Wait, that's not my music!

 

I mentioned briefly on Monday that there were some sound system problems at Saturday's show. This glitch led to a couple of dancers swapping songs, and another dancer having to provide her back-up copy. It left me thinking about what a dancer should do when she steps on stage and the wrong music starts.

1. Keep calm! No matter what sort of music problem you have (wrong music, sound system goes out mid-performance, CD starts skipping), put on your professional face and deal with it in the best way possible.

2. You can dance to whatever is playing, but there can be a couple of pitfalls in this. Obviously, if you're now performing to someone else's music, that means she then has to decide whether to dance to your music (which she might not like), or whether she wants to dance to her song and risk the audience being bored. Also, you might find yourself dancing to something that totally doesn't work with your costume, your prop, or your dance style.

3. Be flexible! In a perfect world, when there's a music problem you'll have a backup and everything will be fine. But maybe you forgot your backup, or the sound system doesn't want to play it. When that happens, be willing to dance to something else. This is why it's good to build strong improv skills!

4. That said, it's OK to insist on dancing to your song if it's at all possible. Whether you do improv or choreography, chances are that in the weeks leading up to the show you've been practicing this piece very hard. You've chosen your costume to match the mood of the music. You did your hair and makeup to fit the personality you want to express. Maybe you're using a prop and there's moments in the music where you can show off the really cool new tricks you've been working on. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do what you had planned to do, and you shouldn't feel bad about saying "No thank you, I don't want to dance to this other song, please try to play my back-up copy."

And now, a few ways to avoid musical pitfalls:

• Did I mention that you should always have a backup? Maybe two? I try to remember to bring my iPod to every gig, and sometimes I'll also have an extra CD copy. Or two.
• Remember to check your music before you leave for the gig. Double-check that the CD burned properly. Edited to add: A clever reader pointed out that you should not just test it in your computer, but in the least-reliable CD player you have access to, because if it will play in that, it will play at the show.
• Always pay attention to the music requirements for a gig. I know we'd all prefer to just be able to send in an mp3 and be done with it, but some gigs want the music on CD, and may even want a CD with that song and that song only on it.
• When sending digital music, make sure that it's in a format they can actually play. You don't want to accidentally send a song that can only be played on your iTunes, for instance.
•  Always. Have. A. Backup. But maybe also have a backup plan. For instance, if someone else is dancing to your song, have a different song you can perform to instead.

Fighting with my music

Music and I have not been getting along for the past week or so. I've been trying to find new things to dance to, or rather, things I already have but have not performed to yet, and I'm just not really liking anything. I had to go way back to something from the 90s for open stage this coming Thursday, and then I had to fight with editing it, because I am bad at that.

I don't know if it's burnout, or if I'm feeling the pressure to just really make amazing choices, or if I'm still feeling a little bummed out and thus not really connecting to anything. I can get into music in class, but there I don't have to pick it out, and I'm also soaking up the good attitude of my troupemates.

I probably need to spend some time just listening to things, without worrying about whether I can dance to it or whether someone else has already performed to it locally or whether a famous dancer has an iconic choreo set to that particular song. I need to remember how to enjoy music for music's sake, and maybe then I can find some inspiration.

Rotten Day

I'm at least a third-generation believer in Retail Therapy, so I tried to make myself feel better by buying a pillow with a beetle on it. What does that have to do with anything? Nothing. But blog posts need pictures.

Today has been a rotten day. Really, things have been varyingly rotten since I received bad news on Saturday (please read this post on my other blog to learn about the loss of a dear friend. I don't want to rehash it here), but today was one of those stupid, annoying days where nothing went right.

First I tried making some jewelry, but I didn't really have many ideas and the ones I tried didn't work. I ended up with one small item and a mess on my desk.

Then I decided that I was going to be a grown-up responsible adult and do the laundry. Well, that's when I learned that our pipe was full of tree roots again, as the water draining out of the washing machine had no place to go so it came back up from under the toilet. GROSS! Luckily since this had happened before we knew exactly what was happening, and the plumber came out and fixed it quickly, but it cost some cashola.

