Fan Veils Forever!

Photo by the ever-talented Liora K Photography!

I tend to go through phases with props, where I'll want to work with one specific prop for a month or two, then a different one, then none at all. Right now I'm in the "crazy for fan veils" stage again. I've really been enjoying working with them lately because they're a beautiful prop with a lot of possibilities. Use them open, use them closed, use them like a fan, a veil, a poi...

Usually I perform with a pair of fan veils, but later this week I'll be dancing at a party in a small room and I felt like two fan veils might be a little overwhelming, so I decided to try working with just one. Wow! With one hand free and one hand holding a prop, there's a lot of new options of what to do, especially once I realized that just because it's a "right-handed" prop doesn't mean it has to spend the entire song in my right hand. I'm having a lot of fun experimenting with ways to manipulate the prop with both hands, and pass it from right to left and back again. I think it makes for an even more dynamic performance.

I've also enjoyed seeing how differently I dance with the fan to different songs. There's just so much room for expression with fan veil, depending on the emotion and speed of the song. I'm really excited about the possibilities and I want to keep practicing and practicing until I've really mastered this beautiful prop.

In fact, enough blogging, it's dancing time!

So tired!

Mondays and Tuesdays are the hardest for daily practice. I have to fill an hour with stuff that will improve me as a dancer, but not leave me too tired to keep up with class/troupe practice. Even when I take it easy, I am still pretty tired by the end of the night. Three hours of belly dance is nothing to sneeze at!

Played around with veil and zills today, trying to freshen myself up on skills I have been neglecting. I actually prefer to dance without props in most instances, because my personal style relies a lot on the expressive capabilities of my hands and arms, which is limited if I'm holding a prop... But the truth is that audiences like props, and if I want to be a professional someday, I will need to be able to fill up an entire show, and that means having a variety of skills to draw on. It's different when I am doing a < 5 min solo and can thus do whatever inspires me the most.

New stuff

Day 319 of practice.

Well, I didn't make it to class tonight. It was a pretty crazy messed-up day, with my husband doing homework ALL DAY (he's still doing it now, at 12:10am), and my brother and I taking a trip to Marana in his big ol' truck to get my mirror from my friend Helen. I have a mirror! For practicing! In my house! I feel like a real dancer now.

My brother also brought me a pair of glow fans. There are definite perks to being related to one of the fabricators at Fire Mecca! I am super excited about my bright green LED fans and the possibility of doing fire fan tricks at indoor venues. Now I just need to learn how to use fire fans.

Practice was a lot of stretching and some isolations. I feel like now that my energy is coming back, I have some serious fun practice ahead of me. I want to start working on new solos! And drill the heck out of my zills and my Anaya moves, and play with the things Jolie has been teaching me.

I'm a fan of my new fans

Day 189 of practice.

Tonight's practice mainly consisted of doing "raver fans" with my new fans. In the skirt/fan fusion class, we only use one fan, in our right hand (leaving our left free to manipulate the skirt), but I figured I might as well do them with both hands, since I have a left hand fan too and who knows when I might get the chance to take a double fan class. I don't want to be amazing with my right hand and lame with my left. I also did some floreos, some belly rolls, and I'm about to go do shimmies while I wash the dishes.

Anyway, I really like the new fans. My old fans are bamboo and silk with sequins glued on. The silk is fading and fraying, the sequins fall off all over the place, and the bamboo doesn't open as smoothly. My new ones are plastic and I dunno, nylon? They snap open smoothly with a loud, satisfying sound! And they have a pretty scalloped edge with a tiny dot pattern. And of course they're green! I can't wait to spend more time dancing with them.

Props and veils

Day 166 of practice.

Just got back from Fonda's Dance Loft class. We did a fun exercise where part of the group was in crescent, using veils, and three people were in the center with balancing props. Unfortunately, since I had a balancing prop and was comfortable using that, I had to balance instead of playing with my veil. Oh well. Plenty of time to play with veil at home!

I got an "A"!

Day 117 of practice.

Taking classes from Fonda at the Dance Loft is a lot of fun, because she always says the silliest things, like "No one died!" and "Ok, you pass the class." Today I kept getting "A"s for doing things right, along with a couple of other students. I smile and laugh a lot in her class. We worked on slow moves and balancing props and leadership transitions and such. All good.

