A New Bottleneck

Well, it's been a few day since I blogged. Since Thursday I've worked out twice, had a high carbohydrate day, practiced with a tango and Lindy practice partner, attended three dances and a friend's Army retirement ceremony, and realized the bottleneck in my learning has shifted dramatically.

For a while now I've felt very frustrated with my ability to get good information on new techniques. As mentioned in my previous blogs, I was seeing the video analysis was taking care of that. By attending the three dances this weekend, I really got how my new bottleneck is integrating the information. I tried a lot of the new moves during the dances with limited success. I practiced some of the new material with practice partners. We made progress. It's also clear to me my ability to generate data on new technique is much greater than my current ability to make them functional on the dance floor. That's fine with me. The urge I've been feeling to tear apart moves is dissipating. I'm not going to quit. I'm going to slow down. This is fine. There are other things that have been waiting in the wings.

These things include learning more about business planning so I can move forward with a few ideas, doing my taxes, sleeping a bit more, perhaps doing more solo practice of the material I want to learn, and, oh well, lots of other things not related to chaining myself to a computer with dance videos. Jeez, that was a long sentence.

As for the dances, I attended UWMBDA, a Dando Mambo social event, and JumpTown's monthly dance. They were all good in their own ways. I had a lot of fun at UWMBDA playing with my new material across several dances. I also spoke with the DJs about using the UWMBDA library as a resource for finding more Tango music. They're long time friends and were kind enough to give me a compressed copy of the UWMBDA library. The quality of sound is much lower than mp3, and I have to delete it when I'm done sifting through the songs. I'm now going through it looking for New Tango songs. There are a lot. Let's just say that once I get all the songs I like from their lists, I'm probably going to have the best Neo Tango library in the country or world. This might sound a little pompous, but I've seen the most extensive on-line list of neo-tangos. It numbers about 200 total songs across Tango, Vals and Milonga. Given the tempo ranges neo tango dancers will dance, most of the songs in Bolero, Rumba, Fox Trot, Samba, Waltz and Viennese Waltz will work. Some of the slow Night Club 2-Steps, West Coast Swings and Swings will also work. That should give me over 1000 neo tangos. This, of course, pales in comparison to the amount of classic tango music available. For instance, some sources estimate Canaro wrote over 9,000 tangos in his career.

The Dando Mambo event was a lot of fun. I taught an introductory Argentine Tango class. Hallie and Edgar do a very good job of promoting their classes and it was full. It was biggest Argentine Tango class I've taught. At the suggestion of one of my practice partners, I taught in a different manner. Basically, I talked less and had them move more. It's been an on-going balancing act between giving a sufficient level of detail so that people can begin to connect and move together (this slows things down a lot because there are so many details) and teaching patterns and then adding the details later. I usually opt for slow with more connection and detail. This time I opted for less detail and more of a pattern orientation. This stayed more with the Salsa and Merengue teaching models, which I think is what people were expecting, but I'm not sure many people got a good feel Argentine Tango movement. Oh well, if they're attracted to the dance, they'll eventually get the details and feel.

And finally the JumpTown event. This was the same night as Dando Mambo. I split my time between the events. JumpTown was relatively small. The larger rooms in Union South were busy with other events. JumpTown was given a small room on the third floor. The dances was populated mostly by beginners and people that have been dancing Lindy since last September. It's always fun seeing how much I can lead with newer follows. I also spoke with the DJ Coordinator and asked to be put on the DJ list. Hopefully I'll get a chance to DJ this semester.

Practicing with one of my Tango partners wrapped up this weekend's movement activities. It was a good weekend. I'm glad to have made the shift from wanting information to wanting to make it functional. It should free up some time.

I guess that's about it. Monday is around the corner, and I need to go to sleep soon.

I Am Now My Own Rockband

The reason I say this is because I'm making a couple changes in rapid succession. The first is to change the name of my blog from The Daily Fix to The Fix. Given my schedule, I just don't think I can write a post every day. The other change is to move the blog to blogspot rather than my own site. I tired hosting WordPress on my server. It was agonizingly slow. The straw that broke the blogs back was posting last night's entry. It timed out on me while publishing. Luckily, it had actually posted it. I saw that this morning when I checked out the blog. Anyway, I now have a new name and new blog server. Now where are my groupies?