Plus, you know how whenever you have a service person over, as soon as you think "Ok, well he seems to be doing his own thing, I'll go get some little job done now" that's always when they suddenly need you for something? Yep, that was an hour of my day that I got nothing done.

Oh, and I tore one of my favorite little yoga jacket thingies while moving something that was blocking the access point to the pipe, so dammit. I really liked that jacket.

So then I was like, well, I'd better salvage this day with some dance, let's sit down and pick out a fan veil song for Open Stage! An HOUR LATER I decided that I hated all of my music, old and new. Albums that I had purchased because I loved the music at the time suddenly sounded awful. Note to self: you hate everything when you're in a bad mood. Next time just drill.

Then we went to Target where we couldn't find some things we needed, but at least I got a beetle pillow, because that is clearly what I need in life. I wish the coordinating comforter also had beetles on it instead of just a floral jungle-y print. I would love to have my bed covered in beetles.

I almost didn't go to class and practice tonight because of my bad mood, but I like to save my skipping for when I get sick. And you know what? I'm glad I went. My bad mood melted away. I've been enjoying the hell out of classes lately. I don't know if they've been especially fun or if I've been especially receptive, but it's just been a great level of challenge and accomplishment and new material and good music and good friends.

So the day wasn't all rotten, but it sure did try. I hope tomorrow will be better. I've got a massage scheduled, and I need to work on Friday's cosmetics review and definitely get a lot of practice no matter how much I hate my music.

Stretch all the muscles!

Well, my emotional homework tonight was interesting. First some In Extremo (German folk metal). I think the song that came up was about a witch trying to convince a lord to marry (or was it sleep with?) her, so I tried to be seductive without being over-the-top sexy. Lots of direct looks, smiles, and hair play. The next song was a Beats Antique that could have gone several ways. I went for sad, because I think sad is what I need the most work on. Not feeling like I had a lot of success on either song. I'll keep on working.

Also did a few minutes of drills of 3/4 shimmies on the up and down (because I need work and the Wolgemut song that came on was perfect for it), some turns and spotting, some walking around and balancing ballet-style because Jolie makes us do that sort of thing, etc etc. I wasn't feeling particularly focused so my practice was all over, but at least it was all stuff I needed to work on.

Then I decided to have a nice long stretch-out, because my muscles needed it and I figured it would help get me into a nice, relaxed state for going to bed early (I have to be up at 7am tomorrow, lame). It feels good to dedicate some time to taking care of my body, instead of just honing my moves. The moves are nothing if the body isn't in good enough shape to do them!

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!

Dancing... at home?

Day 287 of practice.

Lately it seems like I'm always in a class, workshop, or troupe practice. It felt weird to be home and have time to just dance, play around with new music and work on some solos. I think I'm going to dance to Convivio at the student performance this weekend, simply because I was so busy getting ready for the Shakedown that I never worked on a new solo. Of course now I have all these great ideas, but not enough time to really get to know a song and perform it with confidence.

But it is really, really tempting to perform to a Nick Cave song, just to keep up my trend of choosing unusual songs for Tucson performances :)

Work and Play

Day 256 of practice.

Tonight I worked on my solo, and my Anaya moves and tribal basics (I've been taking HUGE steps for Gahwazee again so I drilled taking little steps, for instance). But I also played around by hearing a random song on my iPod and wanting to get my dance on. I might just use it for my solo performance at our upcoming student show here in Tucson. It's fun and funky and it's NOT A VEIL SONG. I love veil, but I don't want to be typecast as "Sophia Ravenna, the girl who always does a veil solo at every hafla." Especially since there's a veil part in our student performance.

The other thing I did today was go shopping for supplies for a new dance bra. Yay! I bought a nice bra to use as my base -- dang, good bras are expensive! But if it's the only thing between my nipples and the audience, I want it to be good quality.

I don't like dancing to the flute!

