Movin' Easy Dancewear

NEW ballroom shoe styles available @Movin’ Easy, Pics available @Movin’ Easy Dance Blog

NEW Zumba and Dance Sneaker selection @Movin’ Easy, Pics available @Movin’ Easy Dance Blog

Rudy Gonzales told about a tour group in Mexico ending up doing a ballroom class in the pool.  Sounds like fun and the report was that the chacha  hip and arm technique improved dramatically.  For full details email them at itmood@vvm.com.

Ballroom, Swing, Tango, Salsa, Scandinavian, Contra-whatever the style, the beginning class is so beautiful.  Everyone is transformed into a band of alien explorers on a distant planet.  No one is safe and yet together they know they will get each other through.  Every type of alien is there, the shy, the awkward, the cool, the stubborn, the bossy, even the “how did I get here” humanoid.

Whether the class is in a secluded studio or the hottest night club, their is an air of excitement like the space ship has landed and what will we do now.

The first test of man with woman comes way too soon and there you have two people with empty brains trying to navigate on an alien planet.  The smile, the grimace, the pause, and then the music begins.  “I can’t really get this.”  “Sorry I got your toe.”

Then the fun begins.  “Oh I think I know this, try just a little of this”  “That’s better, didn’t think I could do that.”  Giggles and chuckles become laughs and then you change partners.  The next partner is moving with a little more bounce or charges the movement different somehow.  Then the next partner floats from move to move and you wonder where you are in the dance.

Catching the fun of each partner is like bouncing a balloon around the room at a party.  Some people send it straight to you and some people are just playing.

Stuck.  Two partners inevitably find themselves in a frozen piece of alien ice.  To the rescue, the social dance instructor.  These are your highly skilled navigators trained on the best starships.  The whole body is their tool kit and in one minute, the partners are unstuck, laughing or gliding away with serious looks on their faces.

In the whole evening there are probably at least 10,000 breaths of relief that every person there actually had fun and that no one was devoured by their partner.  Sometimes an alien planet is the best place to be.

Best kept secret in Austin Ballroom is Dance International kids ballroom camps.  Delightful mom and daughter, eight years old,  were in Movin’ Easy today talking about their summer camp.  “My daughter spent the summer doing a game that Stewart taught them.  She would listen to different styles of music and say which dance you would do to that music.  It was phenomenal.  I could see her little mind working and then she would say, ‘Mom, that’s a cha cha.”

The she told about how much her daughter learned in one week.  “I was astounded.  They had a show and they were really dancing.”

A question for ballerina and choreographer Gina Patterson:  I want to dance WITH Ginger as I learn to lead.  I charge the movement and pull her around and we seem stuck.  Can you help me?

Yes Gina helped.  She watched a few moves of our Silver foxtrot and Bronze Cha Cha.   Two suggestions changed our dancing right then. Here is what she said:  make eye contact at the beginning of a movement and then breath together at that moment.

Both suggestions became expanding insights for me.  Making eye contact took my attention away from what I can only describe as balderdash which is defined as grabbing my body, freezing my breath, and squeezing my brain to remember the move and attack the space.

Releasing all of that balderdash came only with the addition of an inhale shared with Ginger.  What a difference a little shared oxygen makes.  The crimped feeling in the back of my throat gave way to a rising and falling in my chest.  Something became totally different in the way I was feeling, standing, and yes moving with Ginger.

I am trying to lead as if there were no partner there, just trying to complete the move, raise the arm, turn the hand, get her from here to there.  How long does it take to pay attention to my partner?

Rudy has to continually remind me to give her space by holding my frame, to give her resistence in the turn.  Argentine Tango also helps to pay attention to where her feet are before initiating a move.

So I hope I am at the edge of a great divide where my attention is no longer deficet, where my awareness is gentle rather than forced and my lead is firm and clear.

Shawn Johnson, gymnastics champion, tustles with dancing on Dancing with the Stars.  Dancing has so many more levels of complexity than gymnastics and that is seen in Shawn’s dancing.  Every piece of movement perfection and quality is coming, coming, and yes it is there.  And there is more, the anticipation and the explosion of dynamics that includes subtlty as well as bold presentation.

 Shawn has made the huge leap of putting her personality into her dance, now the confidence of believing it is ready to blossom.  This 11th week I think Shawn was in shock from having made such a monumental change last week from cute to powerfully sexy.

Ty Murray, Bull Riding Champion, goes for it on Dancing with the Stars.  The bright light in his eyes and the gusto he puts into his movements is what dance is all about.

Stay in there guy.  You are about to make a new space in your brain for hip movements.

S. Gupta, CNN health correspondent says that dancing is different than almost any other activity because of the “constant work of the core muscles” that “increase the blood flow to all the organs, modulate the blood pressure, and engage different muscles followed by more different muscles.”  Proof is in the Gille who has lowered his blood pressure 10 beats per minute over 10 weeks with Dancing with the Stars.