Final Touches

Lesson today and I told Christopher that I signed up for the Exhibition and Critique on May 22. So, of course, he wanted to see where I'm at with the Free Dance. I got the sash on and ran it. 

First Run Through - This went well! I hit all of my musical cues and ended on time with the music. The only snafu was the catch foot camel. It didn't happen. I replaced it with a regular camel. He seemed pleased but still had corrections for me. No surprise, he wants TONS more expression. I know this. He's told me this. I would also like more expression. I just go into survival mode when I'm running a program and expression takes a backseat. I really just need to practice this with expression every.single.time. We also worked on the catch foot camel for a bit. On average, it take about 3 revs for me to grab my foot which is entirely too long. So we worked on arching my back more and bending my knee to make things easier to get to while spinning. I did a couple that were okay but these still have a long way to go. Next, we talked about the end pose that I made up. It's not bad but he would like something a little more challenging and way more dramatic! He proposed a pretty arm tornado thing and then I drop to one knee while the other leg extends and my left arm swings up. That's certainly dramatic..for my knees! I expressed concern over how my knees aren't getting any younger and I want to keep them working for as long as possible (I already have a weird crunching noise in my right knee. Doesn't hurt, just makes me cringe). He insisted that I do this ending. He said, "if it were easy, you'd be able to do it." I want the challenge so he showed me how to do it. He then wanted to see the program again in its entirety with the new ending. 

Second Run Through - Here we go again. It was pretty much the same as the first and I was able to do the knee thing at the end except my supporting foot slipped out from under me and I went full sploot, lol. This is a risky move but if I get it right, I know it will look great. The trick is practicing it, but not too much. It's really hard on the knees and too many attempts will certainly start to get painful. Fun. 

Gold Moves - For the second half of the lesson, we worked on Forward Double 3s and the Backward Circle 8. I was not able to repeat any of the little successes I had yesterday during my practice. Sigh. He asked if I've been working on the Backward Power 3 turns from the Standard Juvenile test and I admitted that I've completely forgotten about them. I have a lot that I work on and often only an hour to do it all in during a session. So yeah, sometimes I forget things. I promised I would bring them back to my practices. I know they will help. 

So yeah, he seems to think this Free Dance is in a good enough place to be presented to judges. I'm excited to put it out there.