Work, work, work

I don't have a picture to go with this blog post so here's one of my corgis dressed like Frankenweenie

 

I have to be honest, I haven't done a very good job on dancing full time yet. I start each day off with the best of intentions and then I always manage to sabotage myself with "I just need to do this first, I'll dance later" or "I dunno, I might be coming down with a cold, I should probably take it easy." I'm not very proud of myself, but dwelling on my failure isn't going to help me. Time to move forward.

 

Yesterday I decided to dispense with the excuses and do some work. I already had an hour of Skype stretching with my bestie Jen planned (having a physical therapist as a best friend is awesome, don't worry, I give her lots of pretty jewelry to make up for taking advantage of her know-how), and an hour of troupe practice too. I figured I should spend the time before my stretch date getting nice and warm with some DANCE! So I practiced two solos I'm working on, some troupe choreos, and some drills. Let me tell you, these long weeks of laziness have taken a toll on me, even after a good warm-up my arms were sore from one song of fan veils. If anything would motivate me to work harder, it was that.

 

So after dancing, I had a really good stretch with Jen, and a few hours later it was off to troupe practice where we spent the hour drilling choreography to try to get our newest troupemate all caught up. I built up one heckuva sweat! I think it was the hardest we've worked in troupe practice in a while. Not that we tend to slack off, but this is one of our most energetic pieces and we didn't spend a lot of time talking about it, we just kept repeating and repeating, really quickly answering her questions and going again.

 

Needless to say, I am pretty sore today. My glutes and obliques are being especially loud about their displeasure with me. But it's a good sore. I decided not to dance today to let my muscles recover, but rather than being lazy I've been doing some dance-related reading that I need to have done by the end of this month. Tomorrow it will be back to drills! 

Be Thankful for your Body

Thanks for being pretty awesome, body!

When it comes to body love, I often talk the talk without walking the walk. I'll post empowering articles and I'll encourage other ladies, but then I look at my own body and I'm like "Teeth, why you gotta be so sticky-outy? Belly, why you gotta be so fat?* Hips, why are you so TIGHT?"

So I have to be honest, I haven't been dancing this week. Part of it is natural laziness, and we don't have bellydance class this week, but it was easy to make excuses because my right hip was so. damn. sore. And it has been for about a week. I don't know what I did to it, but I am guessing at some point I stretched too far, or forced a stretch when I wasn't warm enough, and I messed things up. I mean, it's not unusual for me to have a little pain in my right hip after a really hard class, but this was a lot of pain and in different areas of my hip, and it sucked. And I honestly think I made it worse by using the pain as an excuse to not go do some ballet or what-have-you, because then I sat home and didn't get warm and spent too much time sitting on the couch with 20+ lbs of dog pinning my hip into position. I'd think to myself "I should warm up and stretch this bad girl out while I watch this DVD" but then I'd sit down and someone would get into my lap and that would be it.

This was a good reminder to be kinder to my body, in my actions and my words. To honor my limits from day to day, to have patience with the sloooow progress of stretching and not try to force my hips to be more like other dancers' hips. And besides, my body gets a lot of other things right. It's given me long, flowing hair, strong fingernails, elegant limbs, pretty eyes, and skin that takes ink well. I don't have any major health problems, I don't have to wear glasses, and I don't have allergies. Good job, body! You're pretty awesome.

Take a moment and thank your own body for the stuff it gets right. After all, it's the only body you're going to get, until we perfect either cloning technology or android bodies.

*Ok, that's my own damn fault. I eat cookies every day. Cookies are amazing. 

More Jogging

I have to admit, I haven't been practicing much lately. I've been in a big funk, plus dealing with the fact that my calves have hurt all week since I went jogging on Sunday. So what did I do today? More jogging of course!

