OK, I'm deserting from the "North London" thread, as this seems to be the place to report one's experiences.
Incredibly frustrating class last night - I came home and just wanted to bang my head against a wall for an hour.
Kicca returned after her trip (
), but she and Keiji took a while to get back into rhythm and connection (
), so a lot of time was wasted trying to work out where they were, and what they were supposed to be doing.
I have to say, based on the sessions so far, I'm not getting as much from the intermediate classes as I did from the beginner classes - there's not so much of a clear structure involved, and it seems much more ad-hoc. Possibly this is because Kicca's been off for a month, but some planning wouldn't have gone amiss.
In addition, I got stuck with a partner (for about an hour) with whom I could find no connection. I'm sorry, I'm a bad person and will rot in hell for saying this, but she just would
not follow my lead - she was racing off to do her own thing, all the time, ignoring my attempts to set the pace and actually do the lead.
(Having said that, I probably do need to speed my lead up - I'm focussing on getting everything done right rather than getting everything done at the right speed)
I know, I'm the leader, I should control things - but in AT, it's all invitational, AFAIK there's no easy way to "increase the strength" of the lead - if the follower ignores it, you pretty much have to follow her wherever she goes. And I've no problem with learning with someone less experienced (amazingly enough, there are people less experienced than me), but I don't want to have to fight for control for a solid hour - we should have been swapped around.
In addition, we covered baridas (sweeps), and I had
incredible problems doing these from a giro - my weight was always on the wrong foot, I just couldn't get it to work despite a 5-minute session sweating in front of both teachers trying to understand it. Finally, I just decided to do it at speed - and it worked! Yay! More to the point, at speed I could "enforce" a lead with a barida, which cheered me up a little.
So, this week's moral is to speed things up.