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What's it like at Waltz
etcetera?
- Our dances
reflect our philosophy:
- Make your partner's happiness more important
than
your own
- Dance with kindness, generosity, and profound
mutual respect
- Focus more on how the dancing feels than how
it
looks
- Over the years, we've developed a loyal
following
of people who resonate with those ideas.
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Monday
lesson & dance
- 6:30 pm class for May 21: Turn with Ease:
The Essence of Viennese Waltz.
Come learn the real essence of turning waltz; learn to turn intuitively, easliy. Left or right, it makes no
difference. Sure, the left turn is a little "turnier" because traffic's
also flowing that way around the room, but the essence and the technique are exactly the same for both directions. There are a few secrets to this (oh
no, I'm giving them away!):
- Viennese Waltz is
profoundly simple. There's not a lot of fancy stuff to
learn. The turns are composed of a very few simple elements, and leads
& follows use exactly the same elements.
- The left and right
turns are
perfect mirror images of each other. So once you've learned to turn in one direction, you can apply what you already know to turning the other way.
- You can begin turning at any moment,
facing either forward or back. You never have to "get into position" to begin.
- You can turn all night
without strain because all the work of turning & staying together is done by big strong muscles in
your legs & torso, and your arms are very loose & relaxed. No hanging on, no counterbalancing.
- If you've learned
one part, you can do the other. Since lead & follow parts consist of the same elements, you can
switch from one role to the other at any instant with no transition,
any time you & your partner agree to. No role-reversal
workshops needed.
- This class is for all
levels. If you're a beginner, we'll get you started right.
If you're an experience waltzer, we'll help you refine your turns, plus
we'll get you playing with trading roles on the fly, and there's
nothing better; it's the sweetest thing to enhance your dancing.
- 7:30 pm: Our weekly
dance.
About half waltzes of all speeds, half other partner dances:
swing, blues, cha-cha, foxtrot, salsa,
one-step, tango etcetera. We play plenty of old favorites but also
always something new &
interesting. We're known for our outstanding music collection. We dance
until about
10:30, sometimes later. Friendly dancers and always a
good turnout. We've
been dancing every
week since the beginning of 1999.
- Sign
up for my emails for more details about upcoming classes plus
info on dances of particular interest put on by other groups.
- Where?
Lake City Community Center, 12531 28th Ave NE in Seattle; follow
this link
for more info, including a map.
- How much?
$15 for the class, $6 for the dance, $20 for both.
Thursday
alternative workshop & practica
- A 90-minute workshop
at 7 pm followed by music for practicing. Make it an
evening by
heading downstairs afterward to dance to
some live blues.
- What's alternative?
Read about creative
collaboration.
- 7 pm Workshop for May 17: Getting deeper
& more creative with the Open Box.
We're having way too much fun to stop! So we'll continue to get deeper
with the open box, refining what we've done so far (including that
sacada/soltada combination) and adding great new moves. This week:
checks and reverses in open box.
Read more about the
open box; also follow that link for some demos of the open
box used in different dances.
- Where?
Upstairs ballroom of Salmon Bay Eagles, 5216 20th Ave NW in Ballard. Follow
this link for a map and parking info; there's easy free
parking just 1 block away if you can't find street parking. The
ballroom is sweet & airy,
with an excellent hardwood floor; one of the best in town.
There's a full bar
downstairs; you can get drinks (alcoholic or not) and bring them
upstairs if you like.
- How much?
$20 for a 90-minute workshop + practice time.
- Then head downstairs
for
dancing to live blues music in the bar. There's a
small dance floor down there. We often
head down there afterward.
Sunday
alternative
lesson & tea dance
- Usually first
& third Sundays, but not
May 20; go to the Waltz
Cafe at the Century instead, see you there!
- What's alternative?
Read about creative
collaboration.
- Tea as in tea-time;
tea dance is a traditional name for an afternoon dance.
- June 3: 1 pm class:
More Tango-inspired Cross-step waltz. In
May we introduced some Cross-step moves taken from Argentine tango and
had a blast; we'll briefly review those and go on to more this Sunday.
And as always on Sunday, we'll
experiment with trading roles as we do so, so that everyone gets to
learn both parts, and everyone gets a little more practice at the 4-stage process
for moving from ordinary lead/follow dancing toward creative
collaboration.
- 2 pm dance:
to a mix of about half waltzes &
half other
dances: swing, blues, cha-cha, foxtrot, salsa, one-step, tango
etcetera.