Day 254 of practice.

I've been learning so much from this improv challenge. Tonight's lesson was that I don't enjoy dancing to New Age-y Native American style flute music. Really, the whole message of this challenge has been to reinforce to me the importance of having some sort of emotional connection to the music. Some songs have personal meaning to me. Others just conjure up fun memories of dancing with my friends in class. Then there are the songs that draw me in with their beauty. And then aside from all that are songs that have nothing wrong with them, they just don't inspire me to great heights of dancing.

Other than improv, today's practice consisted of various isolations while I was waiting for customers at a bead show, and shimmies while I did the dishes. I should probably practice more (didn't I say something about DC Skirt?) but to be honest, I feel like making some jewelry so that's what I'm going to do.

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.

Getting down to business

Day 249 of practice.

No more Miss Lazy Dancer! I've been noticing over the past week that my midsection was getting a little squishier than I would like, the results of not practicing hard enough and eating out too often. This is unacceptable! I need to dance harder and eat healthier and be the best dancer I can be.

So tonight's practice consisted of a nice dynamic stretching warmup to get the blood flowing and everything all loosy-goosy.

Then I did the shimmy drills section from Serpentine with Rachel Brice, which built up a nice sweat and reminded me that my shimmies on the down suck.

Then I grabbed my Rajna CD, because somehow I've never listened to it, and I set out to do some improv. But the first song was only 2 minutes long, so I decided to do the second song too, and it was over 6 minutes long. So yay for over 8 minutes of improv to unfamiliar music! Boo for the fact that the second song had a lot of dulcimer or qanoon or some other vibrating instrument that required more shimmies.

Then I grabbed my veil and practiced my solo.

Then I came in here to update my blog and SaraBeth's comment on yesterday's post reminded me that I had not practiced my 3-3-7 zill pattern! So I spent a few minutes working on that and made some progress.

Now it's time to take a relaxing shower, and do some stretches so I don't wake up with sore abs tomorrow!

Good, good, bad.

Day 248 of practice.

Today's practice was broken up into three parts.

First part: Partial dress rehearsal for my upcoming solo. While digging around in my closets, I not only found a pretty blue silk scarf big enough to be used as a veil, but I also figured out my costume for the solo, too. So I put it on and danced in it, making sure that the veil was going to get along with the costume. I just wore the clothes, though. I need to decide on hair and jewelry and put all those on with it next time, to make sure nothing will catch on the veil or otherwise not work out. But so far, pretty successful!

Second part: Awesome local dancer Kamrah posted a challenge on her blog to do improv every day. Well, I already improv all the time so I decided to try the advanced challenge, which is to do improv to songs I've never heard before. Today I danced to "Aim for the Head" by Creature Feature -- yes, I did belly dance to a song about shooting ghouls. It was a whole lot of fun! But there was a part in the middle where it was just someone talking, and I had to just kind of pose and I found myself wishing that I had my sword or some other weapon to make me look badass. Of course, no one was watching, not even the cat, so it didn't really matter.

Third part: Zills. Ugh! Why am I having so much trouble with the 3-3-7? Anaya wants us to layer it over a Turkish, and I can fake it in class when I'm following the better zill players, but at home it turns into 3-3-what was that awful clatter? I'm going to have to work on it every. single. night. until I can do it on my own.

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.

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.

Old songs and new ideas

Day 203 of practice.

Today I attempted dancing to a couple of different "non belly dance" songs that might be good for future performances. One was good, the other didn't fit for my idea but was still fun to dance to. It was nice to experiment, since I tend to practice to the same songs over and over again.

I'm hoping to find something, either already in my play list or new, that speaks to me as perfect for doing a skirt and fan solo. I just LOVE skirt and fan!

On! Sailing On! To Our Fate!

Day 157 of practice.

Decided to do the random song practice again tonight, and the iPod decided it was in a fast mood and gave me "India" by Xandria. That's where the title of the post comes from. This is a song that I would love to do a steampunk piece to sometime, it has the perfect adventurous spirit... but it's also fast metal, which makes it a challenge to dance to. I was shimmying, making grand gestures, spinning, and rushing across my living room, which left me in a sweat.

