Last weekend, I went to meet rslatkin and vatavian at the Innman Park Festival. The original plan was to take the train, but at the last minute I decided I might want the car afterwards, so I decided to drive. This felt like a really stupid idea when I was wandering around looking for a parking space--and ended up parking a mile away!

So I hiked a mile to the festival, followed the parade route backwards til I found a reasonably shady place to stand and watch, stood through the parade, walked back along the route, and explored the festival a bit while looking for rslatkin and vatavian. (I never did find them--it was so crowded the cell phone networks overloaded! They couldn't even pick up voice mail.)

I had figured walking around in the heat (and it was blazing hot) would knock me out, but no, I went on to Emory for a two-hour dance workshop...went out do dinner with some of the other dancers...changed clothes, and went to the evening dance. It was balboa, which I've been trying off and on to learn at least the basics of for quite a while now. I think I did reasonably well--I'm starting to feel like I might someday be able to do this...a little bit. Maybe. But the great part is, when I got home, I felt tired, but not like I'd overdone it and wrecked myself.

I felt all self-congratulatory until the next day, when my outer calves ached fiercely from doing bal in the wrong kind of shoes--and continued aching until about Tuesday. :P

I've taken basic Balboa about three times now, and it never seems to stick. Partly because it's been most of a year since I've done any serious dancing at all, and partly because, if no one knows I can Bal, no one does it with me, and so I never get to practice.

Maybe yesterday's workshop will help with that. Instead of 1 hour of Bal in a weekend full of other stuff, yesterday was four straight hours of the stuff. The first hour was mainly balance and weight shifting and positioning; then we broke for lunch, then came back for an hour of basic, and two hours of Bal-Swing. Bal isn't as energetic as Lindy, but four hours of *anything* will wring you right out, and I was about done in about halfway through the third hour. I had a snack, though, and kept going to the bitter end.

I'm not sure I retained much more than the basic step and maybe break time, but that's progress of a sort. Plus, it was a small class, so everyone there now knows to practice with me--and is at about the same level, so I don't need to be embarrassed asking them to dance.

Oh, if you want to know what Balboa is, here's an example. It's mainly defined by that close hold and shuffly step style. If you watch long enough to see the dancers open up and spin, that's Bal-Swing.I will probably never look this good, at either one, but a gal can dream.

The gym at the Decatur rec center was crowded with five or six lines of dancers, at least 10 people deep, all working on the same Charleston combination. It was like watching one of those documentaries on the making of a Broadway musical, or the opening scenes of "A Chorus Line," before the final cuts are made.

That was the beginner class for this morning.

Yours truly wandered down to see what was going on in the intermediate Lindy class--and stayed. Less than two months ago, I started Lindy classes at Emory with Ben Lovelace: basic footwork, swingouts, Lindy circle, and a lead into basic Charleston. This weekend, I learned to put the swivels into my footwork, and added at least three new combinations to my dance vocabulary. I'm no longer a beginning Lindy Hopper. Swing me out, baby.

I'm still a beginner at Charleston, but now I know more than the basic footwork, and I can do a tuck-turn into tandem. Yeah, I know, this will mean nothing to most people reading this, but allow me my little brag--this is the same combination that had me sitting down in frustration in an August Hot Jam workshop. Getting back out of it is slightly trickier, but is more of a burden on my lead than on me, so I'm safe as long as I have a solid lead. Of course, I can't do any of it consistently well, or even reliably get it right every time, but the groundwork is there.

As for Balboa, I'm a raw tyro, but after two hours in the tender care of Bobby and Kate, I can do the basic footwork, break time footwork, a turnout, and a lead into lollies. (Lolly, lolly, lolly, get your dance steps here! Got a lot of jolly lolly dance steps here!)