The Left Whisk is syllabus waltz; I actually did learn that one in group classes with a Runaround ending. I've also done the others I mentioned before somewhere, the Contra Check which is syllabus in waltz and tango (and V.Waltz, but no one around here uses it because it's typically the Fleckerl change of direction and no one does Fleckerls) and the (Drop) Oversway in tango. I'm pretty sure in one class we also did a RF Lunge, but our teacher ended it in the lunge and didn't give us an exit.
Let me dig up those workshop notes. . . . If I'm not mistaken these were with the Masons, Timothy and Michelle. The syllabus lines workshop went over Contra Check and Left Whisk as figures, then sort of talked about how you get lines kind of in the process of dancing other figures like figures going to PP, the PP can be a sort of line, and the "hover" family of figures like Reverse Corte or Hover Telemark where I guess it's the hovering action that acts sort of like a line. The open lines workshop went over Throwaway Oversway, Oversway, and Same Foot Lunge. This was a bit over my head at the time and I think my notes show it.
I'm not sure I could quite reproduce these figures from just the notes I have here. If someone demonstrated them to me or I found more info somewhere else, I might remember how they worked though. I think we were given ways to get into and out of these figures. It was mainly the ones from group classes where sometimes the teacher wouldn't give us exits at the ends of combinations. It's OK if you're ending with a syllabus figure (look up the follows), but it's harder when you're ending with an open figure, especially a picture line. I have books at home that must cover additional lines, too. It's just that I've really never learned many of them and it would be nice to have a few more I could use now and then.
As a comment on your reply to Kevin, our teacher told us that in picture line type positions, it should feel like the man is underneath the lady providing support for her from below. I don't think you're really in that position physically, with the lady kind of over the man, but I think his point was where the man is directing his energy. He shouldn't feel like he's coming down over the woman in these lines, he should feel like his energy is directed up to help support her from underneath. That's kind of the same thing as you were saying about not having the man bend over the lady. It certainly takes some skill to get the lines right. I've found that the Contra Check isn't too hard to do and will often use that at the end of dance if I can get into position for before the song ends.
I'd kind of like to start working the Oversway into other dances since I learned it in tango, but I'm not sure how the precedes and follows work when you bring it to the swing dances. And usually I do a Drop Oversway in tango, not the plain Oversway, so that would change things a bit, too. Anyway, picture lines aren't really the same as dips, so maybe we should make a new thread for talking about picture lines if we want to continue. I certainly wouldn't mind continuing, but I also don't want to side track the original topic too far.
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James Marshall
marshall@astro.umd.edu http://www.astro.umd.edu/~marshall
