Swing lesson 12 | Fun Pit

(every second Friday at the Fun Pit, Richmond)

Fun Pit is tandem-Charleston night, the one and only place that we’re learning tandem in the curriculum, or at least in the venues I visit regularly. Tonight we only learnt two phrases, but that’s generally all we get through at the Fun Pit beacuse of its focus on teaching very first-time beginners, so we’re always guaranteed thoroughly learn Charleston from scratch at the start of the lesson. What Kate and Brad did teach though was some great low-down styling which the class more or less applied in different degrees throughout the class, but it was still a good element to teach and emphasise.

The two phrases we learnt were the aeroplane-push with an aerial grip in the right hand in preparation for a kick-out on five and return to the tandem position. Before the aeroplane push, leads change the grip of their right-hands to the firm ‘arm-wrestle’ hold with thumbs interlocked and fingers over the back of the hand. On the next phrase, leads put their left hands on the follows’ left shoulder and push-out gently but firmly in-between counts two and three so the follows swing out and plant their left feet on four with their bodies already facing the leads. The kick-out then comes as a part of the same phrase, so the first kick on count five in the double-kick is done as a high kick-out, after which leads swing their right aerial-held hands back out to their right, swinging the follows back around to the tandem position during the back-kick on counts six and seven, planting the right foot on eight having already fully returned. The idea is that on the kick-out on five, there’s a bit of tension in the aerial grip which we use to balance during the large kick-out.
Nice indeed.

As none of the crew was there, only myself and Asha went last night. I social danced with her afterwards for a few songs, teaching her the jockey-Charleston phrases I’d learnt Thursday at Yarraville, then going into some of our 6-beat phrases as I don’t know that much Charleston yet. I think I may have been a bit bummed because of Yarraville because I passed-up the opportunity to dance with Cat, who came over and talked to me – perhaps that was a bit silly. Cat is really awesome and if she isn’t already spoken for, I may just marry her XD In all seriousness, she’s pretty much at the top-end of level 2, probably doing level 3 already as I saw her doing some Bal (Balboa) during the first song of the social. When we were talking she mentioned she’d never really done much Bal, but from where I stood she looked like she was doing fine. It’s always a little intimidating seeing some of the better dancers and then having them want to dance with you! She did mentioned last Brunswick lesson though that I was doing great for someone who had only been doing it for three weeks, so maybe there’s hope for our marriage yet.

Cat: In the absolute impossible event of you somehow actually finding this diary and reading it, it’s all in jest. I’m just obsessed with Swing at the moment as we mentioned last night, so my current favourite saying is ‘will marry a good swing dancer’… and anyway, I couldn’t possibly marry someone who was so far ahead of me! I have to learn for at least another year and a bit before I’m ready to marry a swing dancer, so if you’re up for it, you’ll just have to wait XD

Back to Brunswick on Monday where I’ll explain to Cat why I was a bit bummed last-night. Actually I was really enjoing just watching the competent dancers on the social floor, and I’ve pretty much figured out the steps for Lindy, but just watching good dancers makes you learn a lot. I was feeling a little passive last night, so I’ll make up for it at Brunswick. Apparently we’re going to start tripples there too which is great as I love all of the tripple-phrases we’ve done at Werribee.

Swing forever!