Hello Progress!

 This week's lessons went well. Lots of dancing. Lots of working on other stuff on my own. 

Preliminary Dancez -  We ran all of these with the music and they are in pretty good shape. I'm ready to test them and get them done already. I have my eyes set on February 19th for testing. Christopher would like me to wear my dance dress to one of our lessons next week to get the feel for the longer skirt. There might be a bit more drag so it's good to get a feel for it now than to have be a surprise on test day. 

Pre-Bronze Dancez - I worked on these quite a bit on my own and today I was able to do the Cha Cha and the Swing with the music. This was actually the first time I have felt like I knew the dances well enough to skate them to music and I surprised myself! It wasn't awful! Yay! The Cha Cha felt really good. Like, to the point where I would feel okay maybe testing it? The Swing felt good overall but an odd thing happened when I skated it to the music. My RBO swing roll got wonky in the arms. I think part of it was anxiety about so many people on the ice while I was doing it. That always makes me nervous. It was hard to focus on a good swing roll when I was trying not to run into a child. I did Fiesta Tango on its own without the music. I still don't feel 100% on this one so it might be while before I can set it to music. But, I know the steps and my timing is okay, just not up to tempo yet. 

Spinz - It was a good spin week! My sit spins are feeling more controlled and I'm getting lower into my position. My camels were inconsistent but overall they are feeling better. I'm hitting more than missing so there's that. Finally, my scratch spins felt awesome! Now that I'm able to find my center more consistently, I'm able to hold my free leg and arms out for a few revs before bringing it all in. It feels like I'm getting 10-12 revs pretty consistently when I was only getting about 8-10 before. Progress. Also, I'm able to finish camels and sits with a scratch spin rather than a basic one-foot spin so I know things are improving. It feels pretty awesome. I never considered myself a good spinner but lately I've been kicking some ass in the spin department. Yay!

Jumpz - I've been working a lot on my salchow-loop and it's getting better every day. I still feel like my free leg isn't entirely crossed on the loop but it's getting there. Flips are still meh. I've been doing that exercise where I do a half-flip immediately followed by a full flip and that seems to be helping with the technique. Finally, lutz jumps. The entry is fine but there is a lot of hesitation picking in for the jump. Once I jump, though, I'm landing it and my leg feels like it's crossed. I think I'm scared of the speed needed to really get into this jump. But, it's a work in progress and at least I'm doing it without fear.