Good bye, 2011!

Day 365 of practice. One. Freaking. Year!

I did it! Mostly! Yes, I missed a few days due to being sick but I never gave up. I danced every day that I could. I danced at home, at class, in New York and New Jersey. I danced in bed, in line at the post office, in chairs of various sorts, and in the car. I danced on stages indoor and out, alone and with friends. I danced regardless of my furnace breaking, my shower breaking, my cooler breaking. I danced my freakin' heart out!

The one-year retrospective will have to wait. I've just finished ringing in the New Year with alcohol and dance and I do not have the focus to go back through my blog and see what goals I set at the start of this and how I did with them.

Anyway, today's practice was good ol' multi-tasking while I cleaned, chair dancing while I beaded, and then dancing to a song which may well be my next solo -- which is funny because it's a cover of a song I did a solo to back in May! Guess I can't get away from Wandering Star! It felt really good to really dance, to be well enough to move and enjoy it, to rock out while I was cleaning and to sink into a new song and to just feel like myself again.

Thank you all for joining me for this journey. I started out for a year of practice but now I'm looking forward to a lifetime of practice -- hopefully with less sick days ;) Check in tomorrow to see how it starts out!

Thanks for all the dancing!

Day 328 of practice.

Have to say I have a lot to be thankful for as a dancer... Great teachers, an awesome troupe, good friends, the opportunity to take lots of workshops, a closet full of fabulous costumes, and a husband who puts up with me being in class 4 nights a week and in Phoenix almost every weekend for performances and troupe practice.

Today's practice consisted of rocking out while I cooked and cleaned in preparation for the small Thanksgiving dinner hosted at our house. My potatoes were quite delicious. I think the shimmying while I brushed them with olive oil made them extra special.

Busy, busy weekend

Days 322, 323 and 324 of practice.

Whew! My last super-jam-packed-travel-weekend is behind me! I can spend some weekends at home. Hooray!

Friday, day 322. Practiced in my car. But really, honestly practiced. Tried Fonda's advice of practicing chest lifts while singing to make sure I'm not using my breath. This is basically the perfect thing to do while driving alone down the highway after dark, because there's no one to see you looking silly and singing horribly. Also listened to the song for my next solo and got some epic inspiration. I need to learn how to do the Berber walk.

Saturday, day 323. Last Anaya Tribe performance at the year! Headed up to Faerie Fest early with Jen, so we could spend a few hours getting our faerie on. Got a scarab henna tattoo with green glitter on it. Danced on the scariest stage ever, switching off with the lovely ladies of Divine Chaos and their skirt troupe. Had a good time despite scary stage. Later, we went to Aura, the black light party hosted at Plaza de Anaya, and I got to play with my sweet new glow fans and practice some Anaya style with Jen.

Sunday, day 324. Troupe practice! Since we don't have any upcoming performances to drill for, we focused on honing our zill skills and developing a new formation. Pretty exciting.

Now I have to get ready for a meeting with my local Tucson dancers. Like I said, it's a busy weekend!

Dancing on the road

Days 294, 295 and 296 of practice.

I'm back from California. We had to make a whirlwind trip out there for my grandmother's memorial service, which meant way too much driving. Between all of the time in the car and the fact that nearly every square inch of our hotel room was taken up by furniture, it was difficult to practice -- but I made do with what I had. Friday was a bit of arm practice in the car and at the hotel room. Saturday was tons of glute isolation practice while reading in the giant, uncomfortable hotel bed. And Sunday was isolation practice while my husband drove. Ok, I also did some glute squeezes while I drove... there are a lot of long, boring stretches of road, I had to do something!

Seeeeeecret

Day 283 of practice.

Well, Jen/Sata and I were working on something special and slightly secretive today and it took far longer than we expected, so we didn't get to go to Jolie's class. That made me a bit sad, because I really enjoyed the classes last week and wanted Jen to experience them, too. But we did have a lot of fun anyway, and it's always good to actually get to hang out with one of my troupemates.

