Stanford Dance Weekend

It felt like it had been a while since I'd done one of the Stanford Dance Weekends so it was a lot of fun to come back to it this year. I came out of it tired, but not unreasonably so, and quite happy with the dancing and learning both. The dancey goodness included:  

West Coast Swing. Michelle Kinkaid taught four classes in this, so I jumped at the opportunity to try to recover some of my atrophied WCS skills and took all of them. They were good classes, but with a rather high talking::dancing ratio. I think her active/passive lead theory is really helpful, but will take a while to be able to apply properly. 

Musicality. This was the only class Lilli Ann Carey taught, but she deserved a lot more time (and space), I thought. I didn't really learn anything new there, but it's an interesting discussion topic and I wanted to see how she taught it, since it's a topic near and dear to my heart. 

Fusion Waltz. Ari Levitt was mixing things like tango and latin into his waltz. I only made it to one of his classes, but I liked it much more than expected, having been ambivalent about "fusion" stuff. (He's teaching it at Friday Night Waltz in a couple weeks, too, if you want to check it out.) 

Cha Cha. It was a bit of a risk taking a beginning cha cha class in the middle of all my west coast, but I did it anyway and didn't mess myself up too much. Joan said the term "Latin-phobic" in her class description was inspired by a conversation with me years ago. Glad I could help. :-) 

Cross Step Waltz. Richard, as always, wins the prize for clearest, most efficient teaching. The "new variations" class especially left me with a bunch of good stuff to play with (which really did all seem to be new). I got some good following practice in the lead-heavy pivaloops class, too. 

Dancing! The dances on Friday and especially Saturday night were some of the most satisfying I've had in a while. Though there were more people I would have liked to have there, I got to dance with some of my favorite partners (including my visiting sister), and with many nice new people as well (including several of the teachers), and it wasn't too crowded. I also had some of the most incredible flying redowas ever with Rowyn. Good stuff all around.