It's been a LONG day.

Well, I just finished my first dance challenge at A Step to Gold, and I think I had fun overall. I know that Carol and her family (her husband and sister were spectators) absolutely loved it. Honestly, I'm quite pleased and proud of her. She didn't let the "competitive" atmosphere get to her. She just did her bast and had fun dancing, which is exactly what I told her you're supposed to do on the day of. And she did a good job with her dancing also! Many of the other instructors that have been working at the studio a while were all amazed at how well she's dancing now. She had been taking lessons at the studio for a long time, but the other instructors had pretty much written her off as 'bad', and didn't think she could ever improve... well I guess we showed them! She placed first in just about every event we danced in... although I'm pretty sure we were the only couple in our age/difficulty category in just about every dance. It was hilarious to me during the awards ceremony; every couple there got first place in every dance they competed in... what a joke. But for Carol, it was great. She felt vindicated, and she felt like she'd earned it... maybe that's the point.

I can't call this a competition. If I did, it would have been the most poorly organized competition I have ever seen or participated in. Set aside the fact that it didn't even start until 45 min after it was supposed to, but half the events we were registered for (and paid for) weren't listed in the heats. And they couldn't get us back into those events until after they had passed, so they stuck us in with other categories... I don't know how they judged us against the couples that had already danced. Oh, that's another thing... only two judges, and they were the pro couple that did the showcase, so they both probably have a similar perspective, so really it was like having one judge. Although I guess it doesn't really matter when the heats are set up so that no one on the floor is competing against anyone else on the floor. There were never anymore than 5 couples on the floor and each was in a different category, or they were dancing uncontested... I guess just for fun? (They were given a score out of 100, Carol's scores ranged from 93-96... pretty good for her first time out)

The worst part was when I was finished dancing for the day and became a spectator. Imagine the worst senior events, with all low quality (but gold level) smooth and rhythm (Only like one couple did any international... and the 'pro' still lead American timing.) dancing. Instead of just being a few heats of this, it's ALL DAY LONG!!! It's a good thing there weren't razor blades around because I would have killed myself from a thousand cuts. The worst part of it is that they don't even know. They have no idea what real dancing looks like! They see these "pros" (which only one or two were decent, gold technique, dancers) and they fawn over them! People look at me and think I'm some crazy amazing dancer, and when they tell me I just laugh at them and say 'you don't even know how much I suck.'

Bunches of old ladies in outfits they shouldn't be wearing, and there's no hot younger ones walkin around to balance things out... it's only old ones, everywhere! There was this cute, feisty photographer who kept asking me to dance, and kept flirting with me, and loved it when I was flirting back. Then, later at the social dance, she introduces me to her boyfriend. I mean, we were pretty much all over each other dancing on the floor, in front of this random guy, then random guy is her boyfriend (ok, maybe not all over each other, but pretty darn touchy feely). What the hell. It wasn't even like, 'This is my boyfriend" it was just, "This is Craig." (or whatever his name was) I had to figure it out, and then ask to make sure later on. Apparently she's very happy with him, but did enjoy flirting with me as much if not more than dancing with me. That's how it always works out... the cute and feisty girls are taken, and you have to figure it out on your own.

The real Pro's show was pretty good. You could tell that their titles were probably won about a decade ago, and I've seen much better shows before, but for this crowd they were amazing. They did five dances. She had big 'ol boobies and a lot of cleavage, so that was a bonus.

The thing about them was that they hung around afterwards and gave feedback to some of the dancers, even though they're giving privates tomorrow, it was like they were giving free privates for a while tonight. So I sort of lurked a bit and listened in to get some info. Most of the stuff they were saying was the same stuff I would have told the 'pro' and his student, but they did give one little bit on info that I found helpful. When thinking about compression, I've been thinking about the compression of the muscles in the back, and they talked about compression into the floor and bone compression. I'm not sure about bone compression, but into the floor is important. Inga has said before to settle into the heel, pushing into the floor, but I guess I was just at the right point in my dancing to actually hear the concept of floor compression and understand it.

I've been typing up a storm, so I think I'm done. They're doing some workshops in the morning... I might go to their samba, just to hear how they talk about the action...