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
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