Week 11 - did one extra class this week and finished the term with a dance party. Arrived in class to find that someone managed to break one of the mirrors. I imagine this was the result of an overzealous turn or perhaps Guedo had a tantrum and broke it.

Ian took my last class of the term. We all know the routine and automatically fall into the lines at the beginning of the class. The warm-up exercises are very familiar and we take the chance to talk while we can. Talking and dancing is pretty hard at the beginner level. It is difficult for this male brain to do the two things at once. Ian also pointed out that when your partner talks to you it means they are bored with the dancing. I was hoping it meant they were interested in me! A good dancer will vary the direction and steps to keep his partner guessing and quiet during the dance. I have since come to realise that this advice was wasted on me, as I am the one who is always doing the talking.

Numbers are down a bit this week - probably due to the Easter break. I believe there were about 14 of us in the Friday night class. Most of the faces are familiar although I still struggle with the names. After eleven weeks of dancing I can name all of the steps, and sometimes pick the music they are danced to. My favourite steps would be the salsa and merengue. I was going to enrol in salsa rueda next term but decided to wait until I had a few more lessons under my belt.

Speaking of belts, I have noticed that latin dancing is a bit like karate. Not in the moves but in that there are different colours for different levels of dancers. It would seem that in class and certainly at the dance party's all of the really good dancers wear black, not black belts but black shirts. Guys with black shirts are experienced dancers and those with the "silky" black shirts are the elite. One day soon I hope to be walking down the street and hear some people say ... "see that guy ... he is a black shirt ".

This week we practiced our turning technique with partners. There are a few tricks to leading a good turn. Number one is to lift the hand to signal to your partner they are about to turn. Number two is to guide the turn around your partner's centre of gravity. The turns we learnt are started with the leaders left hand, the right hand can be used to guide the followers hips in the correct direction. To give us an idea of the feeling Ian had the followers perform turns with their eyes closed. Judging by my partner's motions I needed to work a bit on my technique. To give the leaders an idea of how this should feel, Ian had us reverse roles and my dance partner got her revenge.

Steve - off to buy a yellow dance shirt to replace my old white one.