Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Practice really pays off!

I've mentioned before how my practice has really been helping me. Today I turned one some dance music to help me sweep the house before practice, and as I was walking to the laundry room to grab the broom, I found myself doing an effortless walking shimmy -- maybe even a fast 3/4 shimmy? Could it be?

Sometimes I feel like my "breakfast shimmies" practice is cheating, but clearly it's helping. I'm not good at drilling shimmies -- I get bored. But the past couple of months of dancing while I cook, do dishes, and work on other household chores has allowed me to slowly and naturally develop better shimmies, without overthinking it like I do when I'm actually drilling them.

In addition to housework shimmies and chair dancing while I sorted more music, today's practice consisted of veil performance practice (worked on my entrance! I think I've decided on one!), and some fast Anaya Tribal moves, and belly rolls while at my desk.

Earlier in the evening, I went to the bookstore and picked up a book on anatomy for dancers. It seems to be geared towards ballet, but I figure it will be good for me, too. I'll blog more about it after I've had a chance to look through it.

3 comments:

  1. To make your shimmy practice less boring try varying the speed of your shimmy, level changes from a deep plie to releve, arm paths, single leg shimmies, simple layering like shoulder rolls or snake arms.

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  2. Informal practice is way too under-rated. Those 2,3,5 minutes here and there add up and are usually way more frequent than the blocks of time we occasionally get in. I have always told my students to practice their shimmies every time they brush their teeth! This helps you get them on "autopilot" so you can eventually layer with travelling, shapes and other isolations.
    Way to go, AJ - great job!! :-)

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  3. SaraBeth, I should definitely do that... I just always get caught up in dancing for fun, or to practice specific new combos from class, instead of drilling shimmies or other things I need to improve. It's a bad habit I need to break.

    Yay Mahin! Getting kudos from you means a lot to me :) I should do shimmies while I brush my teeth -- sometimes I do my belly rolls then :)

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