So Busy!

I had a crazy busy dance weekend, and that's after paring down some of my plans because I couldn't do everything.

Today I drove all the way up to the Phoenix area for a very special practice, which I'll blog more about tomorrow when I am hopefully less exhausted. I also got to drop by Plaza real quick and see my Anaya friends. Every time I see them dance I miss being around them! Anaya Tribal really has some of the best ITS moves, they always look so polished, and their zilling sounds SO GOOD! If you are going to be at the Vegas Intensive, you should make sure to go see them on stage and in the vending area.

Then I got home and went to troupe practice, and only two of us showed up, so we got to spend the night drilling things that we needed to work on -- including 20 minutes of shimmy drills. Hence the exhaustion. I am now ready to eat a cookie and veg out for the rest of the night.

Homework and classes

Lots of dancing today! I did my homework from Jolie's class... chest lifts through three songs. SO BORING! It was hard not to slip into other moves, or to let my mind wander and my moves get sloppy.

Then I drove to class at Plaza and had two hours of Anaya goodness, with lots of zills and an exciting new variation of Sunanda that's still in the works. (Sunanda is a move Anaya borrowed from ATS, I really love it).

Now it is time for hot chocolate and popcorn, then SLEEP! I need to rest up the next two nights so I will be ready for Amy Sigil to kick my butt.

Teacher Profile: Anaya Tribal

When I decided that I wanted to make the weekly commitment to go to Plaza de Anaya for belly dance classes, I then had to decide who I was going to study with. I knew I wanted to learn tribal, but there were group tribal classes on THREE different nights! Which to choose? I ended up settling on Anaya Tribal over ATS or Domba, because Thursday was a good night for me and I saw that Cari and Tiffany used to dance with Nawari at the Ren Faire, and I LOVED that group!

I'm happy to say that I made the right decision -- although there probably wasn't a wrong decision. Learning from Cari and Tiffany has been a treat! They have a very polished and exact style of tribal, with a lot of the basics that you'll learn in any class but also a lot of unique combos. The vocabulary is staggeringly large and varied, and ever changing, with new moves occasionally added and old moves dropped out when they fall out of favor. This ever-evolving style means that after over 2.5 years with them, I still don't have the entire curriculum committed to memory and there's always more to learn and room to improve.

In addition to teaching beginner, intermediate, and advanced ITS, Cari and Tiffany occasionally offer classes in sword and skirt. They travel to many belly dance festivals and SCA events to teach workshops and vend their costuming wares. Oh, did I not mention the costuming? I did now. They have the best pantaloons and the cutest vests, not to mention gorgeous bras at affordable prices. You can learn more about Anaya and do a little shopping at the Anaya Tribal website.

Cari and Tiffany also direct The Anaya Tribe, a student troupe of various levels of dedicated students. I spent several happy, albeit frenetic, months as a member of Anaya Tribe performing at a variety of shows. The Tribe is a great way to improve your dance, get performance experience, and make friends. I'm sad to be leaving it at the end of this month!

By the way, Anaya member Danna was also helping with the classes for a while but then she had to take some maternity leave. Her daughter Zoey was born yesterday! Congratulations, Danna!

Back to Anaya!

The New Year Session at Plaza de Anaya finally started this week, so it was time for fresh Anaya classes. Had a good time, enjoyed seeing my Phoenix friends, swapped out some of my retail items and collected my earnings... But dang am I tired out from the drive and the dancing!

Have to say I did feel good in class... I "got" some things that I've had trouble with in the past. Studying with other teachers and practicing more has done well for me.

Holy crap, it's December

Day 335 of practice.

There's just one month left of my year of practice! Can't believe 2011 is almost over.

Tonight's practice was 2 hours of Anaya Tribal classes. I'm happy that they've been adding more challenges for the level 3-4 students in the level 1-2 class. Tonight we had to play 3-3-7 on our zills while the newbies learned 3s, and we had to layer shimmies over our Turkish and Arabic. I am slowly getting better at that. Turns out that most of my problems with dance all stem from just being too tight, so as I relax more and stretch all my tight places more, these problems will go away. Also I have to keep practicing, of course.

I also added some items to my Plaza de Anaya gift registry! Yes, that's right, Plaza has a registry this year, so that your friends, family, and significant others can make sure to buy you the right dance pants. Wait... there are no pants on my registry! What is wrong with me?

Tired

Day 321 of practice.

I yawned my way through classes tonight... The drive up was especially tiring and brain-numbing due to traffic. I sure do hate that drive sometimes!

Worked on zills of course, always the zills. Also an intermediate/advanced move that I somehow never learned, so it's good to add that to my repertoire.

Plus I finally got my copy of Carrie Conyha's Trbaret DVD. Maybe I can watch it over the holiday weekend next week.

