Well last week a few of the TDS gals headed out for dinner in Yorkville. We were supposed to head to Remy’s after for some salsa but we ended up talking for over 4 hours. I thought it was interesting that we didn’t really speak of salsa for most of dinner. We so rarely get together outside of the salsa environment that it was natural to catch up on everyone’s lives. I almost thought we would get through the whole evening without the mention of the “S” word but soon after dinner it came up and then of course we hung around for 2 hours discussing the always fascinating story.
Men, here are some girls night secrets that we discussed! The first discussion was mentioned by Kimberly in her guest post and focuses on how some men and women get better and better and better and all of a sudden start to get worse as dancers, not because they stop dancing but mainly because they start to care more about their styling and advanced moves then making their partner look good. It is great to take styling and advanced classes but slowly incorporate it into your dance smoothly and make sure it enhances the dance and works with your partner instead of taking away from the partnership.
We traded ideas about the qualities of good dancers and the main ones included being smooth, being fun, challenging us without overdoing it and having a varied dance. Smooth means easy to follow moves, smooth transitions, rhythm and musicality and eveness in resistance. Fun means eye contact, taking the dance lightly, joking about mistakes, really immersing yourself in the dance. Challenging us means moves and patterns that keep us interested and busy without overdoing the turnpatters or shines. Having a varied dance means using all the different aspects of the dance such as turn patterns, shines, styling…slow down, speed up, close dancing, open dancing…playful, serious…keep the dance changing and varying to keep it interesting and unique.
Hopefuly these tips will help…until the next girls night!
