05/07/2015
Location: The Exford Hotel (Sundays)
199 Russell St, Melbourne
I made 'Blues Night' my Sunday evening plan. Adrian, one of my friends from dancing had invited me along for a belated birthday dance. That was just perfect as I wanted to try a blues class anyway after I had a go at the Christchurch Swing Festival and really enjoyed myself.
The first thing I noticed about the class was the really good atmosphere when I came in. It was a nice little group all ready to dance the 'blues'. They all seemed quite familiar with each other and joked around a lot.
The teachers for tonight were Joel and Julia. Joel I'd seen around and been to some of his classes but I'd never met Julia and she was mentioned to me before as we do have two things in common: our name and nationality :).
I liked her straight away. She has this really good energy and happiness about her. It was a lovely class and I felt very welcome as a newbie. We learnt a few nice basic blues moves that could be combined and played around with at the end of the class.
I really felt like a glass of wine with the music at some point. That's exactly what I did in Christchurch and it took me even deeper into that lovely relaxed feeling. I saw some bottles of wine around the tables so I wasn't the only one it seemed.
There was a difference between the Christchurch night and the Sunday night in Melbourne though. In Christchurch I knew I could just call my lovely friend Jeremy to pick me up any time.
All I had to do was just jump in the car and out again, whereas back here, in reality I'd just lost my job and had this agreement with myself to spend as little money as possible by not taking any trams any more or buying drinks.
My lovely bike friend Barry was downstairs in the pub waiting for me but I knew that wine wouldn't make it easier to cycle home uphill in one gear for half an hour after the music had stopped :).
Therefore I kept enjoying the dancing with really good blues dancers without wine and I still had an amazing time.
The only strange thing that happened was that one dancer who'd ask me to dance, half into the song just went: "Do you want to lead?". I responded: "I've never lead." He then just switched the position, closed his eyes and said: "You can start now." I kind of pushed him back and forward a bit not really sure what I was doing and wasn't too unhappy when the song finished.
That was my first blues lesson experience and I'm sold. I want more :-)!
My lovely bike friend Barry was downstairs in the pub waiting for me but I knew that wine wouldn't make it easier to cycle home uphill in one gear for half an hour after the music had stopped :).
Therefore I kept enjoying the dancing with really good blues dancers without wine and I still had an amazing time.
The only strange thing that happened was that one dancer who'd ask me to dance, half into the song just went: "Do you want to lead?". I responded: "I've never lead." He then just switched the position, closed his eyes and said: "You can start now." I kind of pushed him back and forward a bit not really sure what I was doing and wasn't too unhappy when the song finished.
That was my first blues lesson experience and I'm sold. I want more :-)!
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