The basics:
Dance: Til Forever
Choreographer: Audrey Watson
Music: “From Here Til Forever” by Helene Fischer
Description: 64 count, 2 wall beginner/intermediate dance with 1 restart
The review:
In the review for “Dreamers” I compared Helene Fischer to ABBA and Celine Dion, and this song does nothing to change my opinion of that, although I’d say the dial leans a little more towards later-era ABBA with a touch of some 80s rock ballad (perhaps a little Bonnie Tyler?) thrown in. “From Here Til Forever” doesn’t have quite as strong a pattern of light and dark sections as “Only Dreamers”, but it’s still there as part of an enjoyable ballad.
The rhythms of “Til Forever” are mostly simple, with only a couple of places where there are multiple half beat steps grouped together. The first is in counts 13-16 which are listed on the sheet as “step lock & step lock step”, although the timing of the first step lock means that I typically hear it described as a Dorothy step. There is something a little messy about this step, possibly because I’m not sure which way my body should be facing for it, but the rhythm captures some nice drum beats in the music which does in part make up for it.
The other place where there are a lot of half beats is in counts 37-40, but again the heel switches here mesh really nicely with the drum rhythms, and because they don’t require much movement the speed of the steps isn’t a huge factor. So much so, that I really think there could have been a similar section at the end of the dance, as there are some great beats just when the verse transitions into the chorus. Such a thing is not to be, however, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with the jazz box step, which does flow nicely into the quarter turn step at the start of the new wall. In fact, the whole dance flows and travels nicely, and even a relatively simply step like the “walk, walk, heel ball step” of counts 25-28 works so well that I’m happy for it to be repeated in counts 45-48.
There are two places in the music where a restart could go, but Audrey has chosen to use only the first. I am always glad to see such a minimalist approach applied to restarts, and certainly by skipping the second restart we get the dance matching up in different ways, providing a nice contrast (not to mention a smooth finish by continuing the two half turn shuffles to come back to the front). However, by replacing the sailor step quarter turn in counts 20-24 with a sailor touch, this dance has what is unfortunately one of the more uncomfortable restarts that I’ve experienced.
“Til Forever” is not quite the perfect dance that “Dreamers” is, but it does combine a song worth singing along to with a dance worth getting on the floor for.
