My Fantasy Line Dance Playlist April 11, 2012

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could make our own playlist of dances? We could pick our favorites and dance until we’re out of breath. These are my favorites. Would any of these be on your fantasy playlist?

Bobbi with an I by Rachael McEnaney – Someday I’ll stop confusing the kicks with Askin’ Questions.
Alabama Slammin’ – Another example of Rachael’s awesomeness.
Barefoot and Blue Jean by Lisa Johns-Grose – Cool song, cool dance and Lisa always posts amusing things on Facebook.
Slingin’ Mud by Guyton Mundy & Will Craig – One day I’ll be able to do Guyton’s arm movements.
Swingin’ the Line by Vikki Morris and Something Crazy (Why Wait) by Wes Smith – It’s just fun to be spinning around and around.
Moves Like Jagger by Bracken Ellis Potter – I can’t stand still when I hear this song.
Stuck Like Glue by Lisa Spangler – My very first favorite dance. This was the first one I practiced at home.
Big Ole Flirt (Nothing to Lose) by Andi Mucklow – It keeps me humble, I still don’t really know this and I fake it.
Put You In A Song by Peter Metelnick & Alison Biggs – Another one of my original favorites.
Shake it for Me by Larry Bass – My current favorite dance.
Singalong by Kenny Henley – Kenny should have a line dance genius shirt.
Wipeout by Susan & Harry Brooks – Forward sailors??? I finally almost have it!
Stronger Peter Metelnick & Alison Biggs – It’s new, fast, and hard. What can be better?

What songs would be on your list for line dance bliss??

Thanks for stopping by,
Cherrie

April 10, 2012

5-6-7-8 Dancing My Way to a Healthy Me!

In some of my posts I’ve mentioned as an aside, that competitive dancing is not cheap.  Because of that, a couple of the readers of this blog have emailed me to ask “Just how much does it cost?”   To which I must answer, dearest readers, without qualification, and without my usual drama:

“A lot!”

I.  Am. Not. Exaggerating.  This wonderful exciting, fulfilling, passion is very expensive.

But it doesn’t haveto be expensive, at least not at first:

1. I am a competitive dancer  and I’m working hard to progress to a point where I can “Turn Pro” meaning that my costs are on the high end of a cost spectrum which actually begins at almost zero.
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2. For someone just starting, who is curious and just checking out “this whole dance thing”  it is possible to start with little or no cost.
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3. And most importantly, the…

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How I Started Dancing April 8, 2012

Leotards, tights, tap shoes, ballet slippers and spending two hours every Saturday at the Turning Point dance studio in North Miami – this was my childhood. As I neared the teenage years and wanted to try other things I still practiced on my own and choreographed my own dances. One of my dances was to Opposites Attract by Paula Abdul. I’ve always enjoyed dancing.

The next opportunity to dance came in ninth grade. I met my closest high school friends by chance. We all landed at the same lunch table on the first day of school. We were a shy bunch and for the first few months Thursdays were the only day we actually had conversations because we would talk about what happened on 90210. Everything changed because of PE. We were assigned to choreograph a dance and perform it in class. Five of us met at Debbie’s house one weekend and created a dance to Janet Jackson’s Escapade. The dance was the catalyst for the many weekends and sleepovers that we shared throughout high school.

The first time I visited Round Up was about six years ago. I went with a friend from work and for days prior to going we cracked jokes about meeting cowboys there. I wish I could remember what I expected Round Up to be like. I didn’t listen to country music then and I had never seen Urban Cowboy to know anything about line dancing. What I do remember is seeing everyone dancing and wondering how in the world they knew the steps to so many dances. I tried mimicking the dancers movements from my bar stool to see if I could figure it out, but it was a lot to absorb. Every song had its own dance!

A few years later, the firefighter calendar signing brought me back to Round Up. My cousins were visiting and we squeezed this event into our busy schedule of sunning ourselves at the beach and consuming large amounts of cheesecake. At Round Up we partied on ladies night and watched the firefighters strutting across the dance floor. I also learned a dance that night. It was for Kid Rock’s All Summer Long. Even though I danced when I was younger it was a challenge to get my feet to do what they were supposed to do.

I started going to Round Up more often after that and then I started listening to country music because I wanted to be familiar with the songs for the dances I was learning. And that is how I started dancing.

Cherrie

How did you start dancing?

Dance Recital-That's me on the right

What Did I Do Before I Started Dancing? March 17, 2012

I often ponder this thought because of how much time I spend dancing. And most of the time when I’m not dancing I’m thinking about it. I know I’m addicted, but there are far worse things to be obsessed with, right?

So here it is- what I did before I started dancing.

Golf: I’ll be honest I didn’t even consider this a real sport, but a guy I liked taught golf and invited me to his class. Much to my surprise I actually enjoyed golf. Every week on the driving range I became more aware of how to position my body to use the club to make the ball go where it was supposed to go. (It didn’t work out with the guy but we ended up becoming good friends.)

Painting: In one of my classes the teacher said that with practice anyone could learn the techniques for painting. I started to see this was true. There is so much room for creativity. You can paint impressionist scenes like Van Gogh or bright, happy characters like Britto. This is one of my paintings, it is an interpretation of Van Gogh’s Cafe Terrace at Night using a scene from a place near where I work.

Photography: I’m the bossy photographer who likes to make people pose. This involves making cousins pretend they are swimming in a wall sized painting of the ocean or kiss an astronaut suit statue. It’s important to stop and capture the moment though, don’t we all like to look back and remember the good times?

Dancing captures a little bit of each of these activities. It involves an awareness of your body similar to golf. Devoting time to practice to improve your technique and developing your style as with painting. And as we gather together to dance every week, sometimes I like to take a step back and admire the scene, my friends dancing beside me.

What did you do before you started dancing?

Dancing & Styling March 10, 2012

We learned the following dances in class:

Alabama Slammin’ (If You Want My Love by Laura Bell Bundy)

Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk (Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk by Trace Adkins)

Hands Up (I Don’t Want This Night to End by Luke Bryan)

Alabama Slammin’ is one of my favorites dances. I learned this dance from the choreographer, Rachael McEnaney, last summer at a three-day line dance event in Orlando called Fun in the Sun. Choreographers attend these events to teach their dances and share tips to improve styling. Styling is spicing up the dance so you are using more of your body than just your feet.

Rachael’s tip was for the heel touches in the last part of the dance.

1. Touch your left heel and step together

2. Touch your right heel and step together

3. Lean back slightly like your stepping over a box with your left foot

4. Brush your right foot

Of course you could just tap your left heel again and not “step over a box”. But if you practice this and actually step over a box or small object the momentum of your midsection (center) makes it feel like you are on a carnival ride.

Honkey Tonk Badonkadonk was the easy dance. If your new to dance, this was your shot at learning something you might be able to show off to your friends. We might think if we know the steps to a dance we don’t need to do it in class. I like to do (most of) them still because when my feet know the steps I can focus on styling. For example, I am still trying to improve my balance with the double kick and three-quarter turn in this dance.

Hands Up is a modification of a dance called Goodbye Cha by Bryan McWherter that was choreographed to Out of Goodbyes by Maroon 5 and Lady Antebellum. The steps were changed slightly to make the dance easier. The challenge in this dance is to actually put our hands up in the air when Luke Bryan tells us. It’s not hard in theory, but as line dancers we tend to focus on our feet and we don’t use our arms. Using our arms makes it easier to balance and turn and makes our movements smoother, easier and more graceful.

What do you think of these dances? Were they easy, hard, fun?

If you learned these dances last year, were they easier to get this time around?