As such, today's practice consisted of dancing while I cleaned again, and rocking out in my chair to some potential new dance music. Now I'm about to round the day out with some lovely stretches.

I'm beat!

Day 282 of practice.

Did I say come back Sunday for a review of the Shakedown? Tuesday would be more accurate. Today was too busy and tomorrow will be as well!

My practice today mainly consisted of dancing while cleaning -- quite a few times I completely abandoned the cleaning to really get into the music. I also did a couple minutes of these glute exercises that Jolie has us do in class and wanted us to do as homework, too, but my thighs are too tired from doing a zillion drops in Miriam Amaya's sword workshop yesterday, so I didn't do many!

Tomorrow I'm spending the day with Sata, and fun times will be had!

On the road

Day 280 of practice.

Today's practice will happen behind the wheel because I have spent the entire day getting ready for the Desert Shakedown and now I'm about to take off to pick up my friend Cynthia and head up to Phoenix. Hooray! I hope I'll see you at the Shakedown tomorrow. I'll be at my Erthe Fae Designs booth for most of the day, and I will be performing with Anaya Tribe at 2:50pm.

Fabulous daydream life

Day 259 of practice.

Do you ever daydream about a life where you have no obligations and can spend all of your time on creative pursuits? I know I have it easier than most because I don't have a dayjob or kids, but sometimes it gets so annoying to feel like I'm going to have most of the day wide open for dance and yoga and jewelry and costuming, and to instead spend it running errands and cleaning the house.

Well, at least I got a lot of cleaning done today.

And I shimmied while I cleaned. And my zills turned up.

But I'm tired, and I didn't get to do yoga like I wanted to, and by the time we got back from our late dinner with a friend we hadn't seen in forever, I was too tired to do a dress rehearsal for tomorrow's performance, which means I have to do it tomorrow before I leave, and if something doesn't work I won't have much time to replace it with something that does work. I don't even want to think about everything I have to do before I leave tomorrow. Uuuugh.

Solo Saturday

Day 246 of practice.

I worked really hard on my cleaning so that I would have time to work on my solo before company comes over... and it worked! Hurrah. Not only that, but I got to dance and explore some floorwork on a freshly-mopped floor. So nice :)

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what I'm doing with this solo, but I'm enjoying the song. This week I'll work on my costume... I think I might wear my amazing black, aqua and cobalt silk wrap-pants. I normally don't use them in costumes, but I think they might be just what this piece needs.

The rest of today's practice consisted of shimmying my way through various chores, which always makes things so much more fun.

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.

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.

Normal practice

Day 207 of practice.

Nothing exciting today... I did some DC skirt and fan practice, some Anaya Tribal practice, some shimmies while I did dishes. The usual stuff. The sort of stuff that I should really do every day, but instead I slack off. I've also been working on some non-dancing dance stuff... helping a friend with costume ideas and struggling to write a guest blog post for another friend. I do like to keep busy!

Another weird place to dance

Day 205 of practice.

Today I was at the mall, and I walked into Teavana, where they're always playing some world music. Today's CD must have been "Arabic Groove" or something, because it was straight up belly dance music! So while I shopped for tea, I practiced my hip bumps and my drop kicks. My husband really can't take me anywhere.

Practice today was hand and ab isolations while watching DVDs and stringing beads. I am the master of multitasking! I think tomorrow will be some serious Anaya and Divine Chaos practice.

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.

Making a space for myself

Day 199 of practice.

I've complained frequently on this blog about how I don't have a good space to practice in. My living room isn't exceptionally big and it has a stupid low-hanging ceiling fan (in case you're wondering why I don't just replace the ceiling fan, it's because I am a wuss who gets vertigo on stepladders). Well tonight I finally said "Enough is enough!" and I rearranged my house to make a space for myself. My entryway and dining room will now serve as my practice space, and now all I have to worry about is dancing into the corner of my too-big dining table.

