Further to all my dance woes... (see entry And so it happens...)
I am now trying to decide what to do. My coach is being laissez-faire about dance. While he insists that he would not refuse to coach dance, he is not taking any initiative in that area. I tried it out - last week, I said I wanted to dance. He asked, "are you sure?" but didn't refuse.
We managed to spend a grand total of 10 minutes on the Viennese before he asked
"What do you want to do next?"
I wasn't prepared for this - at least, I had wanted to work on the Viennese, but didn't think of which other dance. So, I said,
"Well, anything, I suppose... what do you suggest?"
He answered,
"If you can't think of another dance to do, let's do some jumps"
I quickly said,
"Ok, let's try the Argentine... "
I spent the rest of the lesson trying not to crash into the boards.
That made me ponder over the weekend. The "Top 8 reasons..." in my previous post had been done half in jest, half in philosophical reflection. However, it started to dawn on me that perhaps they are really true - reflections of my own issues with dance!
Some of the reasons listed are very real problems I am facing or have faced. but most prominent was reason #1 - it is indeed too damned difficult. Too difficult to dance and free-skate at the same time!
Why do I say that?
Because I feel that I have improved significantly in freestyle over the past 8 months - and that was 8 months without dancing!
It is definitely easier to focus on one discipline. While dance has built up my basics, it has also distracted me from freestyle. It takes up time I could have used to work on freestyle. It saps the energy I could have put into freestyle. It uses different muscle groups, different posture and I would have to re-adjust each time I get on the ice.
And all this for what? I still don't have a partner, I still spend entire lessons trying not to run into the boards, and I still am not getting anywhere in dance.
I am starting to think maybe my coach is right - there is no point in dancing solo, at least not right here, right now. I can still have my occassional dance lesson when I feel like it, and that should suffice.
But... there is this part of me that does not want to give up!
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3 comments:
Hahaha. That actually sounded almost like my lesson today. Well, except the freestyle part. Jon and I had a lesson with Alexandre today. We worked on the Westminster Waltz and the Viennese for most of the lesson. Finally, I begged him to let us try the Argentine and we ran out of room too. The rink we're practicing in is 15 feet shorter than regular rinks. I mean that's not as extreme as your case but it's still annoying.
I want to do a pairs test with Jon at the next test session but he wants me to concentrate on one thing (dance in my case). I still have to figure out what to do when I no longer have a partner ...
It's not about the point on dancing solo.
There is simply no point training ice dance in a rink that claims to be of 25X40m dimension, but in fact feels much smaller...
Especially when you do the higher dances, not only you have no partner, there is also an issue about not completing the dance from beginning to the end.
Dancing with you in competition the first time, i realised there is something else that cannot be trained... Stamina to repeat the dances.
Running 5x5km doesn't substitute training required for 25km run.
Likeqise, repeating half-dances 4 times, has nothing to do with training of stamina required for repeating the dance twice...
True, in a small rink, it is impossible to train multiple patterns of the dances. That actually is a major issue, and this year at Mountain Cup, I was having a lot of trouble on the Rocker Foxtrot. Of course not having actually skated it in the last 2 years didn't help!
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