Today was my first lesson since the tests and it was back to the grind! I have about a month until the competition in Cody and I have a lot of work to do to get ready for the four events I signed up for.
Movez - I warmed up with Silver Moves, particularly all of the 3 turns (since I can do them all now yay!). FO-BI are looking pretty good but both sides of the FI-BO are pretty rough. On the BO 3 turns I really need to get control of my arms after the turn. Even though I am checking with my arms, my torso is still turning and it's hard to get back to the axis. I keep circling back in on myself. My Power Pulls were also kind of icky. Not a fan. Because I'm competing Bronze Moves I worked on those for a bit as well. I did two patterns of the Forward Circle 8 and ran through the Forward Power 3 Turns as well. When I remember to count, the Power 3s look nice and controlled. When I don't? Well, they still look okay but just not...polished, I guess.
Spinz - I worked on the two spins from my program with the aim of seeing how long I can hold them since that is part of another event I'm registered for. I just got my blades sharped a week ago and there is always a period of a couple weeks where my spins are just kind of meh. I'm sure I'll be better for Cody, though.
Jumpz - I ran through all of my program jumps and then started work on loop combos. My salchow-loop is getting more consistent and I'm really hoping to include it in next season's program (which I'll start working on in April-ish).
24 Program Challengez (10/24) - I hadn't run my program at all last week since I was focusing on preparing for the dance tests so I'm a bit behind in the challenge. I should be at the halfway mark right now so I have a bit of catching up to do. I had some time to run my music before my lesson today so I plugged my phone in and got in position. Over halfway through, I saw Christopher by the boards taking video of me skating and it made me super nervous for some reason and I fell on my best jump, the final loop. If I know that someone is watching/judging/recording/ from the beginning, it's different than all of a sudden realizing that someone is there watching. It was jarring. Ugh, I never fall on that element. Stupid nerves! So thus began our lesson...
Lessonz - He replayed the video element by element and had me work on improving each thing. We started with the first jump combo, the loop-toe loop. The video clearly shows me toe-waltzing the toe loop so he had me slow it down a bit and make sure to get a proper toe loop. Once I got that down, we worked a bit on the salchow to make it jump more out than up and then we looked at the loop jump to make sure the fall was just a fluke (it was, thankfully!). Finally, the bulk of our time was spent on the flip jump. My technique on this jump has never been awesome. I land the jump consistently but man is it ugly sometimes. He has been working with me on this damn jump for over three years and it is still gross. I just can't get a feel for the vault. I'm really hoping that I have one of those epiphany moments like I had with the LBO 3 turn and one day it will just...happen. Until then, we all suffer watching me as I over-rotate and overthink the hell out of this jump. Sigh.
On Friday, we will work a bit on adding some extra choreography to the two dances I'm competing with next month. I told him I was able to play around a bit and figure out some less boring arms on the end pattern of the Rhythm Blues but I'm kind of lost on what to do with the Canasta Tango besides adding some cheesy flamenco arms. I'm sure he'll come up with something good. I don't need much, just enough to show expression throughout and make it a bit more interesting to look at. Since this is a competition and not a test, I want to skate to some more modern music instead of the typical circus music that the USFS has on tap. I haven't uploaded my music yet for the competition because I'm still kind of undecided. I know I want Sam Smith's "Stay with me" for Rhythm Blues but I still don't know what to do for the Canasta Tango. All Tango music sounds alike to me. It's all just different variations on cheesy accordion music (no offense to accordionists). So I'm just trying to find something that's a tango...but fun? The only thing that I can somewhat tolerate is "Querer" from Cirque de Soleil but it would need to be cut since the intro is too long. I was really hoping to avoid cutting music. Sigh.
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