Smoothstyle Dance Studio

- posted by Maria

David Ward & Maria Ford - Performance

Having a routine and having a competition-ready routine are two different things! To get ourselves prepared for competing with our new routine, we are focusing on getting it “on the floor” as often as possible. We’ve been lucky to have opportunities to perform it locally, including twice in one night, at two different events, this past weekend!

There’s  a difference between practicing a routine and performing it for an audience. For me, the biggest difference is the level of adrenaline in my system, which affects my heart rate, timing and decision-making. I’m a much better performer when I have an audience, but not necessarily a better dancer. Now that we’ve got three adrenaline-filled performances under our belts we are able to analyse where the weaknesses are and we know precisely where to focus our future practices.

I’m also able to identify exactly what “falls apart” when I’m pumped up on adrenalin. I find that being aware of it – particularly being able to see it on video – does allow me to address it in real time. We’re excited and grateful to have opportunities and invitations to perform locally and to have friends who are willing to video tape our performances.

Audience reactions also influence us as we polish the routine. Sometimes, audiences respond where we least expect it and sometimes they don’t respond where we hoped they would. This feedback – as well as direct feedback that individuals give us after watching us perform – is so invaluable!

We are thankful to every spectator who has taken the time to give us feedback and encouragement. If it weren’t for you, our routine wouldn’t really “be”.

Our upcoming local performances will include:

• Friday, May 18 at Lorna’s Dance Collective (evening dance)
• Saturday, June 9 at the uptown@DWA West Coast Swing Dance Party
• July 19-21 at Toronto Open Swing & Hustle Championships 

Last night, we debuted our new WCS routine at the Gatineau Salsafair event. We were honoured to be the only non-Latin performers and instructors invited, giving us a chance to spread the love of our favorite dance to the Salsa community.

It was an excellent performance experience and nearly perfect. The best thing about “nearly” perfect is that we were able to seamlessly cover up and/or recover from a couple of glitches – it’s mentally important to have that kind of confidence, to go through the experience successfully.

This routine is deliberately at the opposite end of the spectrum from our previous routine and it’s a lot of fun to show off our skills with “pure Swing” dancing, speed and high energy. It’s also a true pleasure to be able to express pure joy in this choreography (our previous routine was very dark and moody).

This performance was our milestone “launch” of version 1.0 of the routine. We’ll be making a few changes to some of the choreography, but our main focus now will be on continuing to polish, increase our precision and go deeper into elements of performance.

We have a few local performances lined up before our first competition in June, at Liberty Swing in New Jersey.

It feels great to have reached this point!

Today we got into a big studio and ran our routine for the first time with no physical boundaries. We’re pleasantly surprised with how evenly it covers the floor! No adjustments needed in that department. We’re tweaking some styling and timing now.

Our costumes are also coming together – so it’s starting to seem very “real” … which is a good thing, since we’ll be performing it for the first time at the Gatineau Salsafair on March 31!