The New Me.

Gentleman, apologies: this is going to be a girly post, so you might want to skip the rest of it. However, since you made it all the way to this blog, you might as well check out this video about last weekend's Swingsation, which nicely puts together many things that happened there:

So, into the girly stuff! First of all, I finally got myself new dance high heels, even two pairs of them! My old shoes are so worn out that I felt embarrassed to wear them in the dance parties. One nice thing I have learned here in Brisbane is wearing high heels when dancing Zouk, which used to be something I rather didn't do. I was simply feeling more comfortable with my sneakers and didn't want to disturb my dancing experiences with worrying about my balance in high heels. Because here are so many Zouk parties around, I've had plenty of opportunities to get rid of this bad habit and got used to wearing heels. It is just a matter of practice and adjusting really. The more I wear heels the more comfortable I feel with them and the more I want to wear them.

Anyway, back to my new pretty shoes! There is this nice lady in Brisbane who has a dance shoe shop at her house in Annerly, and that's where I headed on Wednesday before Swingsation. I was desperate getting a pair of West Coasting shoes for the event since I sure didn't want to wear my dance sneakers for the whole event. My challenging plan was to find a pair that I could dance both West Coast and Zouk with. Challenging because West Coast dancers wear block heel shoes that no one uses in Latin world. Well, I was lucky to find the perfect "compromise" shoes: more Latin style but with wider and lower heels suitable for WCS. I also grabbed a new beautiful pair of Zouk shoes with me, and I can't wait to drive them in on this weekend on DouDoule! There is a good possibility that I'll visit the lady again before going back home. Too many pretty shoes to choose from!

Another girly thing worth mentioning is that I'm no longer a curly blond but a short brunette. I took my curls around an year ago, because I wanted to get that thick and voluminous Zouk hair that wouldn't fizzle out during the parties. My curls served me well but they made my hair in such a bad condition that I simply had to cut it away. I've never had this short hair, so it was kind of a big decision for me. It might feel weird not being able to swing my hair while dancing Zouk, but I since far I've liked the transformation. Isn't it funny that dancing affects to all of my decisions, even the choice of a hair cut! I don't have a nice dancing picture of my new hair yet, but here is a WCS video from last night:

Pretty different look, huh! By the way, please take into account how short time I've been dancing West Coast while watching the video. I still have long way to go, as you can see. The leader I'm dancing with in the video is someone who have helped me a lot with my West Coast. One of the persons who I'll definitely miss when I get back home.

So, this weekend it is time for Doudoule Latin Dance Camp! Those who know me and browse through the artists in the web page can easily guess with who of them I'm dying to dance with. Its going to be yet another amazing dancing weekend!

We Should Consider Every Day Lost On Which We Have Not Danced At Least Once.

This week has proven me that dancing can be quite an exercise. After a busy dance week my body feels so exhausted and tired I started to wonder if I did a bit too much dancing during the week. I have also been starving all the time the last two weeks. Seriously, dancing cannot need that much energy that my body is carving! Well, this must be good practice for the next weekend's incoming Zouk festival. Oh, its going to be awesome, I tell you!

This week has been special at least for two reasons. Firstly, on Monday I checked out Footlight's new dance ware store and got myself new lower high-heels for the Zouk festival. I've had this negative attitude against dancing Zouk in high-heels but finally I decided to get rid of that mentality. Besides, if I think I cannot do something, I most probably won't be able to do it. Yes, high-heels disturb my balance but I've found out that dancing Zouk with heels is not an impossible mission after all. I think I did quite well in a practice with JV and Friday's party in HSA. I have started to use more high-heels also in ballroom dance parties. Just a some more practice and my balance will be fine I think. This might sound funny to you but this discovery simply made me happy. It was kind of excelling myself and my old way of thinking.

Another speciality was that I had dance practices with not one but two new leaders I haven't had one-to-one practices before. Or actually the number is technically even three because on Thursday evening I had an extempore Bachata practice with a HOT dance teacher after being dumped by someone with who I agreed to have practice that evening (you recognize yourself, so shame on you!). Anyway, Wednesday evening after my Voguing class I went zoukking with Carlos who had asked me to practice with him after reading my last blog posting. You get what you ask, huh! I find it useful to practice with someone with who I haven't been dancing much since I seem to identify some strengths and weaknesses I haven't paid attention before. It also makes me feel good if I can give some advice to someone else. Many dancers have helped me improve my dancing so why not to do the same myself if I have skills to do that.

On Friday then again I had my first practice with Bob. I had danced with him only couple of times in HOT's and POT's parties, and even though our dance backgrounds and styles differ a lot I instantly felt a great connection with him in the dance floor. I am usually really shy on asking anyone to have a dance practice with me, especially if I don't know the person, but this time my burst of courage paid back when he agreed without further ado. I had a great time with him and by chance we even had one dance teacher present in the practice to give us some feedback. Funny how fast three hours can go! Let's do this again some time soon, shall we Bob?

