I’ve been dancing Silver Standard for a bit over a week now… and it’s a lot of fun! I learned the Studio 665 Silver Waltz, Foxtrot and Tango routines today, which was a blast… it’s going to take a lot of work to really perfect them, but the more progress I make, the faster I seem to be able to make it, kind of like a snowball effect.
I’m sure that this will level off eventually, and I’ll come to a point of frustration, where I feel like I’m not making progress again, but I don’t think that will ever actually be the case — I’ll just be making progress in ways I won’t be able to detect at that moment in time, but eventually, it’ll all hit a critical mass, and I’ll feel it again. And the cycle will continue to repeat! 🙂
I really think that one of the most important keys to my current progress is the diversity of all the different forms of dance I’m studying. Ballet is helping a lot with strength and balance, so much so that week to week, I feel changes I didn’t think were possible in such a short time-frame. Modern and Jazz are helping me to feel more free, and to appreciate another side of what dance means to me. I’m then bringing that sense of freedom into the Smooth classes I’ve been taking for the last month (which have all been in Silver and Gold Tango, so far), and it’s allowed me to make tons of progress in Smooth, in a very short time, even though I really had no background in it to start from.
Learning to appreciate Smooth, has helped my Standard, because it’s given me a greater appreciation for the solo-dance aspect of all dance. Standard heavily focuses on close-connection partner dance, but being a good solo dancer is still important. Understanding your alignment relative to line-of-dance is far more important than I ever realized. Really knowing and understanding your own movement, without being dependent upon your partner for everything is something that Smooth requires. And just like many learning Smooth dancers suffer from a weak partner-connection in closed-hold (something that Standard focuses on), as a Standard dancer, I have been relatively weak with respect to knowing my own orientation and position, where I should be, and how I should get there, if my partner weren’t directing me so skillfully. I’ve compensated for that by listening really closely to my partner’s body, which is a great way to dance; but, Smooth is teaching me how much better I can be if IÂ also understand how to get to the right positions on my own.
Gosh, everything is just so interconnected, and I LOVE it! I’m even learning things from West Coast Swing which help my Standard. It’s wonderful!