Standard Lesson with Ikaika on 4/23/2010

Attendee: Sharron

Today we looked at foxtrat.

1. The head position: think about looking for people behind the bunch of flower. You don't just tilt your head, you stretch the neck and upper body to left and around.


2. the exercise of pick up right foot direction up, but left foot diagonally up (bicycle ride). So that we leave space for the partner's leg to come through. This applys to feather step on the first slow, to have the left foot a little to the side to allow the leader's foot come through. (Is this similar to put the left foot under the elbow?)


3. Sway on the feather step QQ: A little like the natural turn in waltz, but without turning, rather to move through space. To achieve this sway, must keep the upper body on the standing leg (left leg) for longer, so that when the hip opens, it creates the contrast of sway. The right foot can turn out slightly a little. Keep the head to the left would help creating this sway.

4. We also talked about the starting of the sway, which is almost started from the slow of the feather step. I think we talked about creating the crease between the end of the leg and the hip here. Not sure what it was about though. We also talked about that the other day in waltz, also don't remember it :(


5. Ikaika mentioned something about Loraine's movement in the Foxchatrat. Don't really remember what it was about though.

6. Last thing is that I asked him about the reasons behind the steps he picked for the choreography. He said he pick the steps according to 2 principles:
a. Pick the steps to to teach the different positions that one need to learn at different level.
For example wing in waltz to learn the wing position, though this is not really used in open routines. the fall away step in silver tango so that I can learn fall away.

b. Pick the steps so that it maintains the charactor of the dance: for example Waltz is swing and movement dancing, but there are lots of steps in syllabus that doesn't move much, so he skipped those.