Dance practice consisted of dancing while I cleaned and rearranged, but tomorrow I look forward to some high-quality practice, including being able to practice fan and skirt without hitting the ceiling fan with my fan.

Things I can do while reading

Day 197 of practice.

I don't mention it a lot on this blog, but I am actually a nerd (there goes my femme fatale image) and a big-time reader, especially of fantasy books. After 5 years of waiting for it to be written, and all week waiting for it to actually arrive in the mail, my copy of A Dance With Dragons is finally in my hot little hands and perhaps understandably, I have spent all day reading it instead of dancing.

So what sort of practice can I do while reading? With paperbacks, I often sit splay-legged on the floor to practice my glute squeezes. Or I'll alternate which hand holds the book, with the other hand doing floreos or other exercises. But this is a 900+ page hardcover. It's almost too big to handle and I'm starting to understand the appeal of an eReader. This book my outweigh the smaller of my two cats!

Belly rolls seem like the best answer, so that's what I'm off to do!

I am a social butterfly!

Day 196 of practice.

Wow, I am one tired dancer. I was just thinking about it and I realized I've been out of the house and social every day this week. Monday and Tuesday were spent with Jen, Wednesday was class, Thursday was carpooling with Dawn to class, and today was lunch and shopping with my Mom (scored some sweet dancy stuff!) and then I spent the evening at the Metal Arts Village, where I got to hang out with Fonda and meet a lot of people. I'm an introvert, so all of this socializing has worn me out. Or maybe it's the heat. Either way, tired!

Because of this, I'm taking it easy on the practice tonight... Shimmied while I did the dishes, and now I'm dancing to Pandora tunes while I clean the house (being gone all the time is not conducive to a tidy home). The pile of dance stuff that needs to be put away is particularly intimidating, but really it's mostly fluffy 25 yard skirts!

Dancing in the rain

Day 184 of practice.

It rained today! This is kind of a big deal because it feels like we might be in for a real monsoon season for the first time in years. The desert has been so dry, and of course if you follow the news at all you probably know about the fires here in AZ and also in NM. We had a storm on Wednesday, but it was at 3:30am so I didn't get a chance to dance in it. Today's rain came in around 10pmish, so I paused the movie we were watching and ran outside to dance just a bit. It was surprisingly COLD so I didn't dance much. Ha ha! But it felt so nice. I wish the storm had lasted longer.

The rest of my practice consisted of shimmies while I did the dishes and glute squeezes while I read. The big problem with monsoons is that it makes a lie of our unofficial state slogan "But it's a dry heat!" The only thing worse than trying to dance in the heat is trying to dance in heat and humidity.

Weird places to dance

Day 182 of practice.

What is the weirdest place that you've ever practiced dancing? So far, for me, it's Office Max.

I don't know if it's all Office Maxes or just the one near us, but it seems like every time we go there, either there's a problem ringing us up, or a problem with the person ahead of us, and there's only ever one person working the register. So annoying! Today we were there to buy some card blanks for my jewelry business, and the lady ahead of us was doing a return, which required the use of the only register. After a few minutes I got horribly bored and put the package of cards on my head and began to do mayas and hip slides. After all, if I have to be stuck in line, I might as well DO something.

Today was apparently the day for multi-tasking practice, because not only did I do that, but I also just shimmied my way through an entire sink full of dishes, and now I'm going to go lie in bed with a book and do glute squeezes. It's the lazy girl's guide to shortcuts for dance practice when it's too hot to dance and you've only had 5 hours of sleep so you really don't care!

Clean clean clean

Day 176 of practice.

I got really into the cleaning today, which was nice because I actually temporarily moved some small furniture out of the living room to really sweep and mop the floor, and before I put it back I had lots of room to spin around with my veil. It would have been a nice opportunity to do skirt, too, except that it was really too hot to wear a skirt.

I also got some dancing done while I cleaned, and some floreos while I gamed, and now I'm going to do isolations while I read.