Doing two online dance classes a week, I really haven’t been great with practising lately. With the Saturday ‘Vintage Jazz’ class, I’ve been getting away with just watching the recordings beforehand, but with tap, I KNOW I need to put the work in, so I’ve been spending 45 minutes practising right before class. It served me well last week…but not so much this week.
I knew the entire routine and was happy with the exercises we’ve been doing over the last few weeks, but then our teacher asked us to direct our laptop cameras to our feet to do the routine without her help and so she could see what we were doing. It was all going well until I was halfway through and then I just went BLANK. I just stood there. It wasn’t that I didn’t know it, but I think I got stage fright…at home. And unlike the students in the studio, being at home, I had no-one else in view as a prompt. Then our teacher prompted me to jump in on the last bit that we’d just learnt. Nope. Nothing!
I learned a valuable lesson on Wednesday evening. Practise more and practise before the day of the actual class! (BTW, since starting my proofreading and copywriting courses I’m trying to get into the habit of using the British spelling of the verb ‘practise’ as opposed to the American ‘practice’ – we’ll see how that goes).
It’s Black Friday today and I have been saying for over week now that I am going to ignore it and not get sucked into mindless spending. I’ve done my Christmas shopping already and I don’t need to buy more stuff…but then my adult learning college where I dance are offering 50% off their courses (!!!) so I enrolled on the next couple of online rhythm tap courses and a 10 week online ukulele course for improvers. I can’t believe it has been almost a year since my class and I performed at our Christmas ukulele event in London and my SO and a colleague came along. It was so much fun! I think January’s a good month to pick it up again. I just need to refresh my knowledge of at least 6 chords…