We're known for our outstanding music collection. The Sunday
tea dances are a
special treat; come join us!
- Where?
Salmon Bay Eagles, 5216 20th Ave NW in Ballard; follow
this link for more info, including a map. The Eagle's bar
is open
downstairs on Sunday
afternoons; you can bring your drinks (soft & hard) back
upstairs with you. They
might even have tea...
- How much?
$15 for the class, $6 for the dance, $20 for both.
Other practical
details, for all events
- Do I need to
bring a partner? No,
most people come solo to both classes and
dances.
- Rotating:
In our classes we rotate partners frequently, but you don't have rotate
if you don't want to. We do recommend rotating if you're both
beginners, so you get to feel what it's like to dance with more
experienced partners. Even our beginning classes have a good proportion
of experienced dancers.
- What
do I wear? Dress is casual at our
dances, tho' a
few like to dress up a bit. So dress however you like. You can see what
people
are wearing
in these photos. We
request
that you not wear fragrances or products with fragrance, as some people
are sensitive.
- Our dances are all
dancing.
We figure you come to dance, not watch, so no student
performances or instructor demos, no group dances you have to wait out.
If we
have announcements, we keep 'em brief.
- Get on my email list
to get more details about our upcoming dances & classes, plus
info on dances other folks are putting on, dances you might like if you
like our dance. To
subscribe,
send me an
email. To
keep my
emails out of the spam folder, add lunarpages.com
to your safe list;
that's my webhost and the domain where my email blasts originate.
- Our classes:
- Are
pay-as-you-go, drop in anytime;
no need to sign
up, pay in advance, or miss a class you've paid for.
- Monday classes
are in
progressive series where we start
out with the basics of a dance
and go on from there, teaching a given dance for a number of weeks. If
you're new to that dance, get in on the beginning.
- Thursday
workshops are sometime one-shots, sometimes
progressive series.
Some Thursday workshop series have a discounted pay-in-advance
rate.
- Sunday afternoon
classes
are one-shots.
Creative
collaboration:
Partner dance that's deeper, richer, more connected
In all our
classes - but especially on Thursdays &
Sundays - we encourage students who feel ready for it to go deeper with
familiar dances by stepping just a bit outside traditional gender-based
lead & follow roles. The most evolved form of partner dancing
is creative
collaboration, where lead & follow are no longer
roles people get slotted into, but ways of communicating that both
partners use freely and fluidly. It's utterly delicious, the most
exquisite form of partner dancing imaginable. However:
You have to be able to
dance either
part to do that, and we encourage all dance students to
learn at least
the basics of the other part, by taking ordinary intro-level courses in
the other role. Don't bother with a role-reversal workshop; learning
the other part takes the same kind of patient and persistent work that
learning your regular part did, and a one-shot workshop won't help with
that. Regular ongoing classes in the basics of your favorite dance are
a better use of your time & money. You might consider taking a
class in reversed roles with a partner you're comfortable dancing with,
if you feel shy about dancing with others of the same gender.
Full-on creative
collaboration is pretty advanced dancing, but
we've developed a 4-stage process any dancer can use to gently and
organically evolve in that direction, starting from ordinary
lead/follow partner dancing:
- Simply changing
hand/arm positions back & forth while keeping a basic move
going. This lets you get used to how it feels to be on the other side
of the dance embrace, without the expectation that you would dance the
other role until you feel ready. If you don't feel ready, you can
simply switch back to your familiar side of the embrace on the next
measure.
- Switching
roles when you switch arm positions: whoever is on the lead side of the
embrace is leading. This is as far as "role reversal"
typically goes; we consider it a preliminary stage.
- Lead from
the follow position, follow from the lead position; trade roles without
rearranging your arms. One way to start is to use a signal, like
raising your eyebrows or simply saying "OK, your turn..." This
is the crucial step between lead/follow and creative collaboration.
- Both of you use the lead and
follow principles freely, dancing together without there having to be
assigned roles. Absolutely ecstatic,
no other kind of dancing even comes close.
In our
Thursday workshops and Sunday classes we offer coaching and exercises
to students who are interested in moving through these stages. Other
dancers take these classes as ordinary lead/follow partner dance
classes; working toward creative collaboration is always at
the student's discretion. Newcomers to our classes sometimes don't ever
realize that other
dancers in the class are doing something different.