Back to Practicing!

Shey and I have been practicing for a few weeks now, and so far things have been going really well. We're both learning so much not only about Standard, but also body mechanics in general. Right now our main teachers are Victor Veyrasset, Heather Smith, and Luca Barrichi. How do we have such a team of world-class coaches? Dance Vision instruction videos, lol. It's easy to go back to square one when you don't have much disposable cash and can watch lessons over and over again. Shey and I joke:
"When we compete, they'll ask who our coaches are..."
"- And we'll say, 'Victor Veyrasset.'"
"'He's really excellent.'"
"'We learned everything we know from him.'"
"'...And he has no idea.'"
Eventually, we'll get some real coaching, but we have plenty to think about with the resources we have at the moment.

In terms of my own practice, I'm learning to coordinate all the lady's jobs (body mechanics) that Maya taught me and learn the man's jobs of direction and steps. I feel like the body mechanic work is only partially in my control: I can do an action over and over and still not understand how it applies when I'm with a partner. I just had an epiphany yesterday about something Maya told me months ago - how to keep my heels from clunking on the ground when I step forward. It's a whole new ball game when I have a person in front of me, though. It also takes time to sit and study the man's steps and figure out if he's going or ending down line of dance (LOD) or backing LOD, or moving diagonal center or diagonal wall...all things I never had to think about before. I think it will help my spatial dyslexia, though.

Of course, every practice isn't like walking on clouds. One day we'll figure something out that makes the dancing so much easier and the next day that same body mechanism will be lost. Then it's back to the drawing board...
Or once, we had a practice where we just couldn't pull it together - we were both feeling stiff and couldn't move. We ended up calling it a day and hoping for a better practice next time. It happens.

However, I'm happy to say that we have more good days than bad and we both believe this will be the norm :).