but I feel like it’s steadily declining in quality; such a shame in light of the wonderful teachers we have.

I’m also growing quickly annoyed at the following habits of dancers, with many combining varying combinations of them:

– They must at all times be intently watching the instructors as we do our phrases, not trying to remember the movements themselves and get it into the all-important muscle memory.
or
– They must at all times be intently watching other couples to follow their movements and make sure they’re doing the right thing.
– They continually stare at their feet as if they won’t be able to move them correctly otherwise.

Now truth be told, all of these things are good things to do when you first start out. They’re actually extremely helpful in getting into rhythm as you can follow the movements of the dancers around you. What I don’t like is that people who have been doing it for a while now still don’t seem to retain anything from previous lessons, and then don’t take it seriously enough to get it right for themselves. At Werribee we all probably have a good stare at the teachers and at each-other at the start of the class as all the phrases are new, but by the end of it, pretty much everyone gets really good at nailing the moves on their own, and phrases become smooth and even begin to look great, with some dancers trying styling and flare.

Perhaps it’s because many of the dancers at Yarraville are older and maybe it is just a lot more difficult for them, I don’t know, I find it extremely easy, especially the two phrases we learnt last night being a Hip-Hop kick/slide and a Tap-on-Five slide, both done from Jockey or Side-by-side Charleston. We didn’t even get to ramp up the speed much from where we began.

I might have just been a bit mellow for the night with everyone so frivolous, so I’ll see how I go for the next few lessons, otherwise I might ditch them for CBD at the start of the next semester.

Fun Pit tonight – none of the crew can make it bar one good friend Asha, so she and I will burn it up on the social floor with all of the stuff I’ve learnt. She doesn’t do lessons during the week, so I teach her as much as I can remember at the Fun Pit.