Four down, four to go

Here it is Sunday already and I have yet to update on dance class #4 ...

We learned THREE more dances on Monday: the bolero, the quickstep and paso doble.

The bolero is similar to the rumba, with a slow-quick-quick type movement, a basic dance hold, and a pulse of a motion back and forth. With the bolero, though, each person only does a half of a box step instead of a full one - it's a sweeping step to the side and then a rock step forward or backward. It's a very flowing, romantic dance.

I was excited to hear we were going to learn the quickstep, since it's such an enjoyable dance to watch and the music is fast and fun, but we really didn't spend a lot of time on it. We held our arms straight out and on the other person's shoulders for balance and then started to do the basic steps ... Dave and I are trying to figure out the steps as I write this but we can't remember them ... this is the problem with waiting six days to recap! I just remember that it was very fast and we lost our balance a lot, and after two songs or so, my heart was really pouding fast. I hope we come back to it in the next few weeks...

My favorite dance of the night was the paso doble. I only heard about this dance recently, of course on Dancing with the Stars. It's an incredibly sexy dance - the teacher said that in this dance, the man is the matador and the woman is his cape. He controls her and shows her off.

Of course, we only learned the basic steps - you hold each other very tightly in a basic dance hold and you absolutely do not smile. You're supposed to look fierce, dangerous, angry.

The man walks forward while the woman walks backward, and once they take four steps or so, the man stops and marches in the place while the woman continues to walk backward, holding just one of the man's hands. Once she gets far enough out, she does a turn, walking around an imaginary sombrero on the floor with her hand on her hip, strutting her stuff.

After we got that turn down, we extended it by then walking around our partner, running our hand down his back and then joining him again once we came all the way around. The music, the hold, the running of the hands down the back - it all combined to make for a very passionate lesson! I of course loved every minute of it.

As always, Dave wasn't overly cooperative in our reenactments. The first picture is his way of saying "Everything is done in a box! The pictures all look the same!" and the others are me trying to reenact the sexiness of the paso doble. It didn't work out so well.



So we're officially halfway through our eight-week course and I can't believe all that we've learned so far. It's hard to retain all of the information, but it's an awesome way to spend 90 minutes each week, and I'm confident that after four more weeks, we'll walk away with a pretty good understanding of at least a few of the dances.

Dance Class #1
Dance Class #2
Dance Class #3
Milwaukee Recreation

This afternoon Dave and I are going to Turner Hall to the climbing gym. I've never really done it before, except for one time in preparation for the Urban Tadpole race. I remember it being fun, but pretty challenging. And I remember my forearms being VERY sore the next day. We'll see how today goes.

Tonight is the Academy Awards, which is something I look forward to every year! I plan on spending my evening in front of the TV, so I'll probably post about climbing in a day or two.