Saturday, April 23, 2016

Slip Jig and Other Woes

I will try to start this on a positive note, so...on the bright side, I can get through both steps of my reel now. I start getting sloppy at the end, but at least that is one step that I have to the music. Plus, I am still seeking a 1st with 5 or more competitors in adult novice/prizewinner reel, so maybe I can finally get that, if I work on things like turnout, jump height (which seems dismally low since I haven't been doing jump drills and my abs are all stretched out of shape from carrying an 8 lb baby), and kicking my bum. My upper body is already getting better, and my stamina seems to be improving, though when I start feeling like my old, athletic self, then I end up peeing myself a little and it brings me back to reality :(

I can more or less do the right foot of my troublesome treble jig step to music. Now I just need to work on left foot and combine it with step 1. Hard shoe just seems to come more naturally to me. Maybe it is thanks to the 3.5 years of clogging that I did in my tweenage years. Pre-move, pre-pregnancy, I would feel like I wasn't so great at hard shoe in class, alongside the kids and teens, but then I would totally kick butt at hard shoe at the feis. At one point in time, I had a year-long winning streak in treble jig before I got a 2nd place result, I would win hard shoe just to come in 2nd at soft shoe, and at one really big feis, I only placed in my hard shoe and came home empty-handed at soft shoe. I didn't get to work on my hornpipe at all. They spent a lot of time working on traditional speed stuff, so I stayed in the other room to get more time to work on slip jig.

Oh, slip jig :( My feet will just not move fast enough at 2nd step. I learned it in November, and I was just too pregnant to ever put it up to speed, so I guess I just got in the habit of doing it too slowly. It is a lovely, spinning start, and has some neat elements like twists, but my feet will not cooperate! I am so glad my husband had to work this weekend, because had I feised this weekend, it would have been an epic fail. My teacher asked me if I wanted to practice it to slower music, and I was like, nooooo. That will only confuse me more. Some of my classmates were working on reel to slower music, but I need to do more like they did at my old school, and just work on little chunks to the correct speed of music until I could put it all together. I LOVE the people at my current school, but I miss the drilling of my old school.

Speaking of people, the super-helpful former champ dancer (who is also really nice and a fan of Dr. Who and Harry Potter) will be leaving our class :( She has to do field placements for her degree program, and while I wish her the best on her future career, I will certainly miss her.

The new plan is to start feising again in June. I will miss a couple of weeks of class in May, because of my husband's work and my brother's wedding, so I sure hope I can get my steps ready. My teacher said we would start with slip jig next week. I told her I don't have the space to practice at home right now, and she was okay with it, so I guess that is another advantage of an adult class. This is the first time I haven't had the space to practice, and though we have tossed around the idea of moving when our lease ends in September, it doesn't hardly seem worth going through a move just for a year. I just hope I can get my steps ready for the feis the third week in June. It is my old school's home feis, so I really don't want to humiliate myself. Wish me luck!

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