Ombailamos

they grow up so fast!

A week ago they were mostly bald, with a few bits of fuzz, eyes tight shut, and the size of shelled walnuts. Now they are mostly downy, with a few actual feathers, bright beady black eyes, and nearly the size of their mother. It must be getting a little tight in that nest!

Mr. P bought us a patio heat lamp some time back, because - here in the desert near the ocean - it gets chilly at night, even in the summer, and we had found it uncomfortable to sit outside at twilight or after dark with a glass of wine. It was definitely an indulgence, but I'm really glad we've had it during Our Lady's optimistic (premature?) nesting adventure.

Our overnight temps have been in the low 40s for a couple of weeks now, which is unusual. And we've had rain on and off for the same period. I adjusted the position of my ficus tree one day to bring it a couple inches more under shelter (Our Lady called me nasty names, but came right back to the nest), and I've been turning on the heat lamp for an hour or two every morning, to take the chill off.

It's excessive, I know. It's not freezing, they have some cover, they have plenty to eat. But why shouldn't I take some available steps to make things a little easier for mamacita? She's been hitting the feeders hard, which, given this is the chick-feeding stage and she is hunting a lot for them, means she is having trouble getting enough calories. Keeping the patio even just a little warmer will reduce her stress, which will make it that much more likely that she will successfully fledge these chicks.

I am not a fan of "sink or swim" thinking. I believe there is nearly always something we can do to help ANY situation, and it's often something that costs us little or nothing in time, effort, or money.

social dance etiquette: playing the slots

Picture this: a groovy West Coast Swing or Hustle song comes on, and people get up to dance. They all line up in neat slots and everybody gets to dance without worrying about collisions.

Now picture this: a WCS or Hustle comes on and couples take the floor with absolutely no attention to their orientation. Couples are at right angles to each other, dancing across each other's space; or dancing the figures in circles, instead of slots; or dancing traveling actions from samba or foxtrot that cut right through the middle of the dance floor.

Which room would you rather be in?

Hustle and West Coast Swing, contrary to some opinions!, do actually have figures that leaders and followers can learn. And when you learn the figures, you learn that the dances are intentionally laid out to keep the leader either trading places with his follower, or staying more or less in place, sending the follower back and forth across his position, on a slot.

What is a slot? It's a rectangular space on the dance floor, about the size of a doorway, defined by leader and follower at arms' length from each other. Leader and follower hold their position during these dances; they don't travel around the floor - OR, if they decide to travel, they do it by moving to the outside lane of the dance floor.

This is the truth: WCS, properly danced, is danced in a slot. If you go to a WCS competition, you will not see dancers crossing each other; you'll see them lined up so that the judges can see everybody at all times.

Legend has it that hustle and WCS evolved, or were designed, to work on a slot to maximize the number of dancers on the floor or to show both partners to movie cameras. Either story could be true. The origin of the figures isn't all that important, though. What's important is that you can use knowledge of the figures to maximize your enjoyment of the dances - AND to raise the overall quality of dancing in your community.

The simplest way to start is to take a look at the room you're dancing in. Most likely, it has a "front" and that "front" will be a long side of the room. At Ballroom by the Bay, and at the CCVMA where USA Dance Los Angeles has most of its events, there's a stage at one side and seating on the other. The "front" is where the seats are; and, not coincidentally, it's a long side of the room. You want to be lined up parallel to a long side.

A thoughtful leader with good skills will position himself so that he and his partner dance with their sides to the "front." That way, those seated can see both dancers throughout. A leader with maybe not-so-good skills will position himself facing the front, so that his partner can only be seen from the back, except when he changes places with her - in which case, those seated get to see his back!

East Coast Swing is circular (as is the social version of Jive), West Coast Swing is not. Lindy Hop is a whole other critter, and honestly you don't see much of it at ballroom dances; followers can't do it safely in ballroom shoes, and lindy hoppers do tend to want to do the throws and aerials that are way too dangerous for a social ballroom environment. For what it's worth, though, Lindy Hop has both circular and slot figures. And the slot figures were adapted to become WCS.

Hustle draws on figures from samba, and some of them do travel. There are elements of tango, merengue, cha-cha, even foxtrot in modern hustle. The classic figures stay in the slot. If you want to use adapted figures to travel, get on the outside lane. It is not okay to weave through the center of the floor.

It's also not okay to throw your arms around. People tend to love hustle and WCS because they really get to stretch out. Unfortunately, sometimes they forget there are other people on the floor.

