Dance-Related Injury

Friday, August 14, 1998
One year ago: Opened with Expectation

My comment yesterday about someone who sent me mail from my yahoo personal ad drew another reader out of the the woodwork. (Hi, Mark!) I quizzed him about how he found this journal, because I always am interested in that. He found me from the Pacific Northwest Journals list. He said that though I might grumble sometimes, I'm not a whiner. I'm glad I come across that way!

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Tonight the featured band at the Century Ballroom was Indigo Swing. I've heard this band twice before, in February and in June, and like them very much! I danced several times with Michael Coffey, and with many of my usual partners. There were a bunch of folks who had driven up from Portland for the weekend. I want to go down there to the Crystal Ballroom! There were some road trips organized to there earlier this year, before the Zoot Suit Sunday thing got going in Seattle on Sunday nights, but I didn't go on any of them. Now, when I feel ready, the trips aren't happening! Maybe this fall we will get them going again.

So one of my new partners was one of this Portland group (Mark? Mike? darn it!). I do keep my eyes open during the course of an evening, and if I see that a guy can dance, I'll ask him if I see an opportunity. We had fun! He asked how long I'd been dancing, and was surprised that I just started with lindy last December. He said, "Seattle dancers can be very good, even if they haven't been dancing long, because they get to dance with experienced leads."

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One of the points that is always made in beginning swing lessons, both regular classes or the free lesons before a dance, is that a lead shouldn't use his thumbs to grip the follow's hands. It's just pressure and frame that holds you together. I got a graphic demonstration of the truth of this dictum tonight. I don't know who did this, or if it was an accumulation from several guys who were holding my hand too tightly, but somehow I ended up with a huge nasty bruise on the back of my right hand. The picture you see below was taken Sunday evening, but the bruise was visible by the end of the evening on Friday. Shocking!

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