Caught in a state of bliss

Woo, so our dance performances went great! The routine has a lot of spunk and character (it’s a valentine’s dance to “Tainted Love”, or course it has character!), and we all pulled it off with panache. Our backflips weren’t the most dynamic ever, but were landed without incident both nights. It’s really interesting to have someone trust implicitly that you can flip their body mass over backwards and not more than chest height and land them back on their feet. The follow’s only responsibility, really, is to jump hard, straight up, and keep her legs together. The lead does everything else. The left arm is a support at their upper back, around which they revolve. The right arm comes up as the follow is jumping in the upper-leg region, and pushes her up and around. It’s all a real trip to me, and despite having done it successfully multiple times now, without much difficulty, it still somehow seems like it shouldn’t be possible. I was thinking about having Adam see if he could backflip me, because I’m curious what the experience is like from the follow’s perspective (quite scary, I hear) and I feel a smidge guilty that I expect someone to do something that I’ve never tried. On the other hand, I weigh significantly more than all the follows on the team, so I certainly don’t feel too bad about it.

We’ve got it all on video, both performances. I’m going to try and transfer them to digital, and then maybe I’ll post them here for your viewing pleasure. They’re a lot of fun to watch. The crowds both nights were also very receptive, which was awesome. We put a lot of work into learning these, for a fairly short, non-lucrative (read, no money at all) pay-off. So it’s nice when people enjoy watching them. I like learning the routines just for myself, to gain a sense of choreography, musicality, and to learn new moves and stunts. Not to mention the swing team is, generally, a lot of fun to hang out with. Even so, I don’t think it would be half as fun if we didn’t get to show off every other month or so, to a throng of adoring fans. I don’t have any groupies yet, but I expect them to start calling any day now.

I’ll try to be more interesting later. Maybe post something funny. Until then, I recommend you read Theo’s blog today. The man turns a good phrase, you know?

While you’re there, oggle how pretty I made his blog.