Message 1 in thread Subject: a WCS Jack&Jill story - good news, bad news From: rhn@nicholson.com (rhn@nicholson.com) Newsgroups: rec.arts.dance Date: 2001-01-24 04:31:46 PST The first WCS event I attended was a SF Boogie-by-the-Bay around four years ago. I was a ballroom and hustle dancer who wanted to see what "real" WCS looked like. So I went up to BbtB one evening, and it shortly became very evident that I was *the-very-worst-WCS-dancer* on the dance floor. I think I got one charity WCS from someone who knew me, and a couple of older ladies each asked me for one dance. Once people figured me out, I got a couple more Cha-Cha's later in the evening. A few months later I was down in Monterey visiting some relatives, and decided to stop by Swingfest afterwards for one night. I was still probably in the bottom 1% in terms of WCS dance skill, but I got almost a dozen WCS dances that evening (as well as a bunch of Hustle and NC2S dances later in the night). I was quite impressed with how friendly this event was in comparison with my experience at BbtB. WCS just looked like so much fun. So I decided to spend some time learning how to dance it a little better. Many conventions and workshops later, a few lessons from some top instructors, lots of practice (plus some random bantering on r.a.d. on gravitation vectors and such :) and I felt like I was gradually moving up the skill ladder. First I got to the point where I felt like I could dance with the bottom 10% of followers at WCS events, then maybe 20%. Last year I was just standing in the hallway at the-CW-event-formerly-called-SouthBay; and Julie Meyers (who was on staff at Swingfest this year) started showing some guy what he was doing wrong with his leading technique. I stood almost on top of them while listening, stole the advice; and that one idea almost instantly doubled the number of WCS followers I could dance with. (Thanks Julie!). So this year, I was at Monterey Swingfest for the fifth time and feeling that if I could put together a good WCS I might actually be dancing somewhere around the median level at the event, or maybe around median novice level. I could actually ask a large number of followers to dance (while still trying to follow Buckwalters's rule of asking mostly people at my level or lower. I would still by accident ask a much better follower to dance, and then sometimes spend most of the dance without a clue as to how to lead them properly.) I was waiting outside the ballroom Friday evening to meet some friends for dinner; I had a little cash in my pocket. Some women were signing up for the Novice J&J. I asked the registrar what the ratio was and there were *lots* of extra women signed up. Lots. So in a moment of shear delusion I signed up and plunked down my $15. Hey, I would get several more dances doing the J&J instead of sitting and watching it; if I was anywhere close to the median level I wouldn't stick out like a sore thumb, and any partner who drew me had a 50/50 chance of drawing someone actually worse than me if I wasn't in the contest. And, very important, I would get some feedback from the scoring sheets after the event to let me know how deluded I might be about my current WCS dance level. So I danced the Novice J&J prelimary heats. I think I managed a decent dance with 3 out of 4 partners. It was fun. The prelims were over. I was quite sure my chances of making the finals were zero, so I stuffed my number into my dance bag. Then someone said something about semifinals in N minutes. Semifinals? I hadn't thought about semifinals... My name got called. I quickly hunted down my number and got in line. Was I happy? I was doing some quick mental calculations: - I was hopefully somewhere around the median leader in the prelims... - they called back around half the leaders from the prelims for the semi... - the women are usually better than the men in most Novice J&J competitions which I've observed... so here I was, once again... probably *the-very-worst-WCS-dancer* on the floor ...with several hundred people watching. sigh... -- Ron Nicholson rhn@nicholson.com http://www.nicholson.com/rhn/ #include // this is only random line noise, etc.