Life Again. . .

It seems that I have once again survived another week of Dancesport. What a relief that it's over. For those of you who don't dance, Dancesport is a sort of high cost/reward type of event. In essence, life outside of dance is put on hold for a week, and all energy is placed into dancing at the highest level possible. Dance is fun, but a week of focusing on nothing else tends to be quite draining. I shall try to illustrate why.

My week actually began over a week ago at a warm up competition at Hillcrest High School in SLC. For those of you who don't know what the heck Dancesport is, here is my succinct definition; a competitive event where ballroom dancers go to show off their fancy moves in front of a panel of judges who make split second judgments between couples based on posture, smile, balance, rhythm, costume, etc. . . Anyway, Hillcrest was a disaster for my partner and I. We only competed in one event, Novice Latin, so we made the drive up there with high hopes and came away (an hour later) rather crushed after being eliminated--for good reason--in the first round. I have no scientific explanation for what happened. It just did. The end.

That was how this whole adventure started. On Tuesday, my Latin partner and I met with our coach (who was a judge at Hillcrest) and he was rather truthful with us--perhaps a bit more truthful with me than with her--which is good, because I find the truth to be helpful. But I don't really like hearing it that much. Still, it was nothing that White Zombie's "More Human than Human" couldn't cure in a few minutes. I came out of the whole experience with a new found determination to practice. Unfortunately the net result of practice times for my partner and I the week of Dancesport was only about 1.5 hours--not my fault--and the only real result was an elbow to the face, which, if it had been maybe a centimeter higher, would have broken my nose. I've never been hit in the nose that hard before.

Even with a little practice as we had, I feel totally redeemed, for the most part, from the debacle at Hillcrest. We danced the Novice Latin category again on Friday, and we danced worlds better. We made it to the second round--not that far, but a big improvement from the previous week--who knows, if we practiced to the point where we knew our routines instinctively we might have made it much farther.

On Saturday we competed in the Pre-Champ Latin event, which is the next level up and, consequently, much more difficult. This time did not go quite as smoothly, and I admit that I had a complete brain fart at the beginning of our Samba, so that the first 15-20 seconds were absolute patheticism. 180 (beginning) students could dance better than I was doing at that point. And then my shoe came untied and I almost died. And then, my partner's dress sliced open my finger and I bled all over her gloves and I had to madly scramble to stop the bleeding before the Rumba, which, though without the drama and violence, wasn't really danced any better. By some miracle, we still made it to the second round. Ahhh, the sweet taste of redemption; we danced much better, though this time, Samba again, I got an elbow to the solar plexus that had me gasping for air for several steps. Dance is so fun! We were eliminated thereafter.

Meanwhile, my Standard partner and I, as of say, a week ago, had no clue how to dance our quickstep--a six sided routine thrown at us in an hour by our coach. And our waltz was suspect as well. But, with two lessons this week, and a last minute practice session, we managed to get to the point where we could dance them. . . kind of. So, we danced the Novice Standard event, and got cut the first round. I kind of expected this, but I have high hopes for my Standard partner and I. There are moments that suggest the potential for dramatic improvement by the March competition.

Last of all I competed in the Gold Bar Cha-cha, a class event. The most advanced technique class at BYU. . . what was I doing there? I'm not sure. Still, I was confident for this event because my partner and I had excellent connection and a good knowledge of our routine, and we did dance well, though my partner got sliced on the wrist by a broken bracelet. We got cut the second round, which was disappointing, but not unexpected because of the quality of the dancers in this event.

Anyway, Dancesport is over. Now life starts again. . . and it's actually a bit of a relief.

Pictures later.