Swing lesson 6 | Yarraville

I’m currently writing up a storm here on Opendiary, so for regulars if you please, I’d appreciate it if you had a quick look at my speedwriting bracket, starting from the introduction, the exercise, and the afterword. Serious feedback would be wonderful if you have any thoughts or responses, and thank you to those who have already read and noted.
On to it then!

(Thursday nights at Yarraville)

Andy couldn’t make it this week, so teaching with Shob was the mighty Dave from Brunswick, so we got a double dose of him this week! In the current trend of crazy staff changes, Emily will be returning to SP Brunswick in two weeks taking over from the wonderful Sharon who has other things to do, and poor Shob is having a knee-reconstruction today, so she’ll be out for at least six weeks! Taking her place for the duration of Shob’s recovery time will be the lovely follow from Geelong whose name I don’t remember which is terrible seeing as she danced with me after our lesson two weeks ago! I’ve tried to hunt down her name from the regional Victoria Swing Patrol site, but can’t seem to dig it up – all will be revealed next week.

Last night we continued our 6-beat journey by starting in open-position, changing to cross-hand, then going into a new move called an American spin. Leads flex the right-wrist back into which follows lean into, then they use their pump-lands to spin to their around to their right, coming around to face leads who catch their right hands in our right which is back into open position. We closed up then learnt jig-walks which many of us had done before (my crew had taught me two weeks ago in our little practice session after the Fun Pit), doing turns into reverse positions and back again. This of-course led to the innevitable Big Kick which everyone got a laugh out of, a pose were lead’s left legs kick up and follows right kicks beneath it. Just for fun we ramped up the speed for the end of the class and everyone had a blast spinning and hopping about – another great night!

We all wish the best for Shob and her operation and thank Dave for making his appearance this week – tonight we’ll dance in Shob’s honour at the Fun Pit in Richmond, marking two weeks of Swing for me!