Lindy Hop and Relativity

After work I went straight to my class. We’ve been teaching a little routine to ‘Jeep Jockey Jump’ that’s starting to take shape. I was reminded tonight how tough it is teaching performance related stuff to a casual class. We always have to back track to get the routine into people’s heads. But in between all of that we always manage to divert their attention to some technical issue or other that needs attention. Tonight’s main thing was straightening out their swingouts when they get fast. It’s surprising how many ways there are to mess up something that is meant to be a ‘basic’ step, but as everyone knows, swingouts are actually really hard to get right.

Speaking of things that are hard to get right, tonight was the practice run for the Australian Jitterbug Championships. For the benefit of non-dancing readers, AJC is a national swing dancing contest — probably one of the big two. I’m the head judge this year, and tonight was a jack & jill contest — a fun style of contest where you don’t know who your partner will be. The reason we needed a practice run-through was that the AJC is switching over to a relative placement scoring system. The system was a success, but it’s always difficult to score people relatively. There’s always two couples you just can’t separate for some reason. Still, I do believe a relative system is pretty fair.

Meetings

Phew, today was a busy day. It started with a meeting that didn’t happen. Second time I’ve been stood up by this particular client — was it something I said? Anyway that meant I could go and get a cup of coffee, which wasn’t all bad. Then straight to a planning meeting, after which I met up with Lotte for a hurried but enjoyable lunch on Lygon. Lotte had been to the doctor for about the third time in three weeks — this time for a weird rash behind her ears — some kind of allergic reaction. She’s been having bad luck lately. Then I had to rush back to the office for another project meeting. I try not to schedule 3 meetings in a day because they generally go for 1.5 hrs each, so it leaves little time for preparation. And sometimes meetings go over-time. It’s not that I don’t really like meetings, though. Truth is, a lot of my work centres around meetings, and when they’re good, I’m in my element. The third meeting today was like that. A good project meeting can achieve a lot.