How Many Shops Would A Workshop Shop If A Workshop Could Hit The Shops?

He Goes

Ooof! I ache all over. Partly it's sleeping on the floor on Saturday night, but mainly it's the workshop I did on Saturday afternoon. While my muscles are tired though, my brain is alive again, out of the mood indigo it was in the week before last (perhaps that's overstating the case a little, let's say mood lilac).

One hour classes are pretty good for learning, it must be said. There's probably so much information in an hour that grasping anything more before going on to social dancing is a fool's errand. But it's good every now and again to tackle things that can't be learnt in an hour - to get in-depth and just drill something over and over again, if for no other reason than to stretch the brain's stomach so that next time you have to digest a heavy lesson you're up for it.

Last weekend (in between grumbling about stagnation and writing about it) I went to an informal little solo Charleston workshop in Reading, and handful of people in a circle learning some steps they could do in a jam circle. This weekend just gone, I went to a beginner's aerials workshop: a larger handful of people learning some tricks they could do in a jam circle. Really, perfectly identical in many ways - it's just that the first workshop left me feeling all loose and relaxed, and the second like I'd aged thirty years overnight!

Actually, in lots of ways all workshops are the same. A smaller group than in class, a more dedicated group (because they've taken the step of going to a workshop), a faster-moving group (both because they're usually not absolute beginners - although some might be - and because the teachers are able to focus more on individual problems). Neither of the workshops I went to rotated partners - the first because there were no partners, the second because ideally you have to know someone reasonably well to let them grab you round the thigh and lift you into the air. But when there is rotation, the smaller group also means that individual problems seem to get wrinkled out quicker than in a class.

There's a sort of downside to workshops - sort of, kind of maybe, but not really. Let me explain. With one exception (when I was going to a beginner's workshop that I didn't really need to go to because I was going with someone), I've never left a workshop having nailed everything that was taught in it. I did not look slick doing the solo Charleston moves by the end of that workshop. When it was time to leave the Aerials workshop my partner and I still hadn't managed to pull off a Lamppost. At the time, it's a tiny bit disappointing. But you know what? These things take time. We got close, and what we did do? Amazing stuff. I'm not going to grumble that I couldn't manage 100% of the things I was taught. I'm only human, after all. And I remember things that I couldn't get in past workshops that just clicked one day, sometimes months later. 

One day, lamppost, one day!

Homework for the aerials workshop is less energetic

She Goes

Well, I haven't been able to go to any workshops because I have to work on Saturdays. Contractually obliged kinda thing.

THIS IS MY SULKING FACE!

I want to do aerials workshops. And jazz workshops. And Big Apple workshops. But they're never on a Sunday. *pout*

I'm hoping that going to week two of Herrang will help remedy the pouting. (...nope, still pouting. But I'll keep you posted...)