*Teaching dance, that is.

Today we did acro balancing, during which we built three-high tabletop stacks, played around on the silks in Open Fly – I finally got my dancer’s foot-lock down! — and then buckled down for Dance for Aerials, which is a very cool class, it turns out.

Weird. I had captioned this, but WP ate my caption. Anyway, I’m not in this stack, because the pictures of the stacks I was in have readily-identifiable pictures of younger kids, and I don’t feel right posting them here without parental permission. But you get the idea!

I’m apprentice-teaching this one, and that was awesome. I get to poke people and fix their placement and so forth, and the class as a whole is very receptive and engaged. Eventually I’ll be putting together some combinations for the choreographic bits of the class.

I was really impressed with the students’ natural placement of the torso — for the most part, everyone hit the shoulders-over-hips sweet spot without coaching (unlike me!). Likewise, I didn’t see a single dancer forcing turnout.

The challenge for everyone will be carrying the arms from the back and learning to place the shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, and hands to maintain a graceful line, but that’s the same challenge everyone works on forever and ever in ballet and Western dance in general.

Fortunately, I’ve had plenty of time to think about that, excellent instruction, and great models, so explaining that part to new dancers is very doable. I got good results, and Ms. A said I did a good job.

I have a bunch of books to read that I’m really looking forward to getting into, and I’m really excited about next week’s class.