I will really be happy when my legs adjust to being re-trained. I spent 3 decades walking on my toes, and this led to me having really bad dance posture -- my weight was always tipped way forward of center, which leads to things like falling down when doing levels. So I've been training myself to walk properly, and adjusting my posture, and it leads to pretty much constant leg soreness and tiredness as my muscles get used in slightly different ways. I've been stretching them a lot, too, to improve my flexibility.

I'm tired of it, but I know eventually it will all be better.

Running went pretty well, not as well as Sunday but I still completed our little training program, so that's what matters.

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!

Lazy day

Pretty much only stretched today, instead of actually practicing. Had a couple of important things to get done today -- Bought new curtains to spruce up my blah living room, and finally finished the beading project I've been consistently working on since the 21st.

I did have a nice dance-related surprise -- I got a scarab bindi in the mail today, courtesy of my friend Meghan! Plus I got a crystal bindi that I ordered for myself. This brings my total number of artist made bindis to... a lot. I haven't actually counted. I'm a little afraid to! Dance pants aren't my only addiction.

Snap, crackle, pop!

Days 361-362 of practice.

Ow. When I haven't been in bed with a book, I've been bent over a bead project with a tight deadline. Today's practice involved lots and lots of stretching to try to work out the painful kinks brought on by not really moving for a week.

Sadly, I did not get to go to dance class tonight. I am feeling better, but I still have a nasty cough and low energy. So I'm not quite up for full-throttle dancing, not if I want to recover in time to jump back into classes on Monday.

Oh yes, and yesterday's practice ended up being glutes and lower abs and pelvic floor isolations in bed.

Being sick is for the birds!

Not belly dance

Days 330 and 331 of practice.

Busy busy busy! Saturday's practice was a combination of stretching and glute isolations while playing games with friends. I didn't really have any downtime, I was on the go or entertaining people all day.

Today I went to Tucson Pole Fitness for their holiday open house, because one of my belly dance classmates is an instructor there and she invited me, plus there were crafts to be purchased and I am a sucker for things of a handmade nature. So part of my dance practice was a sample class of pole dancing! Not at all related to belly dance but fun anyway. I can see the appeal. The "sexy" undulations against the pole were not my speed, but sexy walks and large, swinging steps that spin you around the pole are a lot of fun. I may go back sometime next year to take a few classes just for fun and fitness.

I intended to work on my solo today, too, but instead I had to tend to my Etsy shop, so I chair danced while I edited 84 items to reflect my Cyber Monday sale. Yuck. I hate boring tasks! I may yet at least do a simple run-through of the solo before bed. I did just have a slice of leftover chocolate pie and I'm drinking a mug of tea, so it is possible that I will be awake for a long time.

Derailed

Days 305 and 306 of practice.

Not a lot of practice going on here these past two days, other than the stretches Jolie told me to do every morning. Yesterday afternoon I started feeling run-down and within a few hours I had a sore throat, a cough, and no energy. That has continued through today and it SUCKS! I have so much that I want to practice and no energy to do it -- not to mention that it's hard to dance through a coughing fit.

I HAVE to be better for this weekend -- it's the Fall Plaza Intensive and I am already signed up for two days of workshops with Elizabeth Strong and Silvia Salamanca! Plus I have a ticket for the show. And then I have the All Souls Procession Sunday evening -- two miles of belly dancing through a parade! If I absolutely have to, I can skip All Souls or just be there as a spectator, but there is no way I am missing out on the Intensive. I've been looking forward to it for MONTHS!

Drill baby drill!

Day 206 of practice.

No, I'm not talking about oil, I'm talking about hipwork! I haven't been happy with my mayas lately, and I've never, ever, EVER been happy with my taxims, so tonight I made myself spend most of my practice time drilling them. No music even, just trying to make them smooth and big. A well-executed maya or taxim just makes a dancer look like she's made of water.

I also did some stretching, because I haven't really been making that part of my home practice for the past few months. It felt good! I need to be better to my body. After all, it's the only one I get -- although my husband keeps going on about us eventually replacing our fleshy bodies with robot ones.

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.