More movement related stuff later.

Craig

Hope and Frustration

March 26th, 2008

This is my typical Tuesday schedule. Work, gym, work, Lindy Hop JV team practice, home briefly, teach Salsa to my Spanish tutor and her boyfriend, and come home. Work was solid today. I’m getting further with Plone and look to have a working development site tomorrow. It’s been a process to tease out the necessary python, Zope and Plone installations to get this thing moving forward. But I’m on the verge of getting all the pieces sorted out.

The workout went well. I do some Olympic lifts on Tuesday. This was what I did.

Powerclean 145#X10, 8, 6 with 1min rest between sets. I got 9, 6, 5 and 4 reps.
Front Squat 155X10, 8, and 6 with 60 sec rest between sets. I got all the reps. I’ll bump by 5# next week.
Military Press: 100X10, 8, 6 with 60 sec rest between sets. I got 9, 5, 4, 3, 3. Vertical pressing seems to be my weakest direction.
Inclined Dumbbell Curls: 35#/Hand X 10, 8, 6. I got 4, 5, 4, 3, and 4. This was a ten pound jump from last week. I’m not surprised I missed my target by so much. I’ll stick with it.

After that it was time to jump rope. Did you know sweat can cause an iShuffle to malfunction? Well, it can. I was jumping rope when the volume started increasing on it’s own. I looked at the device and noticed I had the instrument panel facing some rather sweaty skin. It wouldn’t respond when I tried to lower the volume and soon stopped working. The happy ending to this story is a short time in front of a hair dryer solved all problems. I’m now typing and listening to ‘Shape of my Heart’ by Cadence.

The only movement thing I did in the afternoon was to continue working on the first part of the Chicho and Eugenia La Estrella performance. I’m actually starting to develop a new visualization/feeling skill. In order to really understand what the lead’s footwork means, I have to keep in mind what the follow is doing at all times. I do this routinely while dancing. It’s a little easier when I have a person dancing with me. The result of this new ability to hold the movements of two people simultaneously in my mind is I feel like I’m integrating the information a bit faster. I still need floor time in practicas and milongas to make the vocabulary mine, but I’m very happy with how things are progressing.

After work I grabbed some food and went to the JV Lindy Hop practice. I say JV because there is a full blown performance team that’s also part of JumpTown. Some of the community’s most advanced dancers are on it. The JV team is fun. The choreographers are very excited about what they’ve put together. The only thing is time is running out and we still have eight eights to get through. Tonight they moved quickly through a lot of material. And this is one of my biggest remaining issues: rapid instruction.

As Abraham would say, I went upstream. When I feel like I’m getting run over with information I get pretty frustrated almost immediately. I can also get frustrated if information is presented too slowly. I’m like a movement student Goldilocks. I’ve got a bunch of strategies for dealing with both ends of the continuum. First, for all group classes I’ll bring my camera. It can take fifteen minutes worth of video with a 2GB memory card. That should be more than enough for the demonstrations most teachers do to finish classes. Given what I can do with video analysis, I should be able to compile a pretty nice manual of class material quickly. For the slower classes, those usually happen locally. I can either skip them or look at it as a social time rather than a learning time. And the thermonuclear fall back is YouTube. I am taking great solace in knowing I can tear apart just about any video and figure out most of what’s going on. It’s a nice tool which will hopefully help me stay moving downstream.

After practice I came home, took a short break, and chatted with Dave. Then it was off to teach some Salsa to my Spanish tutor and her boyfriend.

It was fun. I used my ultimate movement training tool, the metronome, to help him develop a better sense of the basic salsa rhythm. We worked on four basic turns, the cross body lead, and the horizontal salsa footwork with a couple types of breaks and staying in closed position while breaking with the feet. It’s quite gratifying to see their, especially his, progress. By the end of this third class he was staying on rhythm to moderately paced Salsa music most the time, giving clear leads, having fun, and more motion was coming through his dancing.

After that I came home, blasted my iShuffle with the hair dryer and wrote this.