Today I also cut up an old too-tight t-shirt and turned it into a top to wear for classes. American Apparel has this silly idea that women shouldn't have muscles, so all of my "girl cut" t-shirts that used to fit before I started working out are now really uncomfortable. But I really like the designs on them, so I modify them into cute tops to liven up my practice clothes.

Class and little changes

Day 103 of practice.

I just made a couple of small changes to this blog... added some links and bands, and I changed both of those lists to be sorted alphabetically, because it's easier than keeping them sorted by some imaginary level of importance.

Anyway, I spent tonight at The Dance Loft for tribal and balancing props. My new tray worked out really well, it didn't even come close to falling off of my head, unlike my obnoxious sword. I got to spend a lot of time leading my fellow students through slow moves, with and without props, which was really good practice for me.

Basket Tray!

Day 102 of practice.

Today I went to World Market in search of a basket or tray to use for the balancing prop class... and I found a basket-woven tray. It's the best of both worlds! It's pretty, it balances nicely on my head, and I had a coupon. Hooray! So of course part of my practice today was walking around and doing isolations with a tray on my head. I also played a video game with a tray on my head, though I took it off before actually setting out into a combat zone.

The rest of my practice consisted of drills and isolations throughout the day, and knee shimmies on the floor (surprisingly without doggie help this time). I didn't set aside any time for real dancing, which annoys me. I need to be more firm about setting a dance schedule, and not let myself get derailed by the internet or going out or watching DVDs.

On my head.

Day 96 of practice.

Today I went to call at The Dance Loft, and we started working with balance props. I had intended to go out shopping for a basket or tray or something last week, but I forgot, so I had to take my sword with me. Other than Fonda (the teacher!) I was the only one with a sword. I really do need to get a different prop as we had a lot of people in class tonight, so a smaller prop would be better. Preferably something that actually fits in my dance bag, so I can leave it there. I almost forgot my sword!

Class was fun, in addition to balancing props, we did some drills and some 3/4 shimmy work and some practice with zills. Definitely what I needed to fight the funk.

An assault on the ears

Day 89 of practice.

So, tonight was the last session of zills at The Dance Loft (although we'll be doing zills from now on when we do fast moves), and once again I did well in class and Fonda told me how I have zills down. Then I came home and did my 5 minutes of Anaya-and-zills practice, and I sucked. Wow, was I bad! I kept messing up, and one of my zills was a little loose and kept trying to come off of my thumb, and it was just awful. I mean, I was on beat as long as I wasn't doing a complicated combo, but get me switching feet and spinning and I sounded like a bag of zills falling down the stairs.

I realized that the song I practiced to last night was only 3 1/2 minutes long, so I chose a 6 minute song tonight and I'll practice with that for the next 5 days, too, which will more than make up for shorting myself yesterday.

Oh, and to make myself feel less bad about my zillage, I should also mention that Fonda gave me props for my vibration shimmy tonight. I'm telling you, dear readers, practice really pays off!

Next week we're going to do balance props, so I need to decide if I want to work with my sword, which I don't like much, or if I want to go out shopping for a basket or tray or something. I may go that route, because it would be easier to practice with at home, and The Dance Loft can get a little crowded sometimes, so it may be good to have a more compact prop to fall back on, even if I do want to work with my sword sometimes.

Sword!

Today's practice was an hour and a half long double sword workshop. I only had one sword, so I got to have fun improvising on the one combo that required two swords, much to the teacher's delight. Hey, I'm an improv girl at heart! A lot of my friends were there, so it was a social occasion as well, and one of my classmates custom-ordered a necklace, so it was lucrative as well. What a great day!

I love sword dancing in theory, but in practice I really hate my sword. It's supposedly designed for dancing, but it doesn't balance well and I don't like how it looks on my head. Of course, I liked it a lot better back before I met people with cooler swords, so it's probably partially envy and partially the fact that I have one of the cheapest possible belly dance swords ever. I keep telling myself that I need to practice with the cheap sword and get better, and then I can reward myself with a nicer sword to actually perform with!