Happy Dance Friday #78 - Back in the saddle, with Quickstep

January sixth means the holiday season is down for a long winter's nap, the new year is underway, and I know I could use a good dose of energy this morning, so we're going with the quickstep. This dance has been likened to a duck - smooth as glass on the top, paddling like mad underneath. I know that as a writer, I can relate to that. Hence writing quote in today's art piece.

First, straight out of Blackpool (2010 championships, to be exact) let's take a look at how it's done in competitive circles:

I think of that as the guidelines for one's genre. I'll use romance, since that's what I write. From RWA.org, the official definition is as follows:
A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around two individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.
An Emotionally-Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

As long as those two requirements are met, the writer has a lot of room in which to move. In dance, there's competitive dance and show dance (please correct me on my terms, dance fans; I'm only working on one cup of tea here) and what entertains on TV won't always please the judges in Blackpool, but if entertaining is the whole point, I think the clips below do an admirable job. As long as the requirements of the dance are there, it's fun to see what the individual dancers and choreographers do with the same essentials.







Though I haven't seen a quickstep performed to Matchbox Twenty's "I'll Believe You When," I think it's a natural.



Why, yes, I do sometimes choreograph dance numbers in my head, usually for fictional characters...doesn't everyone? Eh, we writers are odd ducks; it's in the job description.