Jonathan Tullett

It’s that time of the week again – my foray into dancing. With girls (no, the novelty still hasn’t worn off.)

I joined the ‘bridging the gap’ class at 7.30pm, where Mark was teaching. ‘Bridging the gap’ is basically the level between Improvers and Intermediate. It’s expected you’ve attended at least 6-8 Improvers classes before you attempt them. Despite my best efforts, Mark keeps insisting I should do this class.

Despite missing my disco-nap, I was raring with energy just before the class. It was a good omen.

You may recall last week wasn’t a good week – I left after the first hour of lessons and felt very stressed and demotivated, if I’m honest, to the point I wondered if I should have resumed instruction.

This week my strategy was different – I didn’t shy away from asking for repeated demonstrations. Interesting to note: this week, again, I was the _only_ person to ask any questions, yet from speaking to partners as they rotated, things weren’t always clear for them either. Why don’t people ask questions? If more people did, the world would be a happier place.

After emailing Mark a link to last week’s blog, and speaking to him on Sunday at length about his class, I was keen to see if any of my feed back altered how the lessons ran. It did, and I think it was for the better too. We got longer with a partner before switching, thus more than a single attempt to get things right before starting again with someone new. For me, this made all the difference between a ’session’ (time with one partner) ending well, and starting the next one on a positive note, and one ending badly, and dreading the rotation.

After crashing and burning last week, I went for the twofer this one, joining in with Sandra’s class at 830pm.

It starts with what I shall call ‘Kata for Salsa’, set pieces of foot work to warm you up. Then we switch into learning a sequence of moves for the week. These are broken into set pieces, repeating each one until we’re comfortable and then linking them together into a dance which is more than passable as Salsa.

There were two issues with the class this week: 1 – too many people in the hall. This resulted in a number of crashes as beginners salsa’d into our inside pivot turns. And 2 – the volume. I have hearing problems, and it’s frequently hard for me to make out what Sandra’s saying. I’m concerned it gives the impression I’m not listening, but that really isn’t the case. Otherwise the teaching was solid.

After the class I borrowed Sandra for a few minutes to run through the footwork on the hook turn. I’ve now grokked it.

I’m feeling enthused, and happy, and excited about next week already. I’m determined to improve, and enjoy myself as much as possible while trying.