Every Competition is a Lesson Learned
The San Francisco Autumn Classic brought a small, fast floor -- though the tails problem was resolved, the floor brought on some new problems. In the semifinal, we had a number of traffic problems (meaning other couples being in our way, and us being in the way of other couples). I think some of them are experience-related... Steve hasn't had to face the challenge of dancing on a really crowded floor, yet, having only danced juniors and I guess youth with basically only having finals... and there, the couples are smaller and the movement is less, so it feels like there's always plenty of space. Which means you never have to get used to having to stop mid-wall to avoid crashes, or overturn and underturn things to get out of some other couple's way, and you definitely never have to learn how to keep your poise and not look ruffled when the inevitable occurs.

There were many lessons learned at this competition.

1. We need to make an effort to practice dancing through our material on crowded floors and work on avoiding people while we do so. In part to ensure we keep moving in competition, and in part to learn to keep our poise when have traffic problems. Steve sees them, but is like a young driver whose response is to freak out and overcorrect, he reverts to having poor poise, a worried look on his face and not really giving me any support or that much in the way of a clear lead. And once shape is gone, it is very difficult to get it back.

2. We dance better when we have an audience -- people who care about our dancing whom we want to impress.

3. Because of our individual mental prep strategies for the comp, it's really better for us *not* to have to talk to each other right before we dance... what is probably Steve's self-talk of "I'm better than all of these people and going to win" comes out verbally from him as "oh this should be an easy field to beat, nobody in it is that good." -- which makes me nervous, as if we misjudge how well we have to dance, then we won't get the result that we deserve.

4. How we feel about our early rounds has an impact on how we dance in later rounds. When we feel a round went well, we step it up in the next round. If we feel a round went poorly, it's hard for us to reset our energy and dance our best in the following round.

So, much to be adjusted. And important to note that the dancing is getting better, but a lot of what we know and can do in practice hasn't really had a chance to sink in to muscle memory yet. Hopefully that will start happening soon -- it will make our dancing dramatically better, I think.

And we did, it turns out, make the final... we were awarded 5th place, which, since we were beaten by a couple of couples whom we have beaten consistently for the last few months, was frustrating, but there are worse things. And at least our tango and quickstep had some good moments, as we scored a 1st place mark in each of those dances. (granted, we also scored a few 6th place marks in each dance, but hey, can't win 'em all).

I think it's all there for us -- we have the good dancing, now we just need to develop the floorcraft, poise and confidence to show it off.