That was the capper to my practice, which started with a shimmy warm-up, moved into practicing my solo, then doing one of the combos Jen and I developed this weekend, but only a couple of times because my thighs don't want to do levels today, then Anaya Tribal fast, then working on the shimmy I need to layer over my Arabic, then Anaya Tribal slow. Whew. I am going to have to practice for more than half an hour a day if I want to stay current on my skills and also develop new things. I didn't get to skirt tonight, and I haven't done veil, zills, or balancing props for a while! I probably also need to practice at home on days that I have other dance plans, too. I spend a minimum of three nights a week out of the house for belly dance things, which is great, but when I'm at class, or dancing at the park, or taking workshops, I'm not necessarily working on the areas that I should really focus on.

Fun with randomness

Day 143 of practice.

Decided to do the random song thing again. You may remember that the last two times I did it, I got songs that were really slow. Well, today was the opposite, I got Apocalyptica's cover of "Enter Sandman", so there I was shimmying my butt off to cellos. I think my iPod is out to mock me.

Also did various arm drills, as that seems to be my thing lately. Really wasn't feeling 100% so it was hard to get enthusiastic about actually dancing.

Two days in one post

Days 132 and 133 of practice.

As you may or may not be aware, Blogger was down for 20.5 hours yesterday, a span of time that included my late-night attempt to update this blog after class. So while I did in fact practice yesterday, with my customary 3 hours of classes, I was not able to blog about it.

Here's a brief run-down of yesterday: I had a nice drive with Dawn, and classes were pretty good but I was feeling really tired and not really on top of my game. Skirt class was especially challenging, because after two hours of classes already, I was really beat! Then I got almost home, after dropping Dawn off, and got stuck behind a stupid train. After waiting 8 minutes, I took advantage of an opening and made an illegal mid-interesction U-turn to get out of there. It took me 6 minutes to detour around the train tracks, and guess what? The train was still there! So I'm glad I didn't wait. Who knows how long I would have been stuck there.

Today I had some nice afternoon practice at home. I tried to do some belly flutters and failed. I expect many more days of failure before I have success. Then I put on some music and practiced this-and-that. I found that I still very much like dancing to "Convivio" so I think I will perform to it the next time there's a hafla. I did some Anaya Tribal fast and slow, then spent an entire song walking back and forth across my living room with various traveling shimmies, including glute shimmies which is pretty awesome because until the Mira Betz workshop, I thought I couldn't even do glute shimmies. Then I decided to dance to one random song, and once again the ol' iPod stuck me with something slow and hard to work with -- "The Witch" by Danny Elfman. The man's a great composer, but as it turns out, movie soundtracks are not ideal to dance to. Oh well. It was fun for practice.

This weekend will be jam-packed with dance! Deb Rubin workshops, a group dinner with Deb Rubin, a joint birthday party for two dance friends, more workshops, a MECDA meeting, and then watching Anaya Tribal, Qadesh and Divine Chaos perform before I head home to collapse into a heap of exhaustion.

The benefits of cross-training

Day 130 of practice.

I practiced during the day! For a while now I've wanted to take the time that I used to go to the gym (12:30-1:30) as my dance practice time. I wouldn't have to worry about being too tired, or about having had a large dinner and feeling too bloated to dance. But while the cooler was malfunctioning, it was simply too unbearably hot to do any sort of anything until about 10pm or later.

As part of this hour or so of practice, I also want to get back into working out. You see, I spent over a year going to a CrossFit gym in my neighborhood, where I got accustomed to doing really hardcore workouts -- running, rowing, Olympic lifting, pushups, sits-ups, squats, etc etc. I got into great shape but I was also too tired to get quality dance practice, and I was frequently covered in bruises (I bruise really easily!) and nursing sore muscles. Plus the membership fees were crazy expensive, so I decided to drop out and focus on dance. But I've been losing a lot of the great muscle tone I had, so I want to get back to at least doing some fitness stuff at home to supplement my belly dance and keep me in shape. I may also pick up some yoga classes or something to further my cross-training goals, but I don't know.

