Dance showcase

Friday was showcase day; I had taken the day off, not really to prepare for the evening, but it was good that I did: I didn't have much time to spare when it was time to go! Also, I had invited Johan and Charleen as guests and didn't want to leave them all alone at the studio.

As usual everyone put in a good performance to make for an entertaining evening. Alexa mentioned it was the biggest turnout of performing students in the history of the studio, which seems reasonable. I remember previous showcases where social dancing between "heats" seemed to go on forever; not in this one.

My two performances were the slow foxtrot and a salsa. The two couldn't have been more different: for the slow foxtrot Alexa drilled the sequence into my sieve-memory, down to the last step. I'm still not sure if I got everything 100% according to the book but it seemed to work. Nobody fell over. Well, a minor glitch at the end: I didn't get my swivel quite right. But nothing that a little improv couldn't repair.

The salsa by contrast was almost completely unscripted. Alexa wanted only three control points: the beginning, the end, and a particular drop somewhere in the middle of our sequence. Again, I nearly dropped her at the start but luckily it shouldn't have looked too bad. Just a little wobble. Everything else was about picture perfect - we got the lines of sight right and the dance seemed to flow nicely.