As with every other dance, your dance space is defined by your connection with your partner. Any arm stylings, kicks, or other extensions of your limbs need to be confined within the space you share with your partner. Never kick backward and never throw an arm behind yourself. These are stylings you may have seen in a performance and thought, "hey, cool!" but the key word there is PERFORMANCE.

If you have not had a real class in WCS or Hustle, you may not know how to orient yourself and work the figures within a slot. Find yourself a teacher (Russell Adcock and Jamie Bayard are local experts) and learn how to do it right. The quality of your dancing will instantly improve - figures are designed to work best when specific techniques are followed. And bringing your better technique to the dance floor makes the evening more pleasant for everyone.

das pictures

Okay, I promised to try, and I did try! And I want some credit, because in order to get these I had to stand on a tiny footstool, focus the camera on the nest, and hold it there (above eye level) for ten minutes waiting for Our Lady to come to the nest.

social dance etiquette: floorcraft and line of dance

One of the things USA Dance chapters try to do is provide ways for dancers to learn better skills. (In some communities, USA Dance chapters are the only social dance events you can find.) Many chapters use handouts provided by National that discuss basic dance floor etiquette - including proper use of the line of dance.

What is the line of dance? Well, many of the ballroom dances travel. In order to minimize collisions, figures have been developed that tend to naturally rotate around the room in a counterclockwise direction. In effect, it's like a racetrack.

Unlike a racetrack, however, where the fastest runner moves to the inside, in the ballroom the faster dancers move along the outside. So the outermost "lane" on the dance floor is for the dancers who can really move - those who have mastered continuity and progressive figures. If you don't know what those terms mean, that's a clue that you should be staying toward the middle of the floor. It's not a judgement; it's just a matter of proficiency levels - which can be improved through training and practice.

Everyone has the same right to use the dance floor - and everyone shares the responsibility of taking care of, not just their own partner of the moment, but all the other dancers on the floor. Because that lady you just banged into? You might have wanted to ask her to dance. The guy you just spiked with your heel? He might have been planning to ask you.

Socially, you'll see dancers of all levels, from absolute beginner to champion. The more-skilled dancers naturally have better floorcraft - that is, the ability to maneuver through traffic without either receiving or creating impacts with other couples. Beginners, or dancers with less training, can learn a lot by watching how top couples manage this. Not just watching and thinking "oh that looks so nice," but watching and trying to figure out what they are doing to make it work.

Generally speaking, there are some really clear ways to tell whether your floorcraft, and your use of line of dance, are better or worse than those of others on the floor:

• if traffic piles up behind you ...
• if you run into people ...
• if you accidentally hit people, or see people ducking under your hands ...
• if people run into you ... or
• if people frequently pass you ...

you probably need to move to the inside of the dance floor.

It is perfectly okay for dancers of all levels to share a floor. It is not okay to impede someone else's enjoyment of the evening just because you want to dance in place right in front of your chair. If you can get onto the dance floor at all, you can get all the way into the middle where you can dance in place safely.

By the same token, it is not okay to run over people just because they are not using line of dance correctly. A faster dancer needs to understand that he/she does not have special rights. Everyone pays the same $10 (or whatever) to get in.

And remember: your dance space is your frame. Everything you do, socially, should stay inside that space - including arm stylings. No matter how good you are, you should never behave as if people should make way for you. You may think so! But if you want to use all the space in the room, plan to dance alone.

A social dance is not the place to practice sequences of choreography that involve fast progressive turns, pivots, syncopations, direction changes, or picture lines. If you are working on a piece that includes these types of actions, you can ask the organizers if you can do a "workshop" or "showcase" performance - with everyone else off the floor. It's a great way to practice, actually, because even if you are just workshopping a routine, having an audience will raise your adrenaline, which will make you dance differently.

When it comes right down to it, social dancing relies almost entirely on Bronze and Silver syllabus figures. Those are the ones that are going to be familiar to the greatest number of dancers, the ones that people are comfortable with, and the ones that are designed expressly to enable people to get out and dance.

Plenty of those figures travel on the line of dance. Learn to do them correctly, and not only will your own dance experience be better - you will be raising the level of dancing throughout your community.

on tenacity

Since I started dancing (13 1/2 years ago!) it's been the consuming interest in my life.  Naturally, it comes up in conversation quite a bit.  Often, people say they've always wanted to dance but ... "I just don't have the talent," or "I have two left feet," or "I have no rhythm."

The blunt truth is a lot of people just don't want to take the time to learn a new skill - if they don't get it right away, they quit because "it'll take too long."  A lot of people also are afraid they won't be great - so if they don't get it right away, they quit because "it just isn't for me."  And a lot of people aren't fit enough to keep up - so if they don't get it right away, they quit because "it's too much work."

