This week...the Jive! The Jive is a very fast version of the Swing. It feels like an amazing workout for your calves. :P


The Jive is part of the International Latin dances in ballroom. In competition it's danced at a speed of 176 beats per minute. Crazy right?!


The first year I was on ELEMENT we did a Harry Potter Jive for the 4th or 5th movie, and oh my gosh was it hard at first. We'd get so tired but eventually we got used to it. Now, this routine is stuck in my head. I'm never going to be able to forget it.


Unfortunately I don't have a video of this particular performance, but I did find one on YouTube that I think you'll enjoy:


http://youtu.be/7KChBpxOA1M

This week....the Rumba!

The rumba is a slower dance out of the Latin section of ballroom dancing. It involves a hip sway over the standing leg (meaning, take a step, stand on that foot, and sway your hip). This dance generally has no rise and fall during the routine and uses arms in various figures. It's a very sensual dance, it's slow and allows you to see the dance movements that the dancers are trying to execute.

Here is a video to YouTube with Derek Hough and Jennifer Grey from Dancing with the Stars dancing a Rumba:


http://youtu.be/GABO66Dkz1Q

This week....The Viennese Waltz!


This one is my favorite ballroom dance. It's a rotary dance that moves clockwise and counter-clockwise with non-rotating change steps to switch directions. I love the music that goes with it; it's a bit faster than a regular Waltz. The dresses you can wear are amazing! Especially if you're lucky and get a very flowy-type dress. BUT! If it's your first time ever dancing the Viennese Waltz be prepared to get dizzy! Especially if you don't spot...:P


Here is a link to the type of music that would be used for a Viennese Waltz:


http://youtu.be/oF_K9jy0RYY


Hope you enjoy!

This week: The Cha-cha-cha!

This is my second favorite dance. It's a fun, flirty dance with a lot of hip movement. You count it as 'two, three, four-and-one.' At first it's a little confusing because you want to start on 'one' instead of 'two.' But once you know how the counting goes it's really easy, and making up steps that go along with the count (and music) is a lot of fun. It's amazing how much you can do with the cha-cha-cha.

Well...I decided to make my blog about ballroom dancing for now unless I think of something else. So for now I'm going to talk about one of my favorite dances: the Tango!


The Tango is a ballroom dance that has a varied amount of steps and poses. It is also known as the dance of love. There's a lot of emotion that goes into the dance, though you don't always see it on the dancers' faces. Most of the emotion is through the steps that are being presented along with the facial expressions.


The general colors that go with Tango are black and red. Personally it bugs me whenever a different color is used (like black and yellow or I've even seen black and green). It just doesn't feel like it goes with the dance; it's like it takes away the meaning of the dance.

Here are some of the dance positions that are commonly seen in the Tango.

It's a really fun dance, especially when your dance partner is in character, then it feels like nothing else is happening besides you and your partner dancing across the dance floor. =)

Well...let's see....this new unit is already kind of hard. I'm not sure how it is for my classmates but I'm not finding this easy. But that's a good thing, being challenged always helps you improve and then you can make the decision of whether or not to use it again in your life. Though if you end up being really good at it, I don't know why you wouldn't use it. :P


I'm currently at the library trying to finish up my rough draft for tomorrow. 5+ pages! That's crazy! I hope we get to choose who reads our papers, I really don't want anyone to make fun of me because of my topic. It's a bit out there...haha. Oh well...we'll just see how it goes tomorrow :P

All right one more post because I just thought of something that's exciting for me.


I'm finally out of that ridiculous walking boot!!!! Woo!!! That thing is so annoying. My ankle is feeling a little better though, I had to get a cortisone shot last week and oh my gosh did that feel weird. And what's sad is that my doctor knew how much pain I can tolerate and didn't even numb my foot like he usually does with his other patients.


I've been going to this doctor for about 7 years now. I broke my growth plate in middle school and have had problems with my ankle ever since...I even have a chance of having some arthritis already. =/ But yeah, this doctor knows me very well...that whole doctor/patient feeling you get when you go to the doctor's office? That's no longer there when I go to this one. I'm so comfortable just walking in and seeing him for whatever is going on with my ankle at the time. I've seen every nurse he's had come and go, and I mean every one that has worked for him over these past 7 years. Ridiculous right?


