(Please note that these All Bal diaries appear on the blog in reverse order. Obviously, if you really want to read them, start 3 posts down with the prologue.)
I wrote this message while still at All Bal. My network connection totally flaked so I couldn't send it until now. Anyway, here is the Day 2 rundown. I'll send the one for Day 3 tomorrow at some point.
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Well, I have about 40 minutes before my next class starts, so I'm going to do my best to get something off before then. Like the day 1 diary, this one may have to split over two emails.
Day two starts with a much better breakfast than day 1. Rob gets directions to a diner outside the hotel and he, Elaina, Mike and I all pile in his car and make it over there. The food is good and cheap. The service is friendly and competent. Things are looking up.
Class number 5 starts. It's being taught by Marty Klempner and Val Salstrom. Marty and Val are the ones responsible for putting on the event and are, of course, fantastic Bal dancers. In addition to bringing modern Bal eastward from CA, and starting the first ever weekend event devotes only to Balboa, they've also have the distinction of being in the Guinness Book of World Records for participating in the longest ever non-stop dance party (52 hours and 3 minutes). Marty notices how many more leads than follows there are. This pisses him off. Apparently he spends a lot of time organizing trying to make sure that this sort of thing doesn't happen. There is a procedure for switching classes that involves coming to him early enough in the weekend for him to make changes. Apparently the follows who've been leaving haven't been following it. He walks next door to the Intermediate classes and grabs some of them back.
The class is devoted to crab walks, which are kind of like scoots but with a forward and backward motion tacked in in addition to the moving rightward. It's harder than it sounds or looks. I was hoping for a new Bal Swing move, but I'll take a new Pure Bal move. I think that I've got it mostly down. In the end they show how to transition directly from crab walks to other ad-lib steps. Learning transitions is nice, since it looks a bit silly to have to put a basic between stuff.
Then there was class 6. Oh god. Class six is taught by Bart Bartolo, the old time legend, and Tise Chao (first name pronounced Tee-Say). Now, Bart is a legend and clearly deserves a lot of respect, but:
1. He's not a teacher
2. He insists that the basic step that we've been doing for a day and a half is wrong.
3. His response to couples that he doesn't think are close enough to have a good connection is not to tell them this, but rather is to squeeze them together.
Now, I have no problem being really connected to my follow, but understandably some of the women feel a little awkward having their breasts up against a total stranger. Having an 82 year old basically force you together into a bear hug is not fun for them. Furthermoer everyone is really messing up because he's changing the thing that's been our foundation the whole time.
This exacerbates the only real problem of the weekend as follows start just getting up and leaving the room.
So far, this was my only bad class.
Next is lunch, and I just grab a tuna sandwich from a snack stand. IT was horrible, but at least I got the food this time.
We come back and we have Randy Maestretti and and Kara Britt for lesson number 7. This is a lesson on crossover steps. I've technically learned these before from Tim, but I really didn't get them. The idea is that you let the follow out to create room and then crossover your own feet while the follow moves toward and away from you to create a neat effect. The lesson goes well, and I pretty much get it. The lack of follows is again an issue after the Bart and Tise class. As a result, I still have trouble getting out of the move. I understand what to do in theory, basically, I step around the follow after one of the crossovers to start a comearound, but just didn't get enough practice. That said I can get into and do the move just fine.
We then have an hour break where I wrote one of my email diaries.
Next is a musicality class. It's very interesting. A band leader explains some of the history of jazz and swing music and why we dance to it the way that we do. His band is with him and they do a lot of playing to demonstrate the differences between 20's, 30's and 40's jazz and how the music sort of forced the evolution of Charleston into Shag and then into Lindy and Bal. It was a great lecture comeplete with audience participation dancing.
For dinner the Baltimore crew goes out to an Irish pub typle place. The food is good and cheap. We chat and laugh a lot. I love the Baltimore swing dance crowd. They're great people.
We're back and get to watch the finals of the amateur ACBC and Jack and Jill. Unfortunately, Tim didn't qualify for the final :-( . Still its fun to watch a lot of cool dancing.
Afterwards it open dancing. By this time others are starting to notice how utterly exhausted I am. 30 minutes into things I can't lead to save my life from sheer exhaustion. I go up to the room to try to take a nap so that I can come back down and dance. I can't fall asleep at all. My body's tired by my brain is still running on rocket fuel. I chill out in bed and try to at least give my muscles a break. I head back downstairs at just the right moment.
The Open ACBC finals start. WOW! These couples are good. I mean scary good. I mean, I can't even imagine being close to this good ever. I should be getting a DVD of the competition, so if anyone is interested, I can show you, but I don't even know the names, never mind the intricacies of some of the cool stuff that they do.
After that, it's more social dancing. I've got a bit of a second wind so I dance to a few of the more reasonably paced songs. (I still can't keep up with the 250 bpm stuff.) After about an hour, I'm toast and head upstairs for the night.
Wow, I did get through all of day 2 in this email. Great! I'll report on day 3 once I'm back in Baltimore. Now its lessons and then I'm off for a 6 hour car ride.
-Ian
Post Script - I never did write the day 3 diary. I just lost steam during the long car ride, and didn't feel like a remembered with enough detail to do a very good job. I promise that I'll do better at ABW 2008 :-)
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