Oh, on somatic note. While jumping rope, after about ten minutes, I started noticing a little acid reflux. This is quite rare for me. I’ve tracked it most of the day and come to this conclusion. Because of the shift I’m making with contracting TA (Transversis Abdominis) more frequently and strongly, my entire posture is shifting. I’m also focusing on keeping my head back. This is much easier to do with the additional support being given by TA. These two things, the head more upright and TA more contracted, have combined where I’m now pulling more up on the esophagus. I think I’ve managed to pull the esophageal sphincter (although anatomists will argue whether one really exists) through the hiatus. This leads to a poor seal for the stomach and acid reflux. It’s really a small deal. In my Rolfing days I studied Visceral Manipulation extensively, taking approximately 120 hours of training. I know the manual manipulation to address this issue and will use it tomorrow if a solid night’s sleep doesn’t put things right. This is actually a very small consequence of having better posture. A very small consequence.

Well, on that note. I think I’ll sign off, do a little video analysis and get to sleep.

Ciao,
Craig

Another Not So Tricky Day

March 24th, 2008

So far so good. It’s been a fairly standard Monday. Work, workout, back to work and then home in a bit. I’ll go to my Lindy Hop class tonight. That should wrap things up, except for all the things that happen in between those events.

Work is solid. I’m learning Ruby as I left my Plone book at home. One way or another I will figure out web based programming. I’m also cloning my main hard drive using Ghost. This is not terribly movement related, but it’s what’s happening in my life.

I went to the gym at noon and did the following workout:

1) Deadlift 135, 225 X 3; 255 X 8 X 3 : 1 minute rest between sets. I made all my reps so I’ll bump up the weight by five pounds next week.

2a) Dips: Body weight + 100 pounds X 8 X 3; 1 minute rest

2b) Pull-ups: Body weight + 47.5 pounds X 8 X 3; 1 minute rest

This was a superset. I started with a set of 3 dips, rested a minute, then did a set of three pull-ups, rested a minute and then did my second set of dips. After alternating between dips and pull-ups, I put my weights back and then did a set of dips with only bodyweight for maximum reps. It’s amazing how light my body felt after having 100 pounds attached to the dip belt. I did twenty-six reps. I then did a set of body-weight pull-ups. I only got ten reps. That’s okay. I’ll probably do the body weight reps every week during this workout. It’ll be fun to track the progress.

As usual, after the lifting of the weights came the jumping of the rope. I skipped rope for twenty minutes. I left my iShuffle at the office. This led to listening to the gym radio instead of my tunes. After twenty minutes of jumping rope, my usual time, I had worked up a nice sweat and took my leave of the gym.

The only other movement thing I’m working on as I type is being aware of transversus abdominis (TA). For those not in the know, TA is part of what many people refer to as The Core. I’m planning to write an article on it for my newsletter, The Monthly Fix, at some point. For now, let’s just say I’m trying to suck in my gut all the time. While this can help foster a smaller waist and help display a six-pack, it has huge implications in terms of posture and movement. Having a strongly activated TA helps efficiently transmit the drive of the legs to the torso. It also helps improve posture. This is a very long story. Suffice it to say an activated TA creates a solid, supple platform upon which the upper torso, neck and head can stack. Focusing on TA has really improved my Tango walk and helps my posture tremendously. All I have to do is keep my attention on it.

Nutritionally, I’m on track. I usually eat fairly low amounts of carbohydrates six days a week and then carb up once a week. As I carbed up yesterday, I’m back to my usual routine. I eat approximately five small meals a day. I tend to have protein at every one and some sort of low glycemic index carb. I also have pickles frequently as I figured out a few weeks ago I was eating too little sodium. This led to cramping and other symptoms. All the symptoms went away after I started eating more salt. For fat I eat olives, they also have a decent amount of salt, and take Omega-3 supplements regularly. Overall, my nutrition is pretty stable. I tweak it occasionally, but I’ve spent the last sixteen months figuring out what works well for me. I’m very happy with how things are progressing on the nutrition front.

Several hours later.

