teaching solo charleston

way back last monday night, davenne and i taught a little solo charleston routine for the intermediate class. i've been meaning to post something up here about it ever since. it was my first time (co-!)choreographing anything, and it was amazingly fun.

however, there's a video that ought to go with the blog entry. i was surprised and really, really happy when the class was up for taking the routine into the gym (where we have our monday night dances after lessons) to show everybody. and since youtube and i haven't been getting along during the few times this week that i've been at home and at the computer (and, er, not obsessing over making audiobooks from the public library work with my mp3 player), the video of them performing the routine isn't up. bah. i'll try again this weekend.

first off, i'm a huge fan of solo dancing. people have even mentioned that it's the easiest way to tell strangers how to find me at a dance -- i'm the one in the corner doing solo charleston. it's great for working on body movement without having to have a partner, and taking a song or two to play by myself usually makes me feel more centered and creative. more than that, though, it gives me a little more control of my happiness at a dance. if i'm not getting asked to dance much (frequent lately -- we've been pretty follow-heavy here in knoxville) and/or if i'm feeling a little shy about hunting people down to ask THEM to dance, it's easy to retreat into a grumpy huddle in the corner... which makes getting asked that much more unlikely. if i stay on the floor, though, and involved with the music, it's much easier to get back out there. and every now and then it coalesces into a full circle of people jamming out solo with me, which is all the cooler. (future goal for keeping myself on the floor -- learn to lead better!)

rambling about why choreography's neat, how much i prefer smaller rooms to gyms for teaching, etc. to be continued sometime when it's not the end of my lunchbreak...