Our West Coast Swing Weekend

Last weekend we took an hour and a half drive down to Corvallis for a West Coast Swing (WCS) workshop at OSU taught by pros Courtney Adair and Sean McKeever.


We also got to hang out with Monkey's long time friend "Galex" (Girl-Alex) as she lives down there and also dances WCS!

It was technically a three day event, but there was no way we could have made it on Friday since Monkey drives down from Bangor on Fridays. There were also private lessons available on Sunday but we already had our own scheduled in Portland. Friday, though, was quite enough dancing for us. It was an all day ordeal. It went something like this.

11a: Square One, Updating your basics
12:30p: The Rubber Band Effect, Finding stretch in more places
2:30p: Grooves & Moves, fun ways to add more dancing to your patterns
4p: New Moves for 2012, Current trends, tips, and tricks
7p: OPEN FORUM WORKSHOP (We skipped this for a sit-down dinner)
8p-1am: Open WCS Social Dance

There was a mix of all skill levels. We are somewhere in the middle. We're super new to WCS, but since we've been dancing for a while we pick it up pretty fast. We just don't know very many moves and haven't quite gotten a handle one the proper technique. I have a mix of salsa and ballet that creeps into mine. Ok, it actually jumps out and screams at you. ha.

 

 

We learned a couple new moves and some new fun things to throw in here and there. My only complaint is that they didn't go over the footwork for some of the patterns. I guess they assumed that everyone knew all the patterns they were using a base for their variations. We figured it out, mostly.

 

Then on Sunday we drove back up to Portland, immediately went for a run (as if we hadn't gotten enough exercise for the weekend!), showered, and headed out for our pre-scheduled private lesson and another social dance. We were able to tighten up the things we worked on in the workshop with our instructor. I also learned how to "highjack" a whip. Now if I can just get those guys to ask me to dance, I can try it one someone. :/


Here is a little bit of video from the social dance Saturday night. We've only had maybe 8-10 lessons. We're not amazing yet, but we have fun. We'll be awesome soon enough. ;) You can see another short video here.