Feeling Competent

Sometimes I feel like I am just totally overwhelmed by dance, or by my goals. Today is not one of those days. Oh sure, we did a gliding exercise which my legs would not cooperate with, but we also did a new layering exercise and I actually GOT IT a few times. Most of the time when Jolie throws new layers at us, I am just completely messed up, but I made this one make sense to me and it feels attainable.

Then I went jogging tonight. I don't know if I've mentioned it on this blog before, but I hate running. I'm really bad at it. Or so I usually thought. Tonight, for the first time ever, I out-ran my husband. Usually he is the one jogging along happily while I am proclaiming that I am about to die, but today I was almost chipper about how well I was doing. I suspect maybe I have been replaced by an alien pod person, but I don't care. I ran and I did well and I completed the running training exercise we were doing for the night. Will I turn into a person who likes running? Well, we'll see how I feel as I continue this training, but tonight I am feeling pretty proud of myself. I feel like my dedication to class and home training has improved my base fitness and maybe running will be more accessible now.

My hideously ugly running shoes might help. They're a brand I've never heard of, and they are silver, sunny yellow, and bright purple, but they weigh pretty much nothing and fit my feet perfectly, so they were easy to run in.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow throws at me!

Layers are haaaaaard

Geez, what a night. It's amazing how one week off can totally throw you off your game. I felt like a total klutz today, stumbling my way through layers. Eventually my legs just gave up and said "You know what? We are not going to shimmy anymore. You're on your own with this one." Class was challenging physically and emotionally, that's for sure. It's so hard sometimes to force myself to do something that I'm doing poorly at.

More practice is definitely the answer. I've been so caught up in working on specific performances that I have not been putting enough time into my general skills. I'm getting a little sloppy from the lack of drilling.

So much layering!

Oh my goodness. Lots and lots of layering and stuff at Jolie's classes tonight. Lots of leg work. Lots of shimmies. Lots of belly rolls. I am utterly and completely exhausted, and sore in numerous places. I definitely got my money's worth tonight! I'm going to go die now.

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?

Sore!

Day 326 of practice.

Another intense day of fast-paced class, which is good because there's still no heat in BreakOut so it's nice to keep moving and stay warm. Today was about layers and sharp accents and moving through space. Lots of shimmies! I'm glad to know that I'm burning off a lot of calories before I eat chocolate pie on Thanksgiving.

Back to classes

Day 312 of practice.

Well, my cough is stubbornly lingering but I went to Jolie's classes anyway. I just stretched my way through the workout warmup part of it, with the teacher's blessing because she doesn't want me to DIE in her class. Although I think that might be good advertising for her: "Did you hear about the teacher whose classes were SO hardcore that one of her students fell over dead from the warmup?"

Had some fun with movement and shimmy layering. It felt good to be in class again, with friends and learning new things.

Limbs fall off

Day 298 of practice.

The problem with having Jolie's classes on consecutive days is that my poor body takes a beating! Then I have Fonda's class on Weds and 3 hours at Plaza on Thurs, so I don't really slow down until Friday. I have a love-hate relationship with this current schedule. On the one hand, I LOVE that I have 8 hours of class a week before I even factor in troupe practice, performances, and workshops. On the other hand, I rarely get a lazy evening at home anymore.

Anyway, tonight's classes involved lots of rib taxims and mayas and taxims and horizontal figure 8s with slow 4-4 shimmies layered on top. Lots of tricky stuff so it was another good, challenging night. But I'm so tired and hungry that it feels like my limbs are all going to fall off!

Layers of frustration

Day 291 of practice.

Uuuuugh. I hate when my brain grasps an idea but my body just won't catch on! One thing that we had to do in drills class tonight was layering a chest circle over a maya. It shouldn't be that difficult, but my maya kept turning into a hip circle instead. I'm not sure that I managed to do it successfully even once. At least I did a little better with layering umis over walking.

It probably doesn't help that I just plain suck at mayas and taxims (which we had to drill in 101). I am so frustrated with how tight my hips and thighs are, and how much trouble I have sinking into my knees. Why did I ever stop going to the gym? I had so much more strength and flexibility then.

Tomorrow I am doing some friggin' yoga and that is final!

The "We Love Deb Rubin" Workshop Weekend!

As promised, a review of the Deb Rubin workshops that I spent my weekend at!