But guess what?  Almost no one who takes up dancing as an adult is good right away.  I certainly wasn't.  Almost no one learns super fast.  I certainly didn't.  And the vast majority of people who dance are only moderately fit.  I certainly was. 

I did no real fitness work before dancing; my only concession to fitness was a regular yoga practice.  Which has been great for balance, flexibility, and strength, but has not - must be honest! - contributed greatly to either agility or endurance.  Those qualities have come through dancing.  A lot, for a long time.  They won't come - any more than great dance skills will - from a one-hour group class once a week in which you're actually dancing for thirty minutes or less.

If you want to learn tennis, or golf, or whatever - you are probably going to need more than one session with a coach.  You are going to need to practice regularly.  You are going to have to watch other people play, and you'll probably need to watch yourself on video.  Same goes for dancing.  If you really want to learn it, you can't quit just because you don't get it the first time out.

Dancing is too complicated for that.  Tennis has different strokes, golf has different clubs - you wouldn't expect to learn that one size fits all in those sports, would you?  Then why expect dancing to be easier?  Dancing comes in so many different flavors, and all of them have individual techniques.

It pays to be tenacious.  It pays to keep going back to group classes.  It pays to take private lessons once in a while.  It pays to watch champions compete, and it really pays to watch yourself on video and compare yourself to other dancers you admire.

If you dance but don't take lessons, you have frozen your abilities in time.  The world of dance is moving on without you.  What you learned in the 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, or 50s is not the same as what new students are learning.  If you already dance, you can be an enormous asset to a group class - or you can be the dancer who scoffs all the way through about "that's not how I learned it."  The latter attitude is not helpful to you, and it's disrespectful to the teacher.

And if you dance but don't do dance-supporting fitness activity, your abilities will decline over time, just as your fitness will.  You may think you're still really moving around the floor, until one night your partner clears her throat and says gently, "we'd better move toward the center, there's a traffic pileup behind us."

If you want to be good at an activity, you have to stick with it.  You have to keep practicing, studying, and learning - because whatever that activity is, it changes over time.  Changing with it isn't a sign of weakness; it's a sign of your ability to adapt.

And remember, only those who are able to adapt will ultimately excel.  The others will end up sitting on the sidelines, secretly wishing they could dance like that.

ain't nobody here but us ... chicklets

Our Lady had to put up with more of my spying Thursday morning. Three of the four feeder tubes were drained, so I had to refill, and since I was outside anyway I had to sneak up to the ficus and greet her. She was flattened out to form a lid over the top of the nest, necessary since it was well into the low 40's last night. She gave me an admonitory glare but otherwise did not twitch.

One of the many charms of hummingbirds is that they are bold. I have read stories and seen photos of people successfully hand-feeding hummers, and even of a lady who had one move into her screened-in porch to spend a winter - didn't feel like migrating, I guess! Once a bird gets to know you, it accepts you as part of its environment. As long as I respect her personal space, Our Lady - who has been a regular visitor for a long time; she may even be one of the original patio-hatched birds - seems to be quite at ease with me.

One thing I've observed over the years is that hummingbirds are like little mobsters. They are confident to the point of belligerence toward anything they are eye-to-eye with. They do not, however, like to have their backs to the room. On one level they know they are the toughest things around; on another level, they know they are a tasty mouthful.

My hummers have avoided the ficus-tree-mounted feeders when I let the tree get too bushy; they like to be able to see through it. Once I realized that, I started keeping the tree thinned. The other feeder has generally been hung on my patio fence. The feeders I have are in copper wire mounts, so I angle the tubes enough that the birds' peripheral vision can encompass the whole patio. That way, they are comfortable turning their backs to the patio doors.

Up close, you can tell Our Lady is now sitting on chicks rather than eggs - her wings are a little bit akimbo and her belly fluff is poofed up on the sides. It is really funny to see her plop onto the nest, knowing that she is body-surfing onto chick heads; she leans forward just a bit from the inner edge of the nest and lets go with her feet, to avoid treading on said chick heads! No doubt the impact from that little body falling a mere inch is negligible, while the feet have claws. She uses her feet to rotate herself, shuffling around the rim of the nest to adjust her position over the chicks. One under each wing.

A while back our apartment manager was discussing taking out the yew tree between our building and the one adjacent. I am super glad they did not get around to doing anything, because the yew (old and rarely, if ever, trimmed - and thus full of clumps of dead leaves and spiderwebs) is apparently a rich source of insects appropriate for feeding hummer chicks, and she should be able to keep them adequately fed despite the weather.