Anyway, my husband decided he liked my idea of practicing/working out in our old CrossFit time slot, so he decided to invite me on a jog. Even at my peak adult fitness I was horrible at running, but I decided to go with him anyway. We probably jogged about 400 meters and walked the rest of the block and it kicked my butt! I decided not to do any skirt practice because I didn't want to get all that gross sweat in my nice skirt :P

For the dancing part of my practice I did my layered shimmy practice, some glute squeezes and lower ab isolations, random bits of dancing to music that came on while I was doing things and inspired me, and then I decided to go back to my "one random song a day" exercise. "Come Tenderness" by Lisa Gerrard was what the iPod gave me. The song is really, really minimalist, the sort of thing I would never want to perform to. I used it as an excuse to practice really, really, ridiculously slow slow moves. I was glad when it was done!

I'll round out my half-hour later tonight by throwing on the skirt and practicing skirt combos and spotting.

Glutes glutes glutes

Day 112 of practice.

It's hot and I'm in my usual post-solo lull where I'm trying to decide what music I want to practice to next. So today I decided to practice some drills... and I made myself stand here and drill glute shimmies for almost 15 minutes straight! And I kept nice upper-body posture for most of it. I think next time I'll put a basket on my head, that way I'll definitely know when I'm not isolated enough :)

I did do a bit of actual dancing earlier. I found that I have five versions of "Cantara" on my iTunes list... The original Dead Can Dance and then four covers (including two different versions by Rajna). I had this silly idea to listen to them all in a row, just to see if I could and to see if any of them were bad so I could delete them. But I liked them all and I danced around a bit while I listened to them. It's hard not to dance to it, it really pulls me in.

So with glute shimmies and dancing around, and other assorted drills, I'm sitting at around half an hour. So much for my great plan of an hour of dance a day for two weeks. *sigh* I think I'll blame the heat.

Not so wow

Day 109 of practice.

After yesterday's partial success, I expected today to be even better. Instead, today was kind of weird. I had more errands to run, and I was just off. For instance, usually I'm starving for dinner by 6, but today I didn't eat until almost 9, and that was only because I realized it was getting late and I should eat, hungry or not. But then I was full and didn't want to dance for a couple of hours. I think that for once, I actually spoiled my dinner by eating cookies. They were really good cookies, too.

On top of that, my wonky right shoulder is acting up, making weird crunching noises when I do snake arms (note, it doesn't really crunch, I can just feel/hear it grinding, but anyone outside my body can't hear it). It feels a little better now, but I don't know if that's because I warmed it up and danced it out a bit, or because I rubbed some nice lavender massage oil on it. Anyway, that kept me from wanting to do too much slow stuff with veil and basket like I did last night.

So I did some isolations, a good warm-up, practiced my solo, danced around to a song I was supposed to practice my fast moves to, and danced to my random song of the day... which was "The Beast of Pirate's Bay" by Voltaire. That kind of summed up how today was different from yesterday -- instead of a profound experience, I had a silly pirate song. Which was, admittedly, fun to dance to. And it allowed me to work on my goal of practicing spotting while spinning. I think I found one problem with the technique I use for practicing at home. My usual "spot" is this weird candle on my bookshelf, which is below eye-level. When I switched my spot to be the dragon picture hanging over the shelf, above eye-level, I did better. So I'll play with that a bit more this week.

Now I'm going to go read in bed and work on my glute isolations. I did pretty well with glute shimmies during the Mira Betz workshops, but I haven't been practicing them as much as my oblique shimmies (which I like better), and now they kind of suck again. Note that "pretty good" for me with glute shimmies means "Oh hey, I am actually shimmying with my glutes" and has no actual resemblance to a well-done shimmy.