I’m now home and winding down for the evening. Lindy class was nice. We reviewed material from two weeks ago, there was no class week, including follower’s double inside spin from the tuck turn and Tacky Annies. Then we moved onto the Shorty George and Mini Dips. It was fun.

Before that I started tearing apart two new Argentine Tango videos. The first is Osvaldo Zoto and Lorena Ermocida’s first Tango performance from the 2004 CITA Video. I really like their precision and power. The other is Julio Balmaceda and Corina de la Rosa’s Vals from the 2003 CITA Video; Side A, Chapter 20. I’ll do these in parallel and try to process a page a day. That seems relatively reasonable.

Overall, it’s been a pretty typical, not so tricky Monday.

A Few Milestones

March 24th, 2008

Today marked a few milestones in my dancing pursuits. The first happened in my practice session with Mary. She arrived about 10:00 am and was very excited about a YouTube video she watched last night. There was one move she simply had to do during the practice session. I pulled up Skye Humphries and Frida’s video from Bern, Germany. The move happens at about 0:51. It’s a cool variation on the Charleston basic. Mary was patient enough to give me time to capture the steps. Once they were captured, however, Mary wanted to do it “NOW!” I totally understand and appreciate wanting instant manifestation. It took a little convincing before Mary relented and allowed me to create an InDesign document with the images sequenced. After that, we were off and running. I’m happy to say at the end of our hour, she had to leave for some religious holiday thing, we were able to consistently lead and follow the move at over 150 BPM. We’re both pretty psyched to throw the move at The Brink on Wednesday. There’s a small point of pride in dancing a move no one else is dancing in the community. Of course, Trevor probably already knows it. Trevor seemingly has an infinite Lindy Hop vocabulary. The only reason I haven’t seen him dance this move is because he’s got so many other moves in his repertoire. So that was my first milestone of the day, going from zero to new move in less than an hour using only a YouTube video and Amy’s feedback. It was pretty fun working that way and bodes well for us learning a lot in the future.

At noon Theresa came over for Tango practice. We haven’t met since the first weekend in February. She’s been busy interviewing for medical schools. We practiced Mingo turns, some of Chicho and Eugenia’s La Estrella performance, and talked about the Madison Tango scene. It’s always interesting comparing Madison to her experiences in Buenos Aires and my experiences around the country. It was also nice practicing with her again. It also looks like Theresa will be more available now that she’s done interviewing. The only milestone in this practice was getting better at leading the little sequence. It’s from 0:27 to 0:36; nine seconds and twenty-nine frame captures in my video analysis. However, being able to replicate anything Chicho does is a milestone.

The journey to this milestone began sometime before September 20, 2006. That was the day I captured the first image from the La Estrella performance. Before choosing to analyze Chicho, Eugenia and their La Estrella performance, I watched a lot of CITA videos. That performance stood out for me. To this day I get tranced watching their La Estrella dance. With fits and starts, I continued to capture and describe images from the performance. A month or so ago I finally decided I was going to complete the analysis. Two weeks ago I picked the little sequence as a starting point. As Theresa pointed out when I told her I did the lead’s footwork for the sequence six hundred times two Sunday’s ago, I can be a little compulsive.

However, my compulsiveness is driven by three things: wanting, frustration and knowledge. I am wanting to have more vocabulary. I am also wanting to be able to express more of what I’m hearing in the music in all my dances. I have been frustrated by most classes over the last year or so. Either they’ve presented information so slowly that I feel like I’m wasting my time. Or they’ve presented information so fast that I couldn’t retain it after the class. I’ve finally figured out doing this analysis really works for me. I get to learn at my pace and have a written record of what I think is going on that’s written in my own words. This approach greatly reduces my frustration. As to doing the 600 repetitions two weeks ago, I did that because of my general movement knowledge. I was told as a beginning martial artist you had to do a form or kata at least 300 times to make it yours. Years later, I chatted with an Aikido friend about Systema. Systema is a Russian combat system that is brutal. There was a lot of physiological research that went into developing their training methods. One of the results of the research was learning it takes 8,000 to 10,000 good repetitions of a movement to make it smooth, automatic and useful in a martial context. This correlates well with the old school martial arts 10,000 repetitions for a technique before moving on to the next technique. It might be brutally boring to do 10,000 repetitions of anything, but it really, really works. 600 repetitions seems like a nice starting point to build a working muscle memory.

