Week Twenty-Something.

The writing has got really slack and dancing has improved. No buggers have sent any contributions to fill the gaps so the website does not get updated as often as the previous two terms. WARNING - this episode may not be up to standard as I wrote it at 12:30am after 3 glasses of wine, between packing for holidays. I leave at 9.30am but I am too excited to sleep.

This week we did four Steps, Forro (the horsey dance), Samba, Bolero and Salsa to finish. We were lucky enough to have Guedo take the class tonight. As usual, he prattled on a lot (all good stuff though) and did lots of demos with the student supporters (fantastic). Guedo's talks and demonstrations inspire me and help in understanding the dance, not just as a sequence of steps, but about the movement and feeling.

Tonight we learnt to Forro in one direction (called "little horse") which allows us to move freely about the room. We also reviewed turning our partner's clockwise direction while stepping. Forro is a funny dance - Guedo describes it well when he talks about limping around on a sore foot. The music is very bounce like and uplifting. We also did a bit of Samba - a dance you can do without a partner and then moved onto a favourite of mine Bolero.

Bolero is danced very upright and you step onto the toe all of the time. The sequences are very easy to learn and the music is not to quick (at the moment) so it is easy for slow learners like me to keep in time. We start dancing face to face, with a one, two - one, two beat. The guy can step out to side so both partners face each other at an angle. It is important to keep the shoulders facing each other - and - Guedo's personal favourite DONT LOOK AT THE FLOOR. We learnt a cross over swivel step - think it was called peas-in-a-row - or maybe I am confusing my names. This can be done on the front and the back foot - I find the front foot a whole lot easier.

No more web stuff for the next couple of weeks - I am off to NZ to catch up with the family then onto the Cook Islands for fun in the sun and a bit of scuba diving. Someone please takes notes on any new stuff that comes up in Rueda and the Level Two classes.

Steve - working on his Tan.