A good day

I feel a little guilty posting this in the face of the tragedy in CT, but I had a good day of dancing today.

Jolie, Rachel and I performed at a holiday party for the radiation/oncology department of one of the local hospitals, and it was a great show. Our audience of patients and staff was really, really enthusiastic and afterwards several of them wanted to talk to us about dance, their past experience with it, where they could see us again, etc etc. It felt really good to make them so happy. I did a solo to Trans Siberian Orchestra's "Revenge of the Sugar Plum Fairy" and I did so many turns with proper spotting that you would not believe they used to almost bring me to tears on a regular basis earlier this year. That is the power of practice, people!

Then tonight I went to High Heel Fit because Jolie was teaching, and she made us dance on chairs. In heels! Now, I happen to have a fear of falling and standing on things freaks me out -- doubly so in high heels, triply so when I'm getting light-headed because I didn't eat dinner. But I did it, and I didn't fall, and I had fun. I'm feeling a little bit like a bad-ass. I hope the video turns out, I want proof that I was dancing on a chair and I didn't freak out.

Tomorrow I am going up to Phoenix for the Circus Farm fundraiser, which should be my last gig of the year unless something else comes up!

Practice practice practice!

Day 284 of practice.

I'm so happy that I was able to go to class tonight! My muscles are less happy than my brain, but whatever. Suck it up, muscles! We used to do Olympic-style weight lifting, we can darn well do some crunches.

One thing that we drilled is paddle turns, which was great because that is something I always need to work on. Much like zilling it's something that I am not naturally good at and I struggle with it, so I don't practice often enough at home except for when I get a bug about it.

I also did a little practice at home to new music, because I am trying to work up to practicing at home during the day even on nights when I have class -- because otherwise I'll really only have one or two days a week with home practice, and that's not good.

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!

Catch-up

Day 136 of practice.

Ok, so I didn't post a workshop review today. Tomorrow, for reals this time! I spent today catching up on the things that built up while I was away for the weekend, and recovering from being tired and dehydrated.

Practice has been a pretty lazy affair, consisting mainly of stretches and isolations, with a song of alternating between basic tribal moves and fast turns. My turns/spins were horrible! I didn't get too dizzy, thanks to my spotting, but I was all over the place. Sloppy footwork, I guess. And I can't seem to whip my head around to spot without my hair slowly coming out of its bun (during class last week, this resulted in me throwing a hairstick at a classmate!). Definitely need to work on smoothing that out, so that I can perform spins with a head full of hair accessories.

Cool Air! (Not the Lovecraft story)

Day 129 of practice.

Oh, blissfully sweet cool air! Our cooler was fixed this morning, so the house is finally at a tolerable temperature and I can finally dance! Of course, I still did arm drills for most of my practice because I was feeling tired, but I did get up, put on a skirt, and practice some moves and some turning/spotting! In the process I found that I spin much better in one direction than in the other. I could stay pretty steady in the one, but then the other would find me stumbling. Or maybe I was just dizzy. Anyway, turns are much more fun with a big 25 yard skirt on. Deep down inside I am still a pretty, pretty princess who just wants to put on a floofy skirt and spin around the house.

In case you were wondering...

Day 116 of practice.

I discovered today that it is, in fact, possible to read a book while sitting on the floor and drilling knee shimmies by attempting to whack the backs of my knees against the ground. This is not an uncharacteristic experiment for me -- when I was a teenager I discovered that I could enliven boring errands by writing in a notebook while I followed my parents around the store.

Today's practice also included dancing to music, practicing zills, practicing spotting while spinning, and dancing around to music while I did housework. It was not a particularly spectacular practice, especially where the zills were concerned. I'm feeling generally off still (no headache, thankfully). Hopefully two nights in belly dance classes will rekindle my dancing fire.

Dizzy dancer

Day 105 of practice.

Wooo... dizzy. I like to end my fast solo with a bunch of fast spins. The problem is that I'm not exactly great at spotting... sometimes I get it perfect, but the more I spin the sloppier I get. It's a hard thing to practice, because after messing up a few times I'm too dizzy to continue! I should make a point of practicing a little each day, even when I have other classes and workshops and such.

I foolishly placed my slow solo song *after* my fast solo song on my play list, which meant that I went into this new possible solo a bit unsteady and lightheaded. This caused me to mess up a few moves (especially the new one I just learned last night!), but over all I'm happy with it. If I dance to the rhythm, I can throw in a few medium/fast moves that lend themselves well to slow medium tempo, and if I dance to the melody, I can do languorous slow moves. If only I was good at languorous slow moves! The song just makes me feel so beautiful, and I think there's a lot of possibility for it if I practice really hard this week. I could also see myself using it for veil sometime in the future.

In addition to a shimmy warm-up and the two solo practices, I did a bunch of arm and hand drills while catching up on The Daily Show, and got a little tray balancing practice earlier. Tomorrow I have to clean the house, so I might see how many chores I can do with a tray on my head -- I can even use it to carry my dust rags!

Nnngggkkk, tired

Day 41 of practice.

I'm not even sure what sort of noise that is, it just seems to fit. I am really, really tired from my 2 hours of dance class and close to 4 hours of driving, thanks to traffic and road construction.

Class was fun, however. We learned a long slow combo, which involved a level change/drop. We also did lots and lots and lots of fast turns and spins, so that I spent most of class slightly dizzy.

Unfortunately, the beading on my new belt started to come unwoven. Fortunately, I am a beadworker, so I should be able to stop it from further coming undone.

Unimpressive

Day 25 of practice.

Ok, this late-night practice has got to end. I was yawning my way through combos, and spending entirely too much time in basic moves because I couldn't remember other combos to practice. I do not feel like I am getting the most out of my daily practice this way. Of course, I won't be able to really adapt my schedule until after the gem show next week... next week I'll just dance whenever I can!

Still really enjoying one-armed veil spins, though. Tonight I practiced spotting while doing them, to try to reduce dizziness.

Spinning faster and faster

Day 24 of practice.

In veil class last week, Fonda taught us the secret to a good one-armed spin with a veil, but she didn't really have us practice it much -- probably because that many dancers spinning with veils in a relatively small studio would have resulted in collisions, veil tangles, and possibly injuries. But she encouraged us to try it at home, and boy have I! I started with relatively sedate turns, but tonight I was really feeling it and I spun faster and faster, so that my rather heavy synthetic veil was really billowing behind me! After the song finished I was pretty dizzy, so it's a good thing it's followed immediately by my slow veil practice song, allowing me to pretty much stand in place while the room spun around me!

I've also been practicing some really quick, dramatic turns for my solos, and I'm happy with how they're coming along -- although I only know how they feel to me, they might actually LOOK awful. I don't have a mirror in the living room, so I rely on my shadow, my reflection in the TV, and how things feel.