It worked. By doing the repetitions I was able to build the muscle memory and start to put the footwork to music. This was an eye opening experience. Simply dancing that nine second sequence repeatedly allowed me to access a completely different feeling for the dancing. After practicing the leader’s footwork 1000 times, I learned the follower’s footwork. This also was a revelation. In most other dances, the feeling of dancing the dance is the same for leaders and followers. Because of the way Chicho dances, the rhythmic experience of the leader and follower are quite different. For that sequence, Chicho uses a lot of double time steps in his leading. Eugenia only experiences three double time steps and one of those is an expected part of the giro. The result is the lead and follow share the dance experience in very different ways. Believe me, there is no way I would have gotten that had I only done five or ten repetitions of the footworks.

After discussing my OCD tendencies and finishing our practice, I followed through on my intention to finish the La Estrella analysis. It took about three hours to get through the last twenty seconds. I finished this phase of the analysis with eighty-three pages of images and descriptions. There are over 500 images for the 4:17 performance. Each page took between twenty and thirty minutes during the last month. I probably spent more time per page as I initially developed my capture technique and became more efficient with my descriptions. Using thirty minutes as an estimate per page, it took about forty-two hours to capture all the images and describe them. Was it worth it? You bet.

I’ve proven to myself I can add Chicho-like vocabulary to my dancing from analyzing his videos. I know I have things to clean up, but having the analysis this far is a tremendous resource. My overall goal is to be able to lead the entire performance. I know there are some very difficult spots in the performance, so I’ll be happy with being able to lead ninety-five percent of the material with Madison follows. I’m totally excited and planning to analyze more videos starting tomorrow.

After finishing the video capture, it was time for groceries. It’s my carb up day so I allow myself to buy some junkie type food. After that I came home, ate a bit, did some laundry, and wrote this blog. Overall, it’s been a great day of translating video captures to working vocabulary. Given how much material is on YouTube for Lindy Hop and West Coast Swing and my CITA videos, I have a virtually unlimited vocabulary library. The only things slowing me down are the time it takes to capture and describe the images, working with practice partners, and floor time. Those are minor. I’m well on my way to developing an extensive vocabulary in all my dances.

On that note, I’ll sign off for tonight.

Craig

One is too many and a thousand is not enough

March 22nd, 2008

Moves that is. If you’re a Movement Junkie, one move will hook you. It doesn’t matter if it’s marital arts, social dancing, competitive dancing, ballet, tap, jazz, gymnastics, skiing, snowboarding, football, baseball, swimming, basketball or tennis. You’re hooked and a thousand moves won’t be enough to satisfy you.

Welcome to the first post of my blog, The Daily Fix. If you’ve found your way here, then you probably know about my site. It’s MovmentJunkie.com. I’m the owner, operator and admin of said site. Hi, my name’s Craig. And I’m a a Movement Junkie. (Hi, Craig.) If you haven’t read my About section, and I can’t really blame you if you haven’t ’cause it’s really long, here is the thumbnail sketch of my movement background.

Inspired by the television show Kung Fu as a child. Began studying Tae Kwon Do in 1981. Continued in the martial arts until April 0f 1996. At the time I was studying Rolfing Structural Integration. I started ballroom dancing in January of 1997. I went through many phases with the various dances. I’ve settled on the social dancer identity. This means I do performances when invited and it works into my schedule. I haven’t contemplated doing any type of competition in over three years. In the past year I’ve really embraced the idea of “Dance like no one is watching.” This means I really don’t care what other people think of my dancing. I try to make sure my follow’s have a good time dancing with me while we avoid other couples on the dance floor.

Beyond dancing, I work for the University of Wisconsin Psychology Department as a computer programmer and am working towards being a self-sufficient entrepreneur in the next two years. I have several projects I’m working on. The edge of moving those forward is developing better web programming skills and learning more about business and marketing. As these ideas develop and move towards the general public, I’ll let you know.

