Hi,

I see quite few time mention of fleckerel in VW but have no clue what is it looks like. Could anyone give me a hint/description of it, please. Apparently, this is belong to american syllabus only, isn't it ?
many thanks,

Thank you all very much.
I saw that movement many times in exhibition routine but never know how it's called. Cool!!
Another question please: I see that the contra check is often used to switch from reverse to natural, what/how would you switch from natural to reverse other than doing an hesitation (I don't know if it's called the same thing in IS) ?
And at last, do/could you speed up the fleckerel or stay up beat when the music is slower than 60bpm ? In one of the video example I have, seems dancers are not right on beat

Thanks,

Laura's basically covered it. I'll add another note to her description though. It's esentially a very fast turn done in place. This is why it's done after a couple moves to the center of the floor, to avoid blocking traffic in the travelling lanes closer to the outside. IIRC, one complete turn is done in only one measure of music (3 beats) instead of two measures (6 beats) like usual when travelling down LOD. They are fairly difficult to dance (to dance well, at least) so don't bet on seeing them at social dances much if at all. Anmd actually Laura's sample combination involves both the Reverese and Natural Fleckerls (one way then the other) plus a Contra Check (probably) to switch between them.

--
James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall

It's also part of the International Syllabus.

In International Style, if you see a couple dance to the center of the floor, then look like they're dancing around each other first in one direction and then in the other, and finally dancing back out to the edge of the floor, then that's a fleckerel.

And fleckerels are very difficult to dance well

As far as I can tell, people only do Fleckerls in the way that lets them use a Contra Check to change. So the basic pattern would be Reverse Turns from the edge to the center, Reverse Fleckerls, Contra Check, Natural Fleckerls, Natural Turns to the outside again to resume travelling around the floor. I don't think I've ever seen it go the other way around, probably because there is no similarly good switch from a Natural Fleckerl to a Reverse Fleckerl. I'm sure the syllabus has a couple follows for each step, but Fleckerls always seem to be done the same way.

Speed up/slow down -- it's possible I guess. I haven't watched high level ballroom dancing in some time and can't remember what it looks like. They should be pretty close to on time at least, but it is possible that the dancers will speed up a little bit to account for the time it will take them to get started again, coming out of the Fleckerls into regular turns. Kind of like how starting the dance from a full stop can take a little time to speed up to match the beat; they could want a little extra time to adjust from the fast spins to the slower turns.