Just another reminder that manipulating a tree to suit our aesthetic requirements is not necessarily the best thing for the animals whose environment it is. When we have our own property, I expect to have some trees managed to meet our own needs - and to leave others pretty much to their own devices.

we haz chicks!

If you are a bird in L.A., it's a pretty bad time to have bald little babies right out of the egg (chilly and very wet around here!), but Our Lady of the Ficus has hatched 'em. I made myself late for work by spying, and confirmed the presence of two little hungry beaks and two little homely heads. Seriously, I was tempted to call in sick just so I could spy all day!

I have a day coming up when I should be able to spy for quite some continuous time, and will do my best to secure a photo or two. If it stays cold, I may just turn on our patio heat lamp while I'm home.

Because I am so thoroughly domesticated myself, I am probably overly solicitous about "my" hummers. After all, birds have been raising families for millions of years in all kinds of crappy weather.

But given that I am part of the species that has damaged (or ruined) the natural habitats of almost all other species, I do feel some responsibility. To me, having that nest on the patio is credit in my karma bank.

fretting

It seems like Our Lady ought to be at or near the end of egg-sitting. I fully expected to see some hatching action before now. She is still on the nest; I was just not able to spend the desired time this weekend spying on her, to see if I could spot any chicklets.

I know this is a Burning Question, so I will keep you posted.

superstars!

Mr. P and I attended the dinner dance Saturday night at the Superstars of Ballroom Celebrity Dance Camp.  I wish we could have taken some of the workshops - in fact, I wish we could have attended the whole camp.  I think the published event pass, for what it included, was a real bargain.  The hosts say they are already in talks to repeat the event ... which makes me happy.

What was the most fun about the dinner dance?  Well, dancing on a big floor is always fun.  We probably clocked more mileage (despite my still somewhat damaged foot ... Worldtone hooked me up with a very comfortable low-heeled lace-up shoe that got me through the evening) than we usually do in three weeks.  But I have to say, the show was great.

Nick Kosovich and Tony Dovolani were the principal hosts and emcees.  One of the couples from Louis van Amstel's show "Ballroom with a Twist" kicked things off with a sizzling salsa.  Nick led the whole audience in a salsa & cha-cha lesson/routine.  Later on, Tony did three numbers in the show: a rumba with his former professional partner, Elena Grinenko; a samba/salsa with Cheryl Burke; and a cha-cha with Chelsie Hightower.  He also gave a lucky audience member a little birthday rumba.  Cheryl also danced a lovely lead-follow rumba with Corky Ballas.  It was a terrific demonstration of how basics can look when they are danced very, very well. 

Chelsie did a theatre-arts rumba with Dmitry Chaplin.  Max and Alessia, winners of the Professional Rising Star championship at the Ohio Star Ball, did three Standard numbers as well as a show dance.  Anthony and Lana, youth champions, did three Latin numbers.  I wish I had the full names, but there were many video cameras on hand and I'm sure some of this will show up on YouTube!

And then ... and THEN ... we went to see Louis' show on Sunday.  WOW is all I can say.  First of all, I am in love with the El Portal Theatre.  It is a beautiful little jewel box, well designed, attractively decorated, and apparently state of the art in terms of backstage and front-of-house equipment.  I wish we could have done "Astra" there.

The headliners were Jonathan Roberts & Anna Trebunskaya and Alec Mazo & Edyta Sliwinska of Dancing with the Stars.  Jonathan and Anna happen to be one of my two favorite ballroom couples (Felipe & Carolina Telona being the other).  Their numbers were sensational - and so were Alec & Edyta's.  In addition, there is a troupe of dancers from the ballroom world and a trio of modern dancers (including Randi Lynn Evans, a So You Think You Can Dance top 10 contestant), and two American Idol finalists to provide musical interludes (much better than I expected, frankly): Gina Glocksen and David Hernandez.

The show was well-paced and very tight; no awkward pauses, no technical malfunctions, no one on stage who clearly didn't belong there.  The choreography throughout was inventive and interesting.  Group numbers gave spotlight moments to each of the members of the troupe.  A videography crew was on hand, which may have been just for promotional purposes, but I for one would be happy to add a show DVD to my library if they decide to release one.

There is still one more weekend of this terrific show.  That's Ballroom with a Twist, www.elportaltheatre.com.  If you can get tickets, GO.  You won't regret it!

household beasts: blackglamapuss