I'm so ready for this crap with my ankle to be done with. I'm tired of going to see him every few months, I want to be able to do the things I want to do without worrying about how much of it I can do because of my ankle. My life has been altered a little because of these issues, I haven't been able to do the things I've wanted to do.


There...now I'm at least somewhat caught up with everyone else. :P

Well...I'm realizing I'm way behind on these blogs...I can't help it though, I'm not a blogger nor will I ever be one. This whole blogging thing to me is kind of pointless...I don't like it. A friend of mine tells me I should do it more then maybe I'll like it, but I just can't get myself to do these on a weekly basis like we're supposed to. They'll get done, sure, but not as often as everyone else seems to be doing them. Oh well.


Well...I guess I should start writing about something...our new unit should be fun. I'm looking forward to it at least, though I'm not entirely sure what to do as my topic. This blog was going to be mainly about whatever I wanted to post on ballroom dancing, just because it's something I have easy access to and I know a lot about it.


Not sure what else to write about...this is just an attempt to get as caught up as possible.

Well, let's see what I can blog about now...


Honestly I really don't like blogging...this just feels weird to me and it's hard to keep up with it along with everything else I have going on. But it's required for one of my classes so I might as well do it to get the grade....


Anyways...I think I left off with the first year of being on ELEMENT...here's some of the third year I was on there. My coach didn't give me any pictures or videos from the second year...I need to change that.

Third year of ELEMENT! This was at Mad Hot for Ballroom. Mad Hot is an event where local teams get together and do performances, and we even get professionals to come and show off their dance moves. =) It's a lot of fun, I love going. This routine was a Cha-Cha.

This is the end of Mad Hot, where everyone goes up in front of the audience and takes a final bow...and then there's a lot of open dancing after that.

 This was the car wash at Skyview High School. We were raising money for costumes, supplies, pretty much everything we needed that year.

This is me and one of my close friends. That was our first break out of the entire time we were at that car wash. It was crazy. It felt so nice to be indoors for a while.

 This was at Nampa High School. We were painting their green room because it was in bad need of a paint job. Not everyone in this picture was on team; most of the kids there are from the dance classes the coach teaches.

 Here's me and two other people. The tall guy was never really in the coach's classes...I think. But he loved coming and helping out sometimes.

Here's some people from the first batch of kids who showed up. Everyone seemed to come and go every so often. But at least the job got done and we started pretty early (that was the only horrible part).










Here's another video of one of our performances. This was just rehearsal and the lighting is bad I know, but it's the best I've got.

Hope you guys enjoy it! =)

Well, I'm new to blogging so let's see how this goes....


I'm going to show you guys some pictures of when I was on my high school's ballroom dance team and give a description about what the events were.
The team name is ELEMENT Ballroom Dance Team. It has a combination of all three high schools in the Nampa School District: Columbia, Nampa, and Skyview.

This was the first year I was on ELEMENT. We were doing a rumba and a cha cha, in the form of a music box. We were basically all dolls, our faces had rosy cheeks on them (though the guys refused to do that part). This was at Columbia High School's annual Winter Ball. It's somewhat around Christmas time.


Now those white dresses may look pretty...but they were the worst costumes we had, even the coach agreed to it. Why? Because those dresses were see-through and to avoid having everyone see what's underneath we had to wear layers: white spaghetti straps or t-shirts, and either white leggings or tights. They were not fun! I dislike those dresses immensely.

 Here, one of the girls was trying to get onto her partner's shoulder. She was supposed to look like those little dancers that pop up when you open a music box...I can't remember if she made it up there or not...hmmm....

Our little circle...not much to say about that one...I think it was towards the end of the performance so we were almost done.

This was at Make-A-Wish. The girl we were there for had a really bad disease (I can't remember what it was =/ ), and her one wish was to go to Disneyland to see all of the princesses. So we all dressed up and gave her a performance she'd never forget!

 Here's me and my partner. I was supposed to be Sleeping Beauty....and there's that horrible white dress again. I wore that dress basically all year, and I was the only one who had to wear it after our Christmas performance.

This was at the Red Lion Hotel down in Boise. It was one of our first performances of the year. It's a mix of foxtrot, samba, and tango.


Hope you guys like it!