That’s the thumbnail history sketch. That history has led to this moment where I find I have several cutting edges in my life. In programming, I’m learning Plone, Zope and python programming in preparation for making a more powerful website for the psychology department and cool websites for myself. I’m also taking private Spanish lessons once a week with an Argentine tutor. My hope is the next time I go to Buenos Aires for tango I’ll be able to communicate effectively. Last time was fun, I was able to function and get around, and knowing the language will make it a much more rich experience. In terms of dancing, there’s a lot going on. It’s a subject unto itself.

There are several areas I’m exploring in dance. There are the dances I’m studying, maintaining contact with my various social dance groups, preparing to DJ more, and developing my classes. The dances I’m currently studying formally include Lindy Hop and Argentine Tango. For pure, blow your hair back fun Lindy Hop rocks my world. I love it and have a blast dancing it. I spend a bit of time every day going through YouTube Lindy Hop and West Coast Swing videos analyzing moves. I have a goal of learning 1000 moves across Lindy Hop, Charleston, Balboa, West Coast Swing, and Blues Dancing. I’ll let you know as I get there. It’s funny, there are times when I think given how much fun I’m having with Lindy, the amount of material to learn in the dance, and did I mention how much fun I’m having with Lindy that Lindy would be enough. But no, there’s Argentine Tango.

I don’t have as much fun dancing Argentine Tango right now as I do dancing Lindy Hop. I love the Argentine Tango connection, dancing close embrace, and what is possible in the Nuevo vocabulary. The trade-off I’ve found between the Argentine Tango connection and the Lindy Hop connection is intimacy and depth of connection for the ability to more easily express myself in the music. For example, I’ve danced a lot of six count East Coast Swing over the years. For a number of those years I wasn’t learning many, if any, new moves. What happened is I became very creative expressing the rhythm with my feet. In Salsa they call what I do a shine. So I can shine while dancing six count vocabulary at will. Usually I don’t even know what I’m going to do. I feel the music and go. At this point I can only let myself really get into the music with more experienced follows as less experienced people tend to freak when I shine. For the less experienced dancers, I usually play metronome for them. It’s a bit less fun for me, but way more fun than if I were to go nuts with shines and get the “deer in headlights” look from my partner. The connection in Argentine Tango is so much deeper than Lindy that any imbalance or jerk is transmitted directly to the follow and vice-versa. In most other dances, except the smooths, those things can be absorbed or muted in the connection or compensated for by my partner. As a result of the deep connection and my skill level in Argentine Tango, I express much less of the music personally and with my partner. However, I hear so much in the music. The music can be incredibly rich and complex both rhythmically and melodically. The Argentine Tango vocabulary is incredibly rich across Vals, Tango and Milonga. Then there is the rest of the Argentine Tango culture; art, history, festivals, traveling, Buenos Aires. I can see that as I improve my posture, walk, embrace and vocabulary my ability to express the music personally and transmit my musicality to my partners will also improve. I can tell someday Argentine Tango will be at least as fun to dance as Lindy Hop.

To help develop both my Lindy Hop and Argentine Tango vocabularies, and I have a huge jones on for more vocabulary, I’m doing video analysis of CITA Videos for Argentine Tango and YouTube Videos Lindy Hop. This consists of doing screen video captures, cropping the image down to the dancers, putting those image into an InDesign document and then describing what I think is happening with the couple. I’ve evolved to this system for two main reasons. The first is I’m at a point where I pick up material much faster than the average group class leader. The second is that when I take privates for vocabulary, I usually leave without really integrating the vocabulary. I just don’t get enough repetitions during the private to get the moves into my body. This video analysis systems leaves me with a solid paper trail and description of the moves in which I’m interested. This video capture process also squarely puts me in the geek category. But I can live with that.