I have to admit, I almost didn't take these workshops. I mean, I knew Deb Rubin was cool, from taking one workshop with her as part of the Plaza Intensive last Autumn. And a lot of my friends were taking the workshop. It's just that I had said I was going to take less workshops this year, and the topics covered this past weekend looked like they would be pretty similar to the Mira Betz and Rachel Brice* workshops I had taken/was going to take. But I decided to sign up anyway, and I'm glad I did, even if I wasted most of Sunday due to dehydration.

Saturday we started off with some slinky arms, and I learned yet another way to do snake arms (if there is one thing I am starting to notice as a dancer, it's that every teacher/troupe has a different preferred method of snake arms). We also worked on layering ooey gooey moves over each other, which was fun and also broke my brain.

The second class of the day was probably my favorite, "Performance Dynamics for the Tribally Inclined." I'm at a stage in my learning where I want to think more about performing, and about making my performance more than just a string of pretty moves that go well with the music. We explored projecting our energy out, and drawing it in, and how to use that contrast. We also explored different emotions and characters. In the past, I've been in workshops where we were given a specific character to dance, and I didn't really enjoy it, so I never gave dancing as a character a second thought. I've also never thought of having a dance persona, who would be a character separate from myself (actually, I think that's a good topic for another blog post!). But in this workshop, Deb played the song we'd been practicing to and asked us to each develop a character based on what the song reminded us of. As a gamer and a writer, I loved this so much! I came up with a femme fatale spy character. Then I had to dance as her. Well. If you know me, you know I'm kind of shy, and kind of plain, and basically just not a femme fatale. But I drew on my gaming experience and I became Yvette Black, sexy double agent. And apparently I nailed it because Deb Rubin said that she was going to think "femme fatale" whenever she saw me. Compliments don't get much better than that!

Sunday started off with a layering workshop, which would have been challenging for me on a good day. It involved lots of stuff that I'm already not good at, layered with other things on top. Add to this dehydration and exhaustion, and I spent most of the workshop struggling. But I did learn some problem areas that I need to work on, so I'll drill some of the layers here at home.

The second Sunday class was Dance Therapeutics, and I had actually thought of at least just coming up for that if I didn't do the whole weekend. The workshop I took last time was upper body therapeutics and I really liked it. It's great to have a class focused on taking care of your body and avoiding dance injuries! I had a hard time with a lot of the yoga, but then my friend Karen saved the day by realizing that I was dehydrated (I thought I was just tired) and giving me Propel. Hooray! I felt human again and was able to participate in the partner Thai massage, which was really good for some of my problem areas. While Performance Dynamics was the most fun for me, Dance Therapeutics definitely had the most physical benefit. I really recommend those workshops for anyone who can take them, because they apply to any sort of dance. Deb said she's working on DVDs for them, so I'll be sure to pick them up when they come out.

All told, I'm glad I went to the workshops and I hope Deb Rubin will come back to AZ again in another 6 months-ish so I can take more... and this time I'll be sure to stay hydrated!

*Edit: Forgot to add my footnote. Yes, that's right, workshops with Mira Betz, Deb Rubin, and Rachel Brice in a single Spring. I am unbelievably lucky and spoiled.

Must... layer... shimmies!

Day 119 of practice.

So, last night in level 2/3 class, we revisited layering shimmies over basic moves and I still can't do it, so Cari worked with me and told me what I need to practice to get it right. So that's mostly what I worked on today. I planned to get more practice during the day, but a couple hours of errands turned into 5 hours of running around town looking for things, so that kind of threw the entire day off.

Dancer vs. Dogs

Once again I forgot to put my corgis in their crates before dance practice -- they were napping so it slipped my mind. During my practice they slipped out into the living room and sat together on the couch, watching me. I was impressed by their good behavior and thought they were finally used to my dancing... until I did a sudden spin, and suddenly they were barking and trying to wrestle me again! *sigh* But I was really into the song, so I didn't want to just stop. I decided to make crating them part of the dance -- shimmied and strutted my way into the bedroom, turned my arm movements into imperious points and finger-snaps in the direction of the crates, and a deep, graceful bend to throw the latches. I only broke character long enough to tell them they were good girls for obeying my mostly non-verbal cues ;)

I had a fun breakthrough, where I discovered that layering a hip drop over a downward level makes it appear like my hip is pulling me down with the music, and then I POP up with the beat. Wee! It really fit the particular Beats Antique song I was dancing to, I'll have to see if it works with anything else.

Otherwise, because I was pretty tired it was a mediocre practice, my veil practice was especially bad, I kept getting tangled up, throwing the veil in my face, grabbing the wrong edge of the semi-circle. My head just wasn't in it!