Day 318 of practice.
No, I'm not really sad. But tonight's class was about emotion and gesture, so we spent most of the night working on choreography to a very sad song. It was an interesting exercise for me, as most of my performances have a happy, impish feeling to them. I did experiment with being aloof and withdrawn for my veil solo at the PJ Sessoms benefit, because the song had that kind of feeling and I was an evil water faerie, after all... But I'm still a newbie when it comes to exploring emotion and characters and being vulnerable on stage.
Class was also challenging for me because we did a lot of non-bellydance moves, and other than some square dance as a pre-teen, belly dance is the only dance I've ever done. I don't know modern or ballet and I can't waltz. So I spent a lot of time stumbling around, but it's good to challenge my brain and body with new things. I want to be a more well-rounded dancer. But hopefully not all of my dance challenges will involve stubbing my toes along the way.
Maybe it's time to sign up for some beginner jazz or modern dance?
ReplyDeleteI'd probably benefit from that but I'm already in classes 4 nights a week. Maybe after Jolie leaves town, but then I won't need it to keep up with her classes. Catch 22!
ReplyDeleteWell, since most belly dancers these days come from a classical dance background you will probably continue to run into teachers who use that training in their classes & workshops.
ReplyDeleteCross training in other dance forms can also improve things like lazy feet, slumpy posture, and listless arms.
Once Jolie is gone I'll probably just be doing ITS again and none of my teachers draw from anything but ITS/ATS. I might cross-train to improve my solo work, but it will depend a lot on my dance budget :)
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