End of the session

Day 293 of practice.

Tonight was the last Thursday class for the session at Plaza de Anaya. Sadly, this means no more DC Skirt for the time being... just when I was starting to get the hang of it! But in its place there will be Anaya Sword, so that's awesome.

Lots of drilling and practicing tonight, to make sure everyone remembers what they learned over the past 8 weeks. We did learn two "new" moves in Anaya class, but they were ones that I already knew. Mostly we worked on zills which of course I always need more work on.

Now I'm quite tired and sore, so it's time for some stretching/yoga and sleep!

All by myself!

Day 286 of practice.

None of my awesome carpool buddies were available tonight, so I had to drive all the way to Phoenix by myself. I took advantage of this by heading up a little early, which allowed me to meet my friend Meghan's adorable new dog and actually eat dinner before class! Of course, traffic was so bad that I got in so late that I missed the first class of the night, but whatever. PUPPY AND RAMEN! What more could I ask for?

Well, actually, I could apparently also ask for a new bustle skirt and a veil because I acquired both of those tonight.

But there was also dancing! We practiced formation changes in Anaya Tribal, and in DC Skirt we learned the last move on the syllabus and practiced a lot. I'm quite tired from all of the dancing and the driving!

Class class class.

Days 271 and 272 of practice.

Wow, how did I forget to blog after class on Wednesday? I guess I had other things on my mind!

Anyway, class has been good for the past couple of days, keeping me busy with learning new things and fine-tuning the ones I know. Lots of zill work! Tonight in Anaya class each person had to go to the front and do a move with a special zill pattern all by themselves. SCARY! I only screwed up a little bit, though. Yay for practice!

Now I'm so tired that my arms want to fall off, so I think it's time for a cookie and sleep.

100 days to go.

Day 265 of practice.

Look at that! There's only 100 days left in my year of practice!

Anyway, tonight was dance class night, as Thursdays usually are. It was fun! We did some peripheral vision exercises and re-learned one of my favorite moves in the Anaya classes, and DC Skirt class had two new moves, and I even took a turn leading the little trio I was part of.

Now I am tired. I need an in-house masseuse to be waiting for me every Thursday when I get home.

Maybe I should actually dance?

Day 253 of practice.

Today I realized that I had been so caught up in practicing my zills for Anaya class that I had not been practicing the moves at all! Oh no! So I did two songs worth of fast and one of slow. It was scary how much trouble I had remembering combos, but they eventually came back to me. Of course, while I was doing that I realized that I haven't practiced DC Skirt either, so I know what I'll be doing tomorrow.

I also worked on my solo, which is coming along nicely, and my random improv. Today was "Blink" by Infected Mushroom. I really don't like that band very much, so it was hard to get into it. But I did it anyway, and explored some different movements.

Then it was zill time and my zills were just horrible. Plus the elastic really is barely holding on, so I think I'll go to the fabric store on Monday. It would be good to fix them before class on Wednesday.

New session!

Day 244 of practice.

Tonight was the start of a new session, which meant lots of fresh faces in Anaya Fundamentals, and starting over with DC Skirt, which also had some new people. And one of those newbies is none other than frequent (only?) blog commenter SaraBeth. YAY! For a long time, the running joke was that we were never at the same dance events, so it's really awesome to be sharing a class with her. Amusingly, we both wore the same black iris sparkle scarf, so we had matching butts.

It was a really fun night. We did lots of zills in advanced class, and I enjoyed having my friend Amanda keep me company on the drive, allowing us to catch up with each other. Next class may find me with a FULL car for the drive up. I love having carpool buddies :)

Small animals fleeing in terror!

Day 242 of practice.

Oh no! I've once again decided that I really need to work on my zills! Anaya Tribal has recently decided to start adding more variety to the zilling that accompanies their dance moves, and they've passed that along to those of us in their classes and the student troupe. No more getting away with simple triplets, now we have to be able to play baladi, saiidi and more! Oh no! I'm familiar with all these rhythms, and I've learned them before, but that doesn't mean that I can reliably play them without having a stronger player nearby for me to lock in on. This would probably be much easier if I was one of those people who had gone to an actual school, and played in a marching band. Then playing music and moving at the same time would seem natural!

In order to actually have some fun tonight, instead of just tormenting all of the ear drums in the house, I then put away my zills and worked on my solo for an upcoming benefit I'll be performing at (more details later this week, but it's at Plaza de Anaya on Sept 17th, so save the date!). I plan to do some veil work, as that was specifically requested (could this be my specialty? I guess it is for now!) but I decided to dance sans veil tonight to get a sense of the song and what moves work well with it. I found myself playing with nice, deliberate walking, and sinking down into poses. Feeling very slinky tonight.