Maintaining contact with my various social groups is important. Even though I’m not into the competitive ballroom stuff, I enjoy going to UWMBDA. I tend to make it a class in comparative dancing. For example, I’ve recently learned three tuck turn variations in a Lindy Hop class. The next time I go to UWMBDA I’ll see how I can dance those moves in Merengue, Rhumba, Cha Cha, Hustle, Night Club 2-Step and Salsa. If I get a waltz with Caitlin, I’ll see how they translate to open work in waltz. At this point, I have to do stuff like this to keep myself interested in dances other than Lindy or Argentine Tango. I’ve figured out that if I’m not working on something new, I get very bored. Keeping in touch with the Lindy crowd is pretty easy. I have a class Monday nights, a practice Tuesday nights, a social dancing night out at The Brink on Wednesday, and a couple Lindy dances a month. Tango is okay. The Lindy practice conflicts with the MTS Practica currently, and I missed the March MTS Milonga because I was getting over a nasty cold (actually it was the manifestation of some pretty toxic thinking, but that’s a very different topic). My main social contacts in Tango come from teaching my classes. Overall, I’m quite happy with my social dancing.

I’m preparing to do more DJing. I have a pretty decent start for Lindy and Argentine Tango because two very good DJs have given me a lot of music. Nicole shared her Lindy Hop library with me. Dave shared his Argentine Tango library with me. Dave is a good friend of mine from Boulder. He’s a very good Argentine Tango leader and DJs in the Front Range community. Even though he’s a more experienced DJ than me, I have the pleasure of knowing I helped introduce two very fun songs to him and the Front Range community. Last weekend I went out to Colorado to visit Dave, dance tango, and take a short vacation. I brought some music to share with Dave including ‘Always Look On The Bright Side of Life’ by Monty Python and ‘Ode To My Car’ by Adam Sandler. Dave initially thought ‘Always Look On The Bright Side of Life’ was cortina material. I had tangoed to it a week earlier at a UWMBDA dance and suggested he give it a try. I thought ‘Ode To My Car’ was only a funny song. Dave listened to it and immediately proclaimed it final tanda material. He played both songs in his final tanda of the evening. They were quite well received. Dave was kind and gave me credit for introducing him to ‘Ode To My Car’. I chatted with a fellow named Tom after the Milonga who really liked ‘Ode.’ He told me the song made his evening. If you’re ever at an alternative Milonga and you dance to ‘Ode to My Car’ you may have me to thank or blame.

So I have a good start on my Lindy and Tango libraries because of Nicole and Dave. I’ve recently discovered the joys of Amazon.com MP3 downloads and the iTunes Store. I did not know there were, like, eighty versions of ‘Moondance.’ I’m in the process of finding Neo tangos by looking through DJ playlists for West Coast Swing and Argentine Tango. I’m also going to mine the UWMBDA library for Boleros, Rumbas, 2-Steps, Waltzes, Quicksteps, and Viennese Waltzes which work for Nuevo Tango. After that, it’s classifying the songs and putting together tandas. It’s an on-going process. For Lindy, I want to determine the beats per minutes for my current library. The tempo defines what you can dance to the song. When I DJ, I’m very interested to track the tempo of song versus number of people dancing when I DJ. My sense is there is a tempo range which keeps the floor filled. I figure that’s part of the DJ’s job; keep people dancing.

And, finally, there’s developing my classes. This has another on-going process. I initially started teaching because I was excited about Tango and wanted to share my knowledge. I also kept the adage “Those who teach learn twice” in mind. Over the last sixteen months, I’ve reflected frequently on the process of learning and teaching Argentine Tango and dance in general. One of the things I’ve realized is Argentine Tango is a difficult dance to learn. For example, in an hour East Coast Swing class I could teach the average person six to ten patterns. They’d be able to get out on the dance floor after that hour and have a pretty good time. In contrast, after an hour of Argentine Tango instruction the average beginner follow might be able to walk forward, back and to the side. The average beginner lead might, just might, be able to lead those steps. To help people better learn the intellectual side of Argentine Tango, I’m developing teaching materials. To more effectively let people know about my classes, I’m studying marketing. This is leading to developing and executing a long term marketing plan. This blog is actually one of my marketing tools.

I’m hoping to blog regularly if not daily about the movement things going on in my life. The topics will include dancing, my classes, my workouts (something I didn’t mention previously, but I’m a gym rat), traveling for festivals, practicing, and sundry movement related activities.

Well, my tendency to be wordy while writing continues. But at least you’re up to speed on my movement life. See you tomorrow.

Craig