Trying to Dance for the first time.

I had been mulling over the idea of taking my Tai Chi to the dancefloor for a few weeks before I actually tried it.

My first attempt failed. I had no comfort or confidence, and didn't "feel" it.

The second attempt failed, too. I wasn't in the right frame of mind.

The third attempt blew my mind.

Basically, the key that I found was in the timing (duh!). For the most part I'm not actually doing Tai Chi. There are times when I need inspiration and I'll break into Cloudhands, or other specific movements, but what I've found to be most critical are the most basic concepts, particularly silk reeling, and the flow of energy through the legs and hips, up to the upper body.

Since Tai Chi has trained me to use my hips for control, I find that a very large part of finding a rhythm comes simply from shifting the hips, and thus shifting the motion of the entire upper body.

Studying definitions of various types of dance, I find that "popping and locking" describes a significant part of the final flavor of the movement.

On timing, I've been going out of my way to discover how to use variations on the beat in order to make the result more interesting and deep. More on timing later...