Wednesday 31 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

We had a modest turnout to the Rock & Roll class last night. We were missing Mandy and Bill and their respective partners, but most of the others seemed to be there. I got to dance with Linda all night. I wore my little 30 badge, but it matched the orange of my T-shirt fairly closely, so not that many people noticed it. A few did though, including Linda.

In this class, we learned the Neck Breaker. (Nice, eh?) As my dad put it, “are you sure you’re going to a dance class and not a karate school?” As with last week, Linda seems to think we all know this move already, so we went over it pretty briefly. Everybody I danced with seemed to know what they were doing, but I didn’t. The move came off, but I’m still not sure exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. The same goes for the other move we learned, Stop & Go.

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Tuesday 30 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Well, I spend last night in the company of an old friend. (Hey! She’s only 45.) We went out for a meal together. As always, we talked for hours, and yet I was still sorry to see her go. But hey, we had a great time anyway.

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Tuesday 30 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Tonic, submediant, subdominant, dominant.

In the key of C major, this equates to C major, A minor, F major, G major. It’s the very first chord sequence I ever learned, before I even understood what chords were, and it’s the chord sequence of a thousand million love songs. For instance,

Unchained Melody, Earth Angel, Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, Let’s Twist Again, Beyond The Sea, Blue Moon, Silhouettes, Angel Next Door, Stay…

And that’s only what I can think of off the top of my head. (And things like Calandar Girl feature the same chord sequence, although less prominently and in a more complicated arrangement.)

Another common choice is to replace the subdominant with the supertonic (i.e., replace F major with D minor instead). The result sounds broadly similar, given that there’s only a single note different (D instead of C). In fact some of my examples above might even be using this variant rather than the first one.

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Tuesday 30 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

I’m going to do this one in pictures…

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Monday 29 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Friday began uneventfully enough. At break time, we were all called into the tea room for an announcement. I was pretty sure they were going to announce the liquidation of the company — but when I actually arrived at the tea room, I got a birthday cake pushed into my face, complete with a burning Three Zero. (And everybody standing around the room staring at me.) Heh, I didn’t think that anybody had actually noticed it was my birthday!

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Friday 26 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

So, Tuesday night Linda decided that we would “recap” all the moves that we’ve “forgotten”. Of course, the truth of the matter is that two classes were merged into one, and one class was more advanced than the other. In summary, I haven’t forgotten these moves, I was never taught them in the first place! So to Linda.

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Friday 26 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Friday was not a good day for me. First my humour managed to upset people on the Internet [again]. And then my dance class happened.

The Big News of course is that Friday was Lois’ birthday. I made her a little birthday card, and since she loves purple so much, I wore my purple waistcoat and a purple shirt. (But not the expensive purple shirt I bought from John Lewis — that apparently doesn’t actually fit me any more! But fortunately I have another one which does fit.)

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Thursday 18 Mar 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

While Friday was a disappointing day, Tuesday was somewhat better.

We had a reasonable complement of dancers. I ended up having to dance with that Polish women, which isn’t the best thing, but hey. We once again becan with a stroll to that rather nice rendition of Across The Sea. Then we practised our doubles — double Charleston thing, double Bunny Hop. We tried the former to some seriously slow music — so slow that most of us were actually bored. And we tried the Double Bunny Hop to ludicrously fast music, just so Linda could demonstrate that it’s impossible. (Yeah, thanks for that!)

Linda also got us to dance using only the more basic moves. “I’m looking for style” she says. Well, dancing with this Polish lady, there wasn’t any. She’s the kind of dancer who decides what she’s going to do, and then does it, regardless of what her dance partner tries to do. So much for the man leads.

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