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!

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.

Where are my zills?

Day 258 of practice.

My zills are missing! I couldn't find them in my dance bag at class last night, so I figured I had left them at home... but I can't find them at home, either :( I had to use loaner zills and class and half of them had elastic that was too tight and the others were too loose.

Otherwise, class was fun. In DC skirt class, Shannon had members of the student troupe pair up with non-troupe students, which was awesome because I was able to have the more experienced dancer lead the combos, and then talk me through leading them myself. We practiced passing and fading and my partner was so happy with how quickly I got it that she gave me a big ol' hug.

In other awesome news, my sweet friend Jen aka Sata brought me back a beautiful green bead and medallion belt that she found while on vacation in California. It's the perfect shade of green, I'm pretty sure the medallions are set with malachite (one of my favorite stones) and it's so pretty that I must have gotten compliments from a dozen people just during class!

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 :)

Skirt + Fan

Day 188 of practice.

Skirt! And fan! And skirt! And fan! No, I'm not once again talking about oscillating fans or ceiling fans that interfere with my dance. I'm talking about Divine Chaos Skirt and Fan combos, the class that started tonight. I'm SO excited about it! I love skirt, and I love fan, and now I love them together!

And I also had fun in Anaya Tribal class, because I finally learned the Oojam Bomb. This combo is so ridiculously long, and I've never had it broken down for me, so every time someone would cue it in the "fake it til you make it" section of class, I'd stumble around like an idiot. Now I'm still confused, but least I have an idea of what I should be doing.

Slooooow like a mo-fo.

Day 164 of practice.

Fun practice today, over 40 minutes of dance. Well, ok, some of that time was actually spent reading the descriptions of skirt combos and walking my way through them, but that was dance-like. In addition to that I did the shimmy drill section from Serpentine, and then I put on a song and practiced dancing as slow as I could. I dance so slow that I ran out of song long before I ran out of slow moves that I could remember off the top of my head, which doesn't usually happen.

Getting ready for recital!

Day 160 of practice.

Class nights are so much more fun now that I have friends to carpool with. I find myself much less tired when I get home now, because my brain hasn't been numbed by a boring drive. Thanks, Dawn and Amanda!

Anaya Tribal was all about review and recital prep tonight. The recital is next weekend and I'm looking forward to it. I simply don't get to perform often enough, so it's really nice to have performances two weekends in a row.

In Divine Chaos skirt class we learned one new combo, did some review, and then played freeze tag just for fun. Good times.

Carpool!

Day 153 of practice.

Yay, I temporarily have a second carpool buddy! Amanda is staying in Tucson for the summer, but she didn't want to miss the rest of the session, so she'll be coming up with Dawn and I for a bit. It was a lot of fun to have two friends keeping me company tonight, and of course we all saved on fuel. Win-win!

Class was a lot of fun. Went over some Anaya Tribal moves, learned more Divine Chaos skirt combos, ruined my tabi socks. An eventful night.

Dancing at the park, dancing in my skirt

Day 151 of practice.

Tonight I went to the park, where there were a bunch of lovely drummers playing live music for us. Mostly we went over tribal basics, and then had some freestyle dancing to an Ayyoub rhythm.

I left early so I could come home and practice some DC skirt combos. Still having a bit of trouble with them, I sure hope we do some good review at class on Thursday! I think I'll also run through them before or after class tomorrow. I really like Divine Chaos's style, so I want to truly commit these combos to memory for future use.

And since it's so fun to spin around in a skirt, I practiced my spotting, too! Getting better!

One Five Oh

Day 150 of practice.

Woohoo, 150 days of practice, despite burn out and frustration and questions on where I'm really going with dance!

Just as I planned to, I spent today's practice working with my skirt, after tearing down the table that was taking up valuable living room space. I printed up the descriptions of the moves we learned in class last week and stumbled my way through them, then put on some music and danced them to the best of my ability. I did well on some, but the really long combo is going to take weeks, possibly months of practice to work into my muscle memory, and my memory memory.

I also did spins, to practice my spotting, and worked on my Arabic shimmy (still sucks, but I haven't been practicing it as much as I should). That didn't quite total up to half an hour, so I think I'll do some arms or abs or something before bed.

Please break my brain

Day 146 of practice.

Still in that bad mood, but at least class was a lot of fun tonight. My awesome carpool buddy Dawn couldn't come with me, so I decided to skip beginner class, mainly so that I could actually eat a real dinner before leaving. Usually I have a PB&J sandwich and maybe some chips or apple sauce, so it's really no wonder that I can't focus by the time skirt class comes around!

All of our Anaya teachers were out of town, so Shannon from Divine Chaos was our substitute teacher for the night. She went over a couple of moves then gave us some really fun formations and exercises to play with for the rest of the class. This was just what I needed! I think my brain is bored of just hanging out while my body repeats the same moves over and over to put them in my muscle memory. I know that practice and repetition are important, but I also need mental stimulation! Tonight gave me some of that.

Then Shannon taught skirt class, and we learned SO MANY Divine Chaos combos! I'll have to practice hard all week if I intend to keep them in my head.

Substitute Teacher

Day 139 of practice.

A lot of people are away for Tribal Fest right now (lucky people!). This includes our usual Thursday night teachers Cari and Tiffany, so Danna (who is also part of Anaya Tribal) was our substitute teacher. Class was also smaller than usual. We went over a lot of level 2/3 moves which was nice, I really needed refreshers on those.

I'm finding skirt class hard, by the time I get to it I'm all tired out from two hours of tribal and I have a hard time focusing, and my arms want to be lazy and not hold my skirt up.

Skirts and friends

Day 125 of practice.

Tonight was a fun evening of Anaya Tribal classes, made extra fun by the fact that my friend Dawn is now carpooling with me to take classes at Plaza! That long drive sure went a lot faster with someone to chat with :)

We learned this weird half-turn double choo-choo move in skirt class and it was just so counter-intuitive, a lot of us were struggling with it. I know what I'll be practicing all week.

Also, in performance prep we learned a BRAND NEW slow move! So exciting! I'll have to also practice that, since it's new and all :)

Now, hydration followed by sleep.

Flirty Skirty

Day 118 of practice.

Class was fun, as per usual. It's the start of the new session, so we started beginner over... AGAIN (*sigh*), and started Level 2/3, which is good because I really needed to review those moves, and then Skirt Combos! Woohoo! I love 25 yard skirts, so it's fun to learn more ways to dance with them.

I narrowly resisted the desire to buy new dance pants, too. My resolve may crumble next week!

Skirt Combos and Shopping!

Today I went up to Mesa (part of the Phoenix metropolis) to go to Yasmina's Belly Dance Swap Meet. I don't know how Yasmina can do it, but she lets people set up booths for $10 and the workshops are $5 each! It's a super deal, and the weather was so warm and beautiful, so it was nice to be at an outdoor event (although we got really hot inside doing the workshop!).

The workshop was skirt combos with Divine Chaos, and in an hour they managed to cover FOUR combos! Those ladies can teach! The combos were a lot of fun, kind of flirty and sassy and energetic, but also graceful because of the swirling skirts. It was a good thing we were in a big room, because there were a lot of students and of course we were all flinging our skirts around and twirling and traveling!

Unfortunately, by the time I got out of the workshop, which was the last of the day, most of the vendors were already tearing down their booths, which made it hard to shop. I did get myself the prettiest hair clip, made with hand-dyed flowers, and a cute belt with shisha mirrors, and spent less than $20 total. I'll post a pic, maybe tomorrow!