“In answer to a question you asked me not a long ago, a question I didn’t answer at the time…it is worth it. Love is a perilous dance too, you see. And if we stop dancing, we’ll die. Don’t ever stop dancing.” - Kate Avery Ellison

Yy, Kaa, Pusi Pusi.

On Thursday's intermediate HOT-dance class I got to know once again a new dance: Humppa. Apparently Humppa is not one of the most popular Finnish ballroom dances since there were only around ten people in the class compared to the normal 20-30 dancers' group. Humppa is a fast Finnish music style and the dance reminded me of Samba. The basic step has a lots of bounce as Samba does, but the rhythm is different, 4/4 beat, and the hip movement is missing. I was a bit afraid of going to the intermediate class with no experience of Humppa, but it turned out that also the others had difficulties with the basics, so we spend most of the time practicing the basic step and simple figures. Humppa is really energy consuming dance so all of us were quite exhausted after jumping around for two hours. I felt sorry for the leaders because they didn't have any breaks between dance partners; at least us followers could rest while waiting the next dance.

After "warming up" with Humppa, many of us continued to an advanced class of Cuban Salsa, which attracted lots of dancers who normally don't come there. Also for me this was a dance class I didn't want to miss! Even though the class level was advanced, we started from the very beginning. For me this was perfect because Cuban Salsa differs from the Salsa style I'm used to even with the basic steps. The hardest thing for me was to keep my knees bent all the time and to restrict my hip movement only to side to side movement (not to do the 8-shaped movement that I tend to do automatically). We also practiced some really basic Cuban Salsa figures, such as pausa, dile que no and dile que si. We'll have Cuban Salsa also for the next two times so we'll have time for some more advanced figures in the coming weeks.

On Friday I had my first actual Spex practice. As I told before, I'm going to dance in five dances in our student musical Spex. Since I cannot reveal the songs, I'm going to call the dances with numbers 1-5 in the order they appear in the show. So Friday's practice was for a dance 1, and this dance's song is definitely one of my favorite ones in the Spex. The choreographer for the dance 1 is one of the Spex dancer's sisters' boyfriend (someone correct me if I got this wrong!) and he is a dance teacher in Footlight dance school. In addition to his great skills in dancing and teaching we were able to use the dance school's space, which is a perfect place to practice! From the first glimpse, the choreography seems really awesome. It has lots of small tricks that look great but are not too hard to learn. I think most of the girls (including me) dancing in this dance don't have much experience in this dance style so the choreography couldn't even be too challenging or we wouldn't learn it well within the limited time we have. Because this dance style is totally new for me, even the simple and basic things takes a lot of time to learn, and most of the time I was the slowest one to get the steps. This leads to one thing that I really liked about our choreographer: he looked at me many times with a patient and kind look as saying "yes, be both know that you are doing many moves wrong but don't worry, you'll get them with time!". I could see after the practice that I wasn't the only one who got really excited about this dance and the choreography. I'm telling you: it's going to be spectacular!

In Friday we had also a small Spex dancers' evening party at one of the dancer's cozy apartment. Everybody brought something small to eat which ended up a table full of different kind yummy treats. We ate well, took some drinks and got to know each others. We, for example, played this game "who of us would most probably..." which revealed some interesting things about the other dancers. I must say the evening was a success and everybody had lots and lots of fun. I can't remember when was the last time I laughed that much (no wonder my abbs hurt when I woke up this morning)! Around midnight we headed to a near bar called Korjaamo from where we later continued to Roska for some party dancing. Around 2:30 am I was already heading to the main bus station with two other dancers to get a bus home, but we ended up to this new night club on our way and danced until the place closed! Today it wasn't a hard decision to skip the dance class I was planning on going and to sleep late. Thank you all Spexers for the unforgettable night!

By the way, today I finally bought myself new dancing shoes! I love my high-heels but they just don't go with every dance and I have been needing flat shoes for a long time. I went to Suomen Tanssitarvike and after trying on different kind of shoes I settled on black leather sneaker-like dancing shoes. They just felt the right pair for me the moment I put them on. I can't wait to wear them in tomorrow's practice and see if they were worth of the buy!

Dancing Without Shoes?

Even though we came home quite late on Sunday, we didn't even think of skipping our Monday's practice. When we got to our ballroom, we faced some problems though: there was a Pilates group starting their session in the same place! It turned out that the person who is in charge of the place double booked it for both of us. He called me later that evening and asked if we were still using the place. I simply replied that we have made a contract untill the end of this month and we are not planning to quit. He didn't sound happy. What I am worried now is that if we are able to get practicing time for the summer at all. The person said that he would like to cool down the usage of the place for the summer because he doesn't want to stress too much about it during his holidays. Since when one person can decide on these things? If he cannot handle the job why did he even volunteer for it? And why the Pilates group can have their practice and we cannot? Do not get me wrong, I have nothing against Pilates but I am just so displeased about this situation! Where can we practice if we loose our practicing place? I cannot even imagine summer without dancing, it would drive me crazy.

