Comp Weekend

Well I survived 20 hours of driving... yowza! My ass is still a little sore. I could have let some of the other people take shifts driving, but we took my baby. I'm still not ready to let anyone else drive my baby; that's only happened once, and that was because I was very ill and she got special privileges...

anyways... back to the comp! I'm not so sure we're gonna go back to this one next year. It seemed pretty poorly run, and they were just anal nazis about how things worked. They were generally difficult. For example, they wouldn't let anyone add any events. There were only three couples signed up for 10 dance (only one actually took the floor) and they wouldn't let us add. It wouldn't have made a new heat or anything, but they just wanted to be difficult. They did that to a lot of competitors from all over this weekend. Plus they had the crappy music guy. The guy that did TO this year. I don't like him. He's generally a creepy douche and I really hate how he just fades the music up for the second half of a heat. It's not fair. The other competitors got the first part of the song with the phrasing of the intro, the second half should too; and it takes a little longer to find the phrase if you don't start from the beginning.

I'm pretty happy with our results though. We got 4th in Silver std, placing just behind our closest rival competitors, and 5th in Gold std (our nearby rivals didn't make that final). Then, the second day, we placed 1st in Silver Latin and 2nd in Gold Latin (the couple that beat us in gold also won novice, and we beat the second place couple in novice... I think its time for some open choreography!!!!)

I got to wear my new syllabus latin shirt... I think I looked pretty good in it. I'm a dead sexy beast of a man on the dance floor... I'm just sayin. I ordered another shirt from the same place. This one will be white and for open work... so I better get some open choreo!

One of my irritations is that I messed up paso! I worked really hard on that paso routine and then I got off the phrasing with it. I think we bumped into another couple (they were all standing still cuz they didn't know any paso...) and I tried to get back on. I waited for the highlight and hit it... but I was still four counts early! It was a different song, same counts, but different so it was harder to judge. We still got 3rd in our paso... but that could have gone better and I'm peeved with myself that I let us get off from it.

ML felt really good about our latin, and so did Wayne, but I felt a lot of flaws in my technique, so I really need to start pushing myself. I'm not getting the stretch half of the compression like I need to, and my syncopation in samba is a ltttle off, and my volta action just didn't feel on target at all. I need more speed in my cuban breaks... my chasses need to be tighter, especially my twist chasse... I need to use my core more in my rumba hip action... my arms are horrible... I need to think more about when I want to be quick versus slow and smooth... I need to actually make some jive routine... and then ML and I really need to work on lead follow, connection, and elasticity... and that's just the latin stuff that I know about...

Lots of Work ahead.