Hubby and I are learning dance. He's CCW; I'm CW. This hasn't mattered until now, when Coach announced she wants to put twizzles into our footwork ( ), and for us to learn a dance spin ( ).

I'm turn-challenged at the best of times and can't spin to save a penny, so we've decided that I'll be the one to "change" (the theory being that (a) I haven't learned to spin so may as well teach me CCW; and (b) Hubby is a pretty good freestyle spinner, so he can hold me up!! )

Any tips on how I learn to spin and twizzle the wrong way?? I know practice is the key, and I'm practising, but at the rate I'm going...

You ought to have been taught twizzles on both feet anyway - all 8 edges, in fact (says me, who can only do FI and BI ones, and still find FO ones hard and BO ones all but impossible!) - all our elite dancers, and increasingly all the other ones, incorporate alternating twizzles as part of their warm-up sequence.

If I were you, I'd practice alternating twizzles - but there is no reason why you and your husband shouldn't do them in opposite directions as part of your step sequence! We haven't them in ours yet, but we do just one (LFI single) at the very start of our Dutch Waltz this year, and working on that has really helped us get our side-by-side twizzles, so maybe next year.... Of course, the Husband can't check single twizzles properly......

As for learning to spin the wrong way, it's really a matter of doing it. I find the couples' spin technique is very different to a solo spin anyway, so why not keep your normal-direction spin for solo work, and learn a couples' spin (whichever one you start out with) as a totally different element in its own right?

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Mrs Redboots
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What solo spin??

BTW, for some reason, when I selectively quoted to respond to different bits of the post, the quoted post (Mrs Redboots') went into normal type, while my reply has gone to italics, all of which is the opposite of what normally happens; and I can't change either back. Why?

I'm a CW skater. I can spin and jump both ways. Basically, it's due to lots of practice. I skated synchro, where most (all!) of the choreo is for CCW skaters and I also teach intro figure skating where I have to demo, and most of the kids are CCW. Yeah, practice, lots of it. For spinning, to learn and be confident on the 3 turns that go your uncomfortable direction.

If it helps any, I saw a senior level dance couple last week two foot their way through twizzles, one of the partners is weak on one of the set and they spent most of their session on them.

...

Dunno what you did to reply...but I'll use <>'s in place of []'s below to illustrate what I did here:

<quote=aussieskater>What solo spin?? </quote>
...

<quote>BTW, for some reason...</quote>
Dunno what you did...

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Just to thank everyone - the CCW spin is finally coming (so's Christmas 2010). I managed 2 clean centred revs of a 2-foot CCW spin yesterday. Yay! In fact, DH and coach both commented that my CCW directionn is generally technically cleaner than CW - probably because I have to work so hard at getting it to work at all!