After all, the Pilates group gave up and we were able to have our practice. This was the first practice we had our shoes on and, geez, it was like going back to the starting point! I wasn't even able to do basic Rumba walk without Nic holding me up. It was quite hilarious I must admit, like a baby learning how to walk. It was even harder with Standard dances because my shoes are for Latin. Also, my feet got tired quite fast, especially ball of the feet. Well that was expected after dancing two days running with new shoes on during the weekend. I am quite proud of myself not to get upset about doing really bad. The old me would have been discouraged but this time I was just laughing at myself looking so funny. And in the end I was already making some progress with my balance just in couple of hours.

So, I am not worrying too much about the slight come-down, because I just need some time to get used to dancing with my shoes on. I learned it before so I can learn it again, right? Let's just hope we can sort out our practice place problem so I can keep on learning.

This Is My Dancing Partner.

In addition to Hassen Tanzt our weekend in Germany included also other dancing activities. Both Friday and Saturday evenings we went to Nic's old dancing school Tanzschule Bier (www.tanzschule-bier.de). On Friday there was a ballroom dancing evening where we met couple of Nic's friends from his competition dancing times and they turned out to be really awesome people. I took my new dancing shoes with me and they proved to be excellent and the most comfortable shoes I have ever worn. My shoes were also noticed by Nic's friends ("what, do you have PAOUL's dancing shoes, how is that possible?!"). It was quite hard, though, to dance with the shoes for the first time especially to Standards since my balance was placed differently.

What I was surprised and what made me so happy was that every time Nic introduced me to someone I was always referred as his dancing partner. Not a friend nor something else, but a dancing partner. I don't know much about dancer circles but I know this: dancing partner isn't anyone, s/he is someone really special and important. You don't go around introducing your new dancing partner just like that. Yes, one of Nic's motives taking me to his dancing school was to show me off, and you know what, I don't mind! It just shows that he is so proud of having me as his dancing partner. It was like making things official if you could say that.

On Friday I danced Slow Waltz for the first time with someone else than Nic when Nic's friend, who is a competition dancer, asked me to dance with him. I struggled so much to follow his lead I cannot believe. He took so long steps and his signals were so different from Nic's, plus it didn't help I was wearing my dancing shoes for the first time. Actually I felt like I let Nic down not being able to show what he has taught me, but later Nic told me that his friend saw a great deal of potential in me. I think I was able to make a good impression to Nic's other friends too. What a relief!

Saturday's Salsa party "Salsa Mea" was just awesome. I wore my new Salsa skirt and I don't know if it was that, the tequila shot or the things I learned form Hessen Tanzt but I was on fire in the dance floor! I knew I had improved since last time even without looking at Nic's amazed look in his eyes. Even Nic's friends commented to him that they would have never guessed that we have been practicing only for three months. Well, I guess it is as Nic said: you can learn to salsa only by doing it.

The Shoes.

 Today me and Nic flew to Germany and spent the day around his home town Wiesbaden. The city was nice and Nic was being the perfect tour guide but the best part of the day was when he took me to a “secret place” that turned out to be a dancing shoe shop called V. Agresti GbR. This shop is the only one in whole Germany that sells PAOUL dancing shoes and it just happens to be next to Nic’s place in Wiesbaden. Nic has bought all his dancing shoes from Agresti and I was told it is one of the best places to get your shoes. I was so excited when I found out where we were going since I absolutely love shoes and I really needed a good pair of dancing shoes since I didn’t have any.

Basically there were three different categories of dancing shoes there divided by the height of the heels. First I totally fell in love with one pair that had beautiful golden high heels, but after walking around for a while they turned out to be too high. After all, I am supposed to dance with the shoes so they have to not only look beautiful but also fit perfectly and feel comfortable. If the heels are too high I would have lots of problems with my balance.

The too high heels.

After trying some more shoes the lady who has been running the place for years brought me a pair that immediately felt so comfy in my feet. They were black, satin-looking shiny high heels that I looked awesome wearing. It didn’t take long to realize this pair was about to became my first ever dancing shoes. What I didn’t expect was that Nic had decided to give them for me as my 25^th birthday present! I don’t know what I have done to get him as my dancing partner.

After stepping out from the shop carrying my new Italian lovers I couldn’t stop smiling (and I still can’t!). I don’t know when the last time I felt this happy was. I love love love the shoes so much! They are just perfect. I cannot wait wearing them tonight! Thank you so so much Nic!

So here they are, aren't they pretty?