Worn out!

Day 237 of practice.

I'm beat, and I only did 2 hours of class tonight! Skirt and Fan was doing a choreo, which I missed the first part of, so I had to skip the class. I miss it so much! :( Next session we'll be back to just skirt without fan. So sad!

Anaya classes were fun, we're changing up our zills more, which makes my brain hurt. And I had to lead a move that I didn't really know. Good thing other people in my group did, so I had them tell me what to do so I could pretend to lead ;)

Most importantly, it was good to see my Tempe dance friends who I had not seen for a month!

Then I came home and did my sword practice. Note to self: do sword practice before class, when your muscles aren't tired!

Sword on my head!

Day 235 of practice.

On Saturday, I took a sword workshop with Anaya Tribal and it reminded me that I had not worked with my sword for a while, so I really should practice more. Then today Mahin issued a practice challenge... five minutes of practice with a sword on your head every day for a week. How perfect! That Mahin, she's psychic or something.

Tonight I decided to spend 5 minutes doing rib isolations with the sword on my head, because it was around the middle of the difficulty list and I like rib isolations. I'm happy to say that I didn't lose my sword, but it did wobble around a lot. I especially need to clean up my rib circles. Well, that will give me something to aim for this week!

I think I actually got half an hour or more of dancing done today. I had a lot of beadwork to do, and since I had music playing while I beaded, there was a whole lot of chair dancing going on. Plus I did some hand isolations while I read -- hey, my left hand has nothing to do while my right holds the book, I might as well exercise it.

Weather can bite me

Days 218 and 219 of practice.

Buh. I was supposed to spend the day at the New York Renaissance Faire, where I would get to see Veldrina, my one NY belly dance friend. But no. The weather had other ideas in mind. It rained. And it was humid. Is humid. Will forever be humid.

Have I ever mentioned that I have lived in deserts my entire life? The East Coast is not for me.

The other thing I was supposed to do is attend the first meeting of The Anaya Tribe, the new student troupe that I will be joining. But obviously, being on Long Island made it rather difficult to get to Plaza. So I soothed my sad spirit by shopping all day. I bought a femme fatale hat, huge earrings, a bracelet with a beetle on it, oh yes, and clothes for my mundane life, too.

Yesterday's practice was not really worth mentioning, as I was in a food coma and barely moved. Today's practice was much better. I did some isolations, struggled to remember skirt and fan moves (and why, exactly, would I want to wear a 25 yard skirt in this humidity?) then put on some music and danced for my mother in law. It was hard to do traveling moves in the little living room though! I'm starting to miss my tiled entry way practice area at home.

I miss my classes!

Day 215 of practice.

The problem with being on vacation is that I'm away from my classes and have to practice all by myself. So sad! Tonight I did some isolations, some drills, and some Anaya Tribal fast moves to music. During the drills I continued to work on my mayas, which feel a little better. But I'd still rather have been at The Dance Loft with Fonda and my classmates!

I did get to chat with Dawn on the phone, and I'm keeping in touch with other dance friends via FB, so at least technology keeps me from being completely cut off from my community.

Happy Dancing Cheesecake Day!

Day 211 of practice.

Who comes up with these days? Ok, it's actually National Dance Day *and* National Cheesecake Day, so I decided hey, why not combine them? But I didn't feel like eating an entire slice of cheesecake before dancing (too heavy!) so instead I had cheesecake frozen yogurt. Yummy! Then I danced! First I danced around a bit while doing the laundry, then I moved to my dance space and got some Anaya Tribal practice in. I even broke out my zills, much to the dismay of my dogs. I haven't been dancing much to music lately, except at class or when I have someone over for practice, so it felt good to really get into the rhythm and musicality of it again.

New pants!

Day 209 of practice.

Tonight Dawn and I went up to Tempe for class, as usual, and we had fun, as usual. It was a good night of classes, with lots of practice and review and some new moves, too. I'm really honing my Anaya Tribal moves, and getting comfortable with DC skirt and fan. Over all, I'm happy with my progress right now.

But wait, didn't I say "New pants!" up there? Why yes I did! There was a bunch of great new merchandise at the studio, so I decided to treat myself to a new pair of dance pants, because it's been far too long since I fed my addiction. I picked up a great pair of ruched, ruffled brown capri-length pants. They'll be great for steampunk, great with boots, great to transition from Anaya Class to DC class by throwing a skirt over 'em... really, a good investment!

Getting my Anaya on.

Day 204 of practice.

Today I practiced while I did some housework, and then I busted out some Anaya Tribal moves because I haven't really been practicing those enough. There are a lot of moves that I need to brush up on, I should probably just work my way through the syllabus and see what I do and don't know well enough to just do from memory.