| It's been a long time |
[Feb. 2nd, 2008|02:18 pm] |
| [ | mood |
| |  excited | ] |
I started group dance lessons at a new rink today. Wow, what a sensory overload. I felt like I skipped from kindergarten to college.
I changed rinks because the rink I had been going to changed management and it was pretty clear that hockey was the only thing they were interested in. There were rarely any public sessions on the weekends, which is the only time I can skate, they changed the rules that lessons were not allowed during public sessions. Freestyle sessions were scheduled very early in the mornings and had to be paid for 8 weeks at a time, in advance. Miss a session, too bad.
The new rink is less everything. One rink, low ceiling, cold hard ice. Actually it looked more like most recreational rinks that I've seen. The other rink was just so big and nice. But their group lessons were at a better time. It's about an hour and 15 minutes away instead of just an hour to the big rink.
There is NO warm up time for the dance class, and I hadn't skated in weeks, so I felt like I was waddling out there as a pre-Alpha. The first 15 minutes are just edges. First move: power pulls. I could marginally do those, so feeling pretty good. But then the instructor wants twizzles, and she just saw one where you hold your free skate while doing them. Um, sure. Forward and backward swing rolls with emphasis on extension. Extension was never emphasized in any class or private lesson I took. Forward and back cross strokes, again with lots of extension. Must work on extension.
The class was huge, but there was another adult, so I stuck close to her and watched. She had beautiful extension. After 15 minutes, the basic classes left the ice so we got the whole rink. We were supposed to pair up and do the Dutch Waltz. My plan was to just stand on the side and watch what they were doing but the other adult said she would show me the dance. All basic, easy to do moves, but keeping up with what to do next was just too much. I was swinging left on inside edges when I was supposed to be swinging right on outside edges. Finally another coach came out and walked me through it.
It was the quickest 30 minutes of my life. Unfortunately I had to run home. I'm considering taking the freestyle class (which is right before and most of the girls take as well) just to be able to warm up before the dance class. And maybe next week I can stay for the public session and see if that is crazy busy.
Oh and my husband and I have signed up for ballroom dance classes. I'm amazed that they have ballroom in our teeny tiny little town. My husband and I haven't done anything together in forever, so that will be cool. I'm pretty sure it's a very casual class. We will be learning the Rumba for the first 4 weeks. It will be worth the price of admission just to see him try to move his body like that. |
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