Workshops with Mahin!

Photo by Lee Corkett, costume by Mahin, beaded jewelry by me!

Yesterday I spent five hours in workshops with Mahin! It was great to be in belly dance workshops again, and I always like working with Mahin because she has a ton of knowledge, a great personality, and a good teaching style. Oh, and good taste in jewelry! I always love seeing pictures of her wearing the custom-made set I beaded to go with her costume.

Anyway, the workshops in question were on anatomy, 3/4 shimmies, and palm flames, so it was a really good range of topics and everything was applicable for all styles of bellydance. I'd taken a much shorter version of the anatomy workshop in Bisbee last year, so I was looking forward to the full two-hour version to cover even more ground, and I'd also purchased palm flame in Bisbee so it was well past time that I started working with them. And as for the 3/4 shimmies, well, mine always need work!

Belly Dance Anatomy and Injury Prevention was definitely my favorite workshop of the day. I really like knowing how my body works and how to take better care of it, and this workshop really gets down into that. Not only does Mahin talk about the different muscles used in dance, but she teaches lots of great stretches and exercises for conditioning your body. She even has a tiny skeleton that she uses to show you where on your body different muscles and tendons connect. I totally geek out on this workshop and will probably continue to take it whenever I get the chance.

Full on with 3/4 Shimmies covered a wide variety of 3/4 variations and how to pair them with foot patterns and upper-body layers. I enjoyed this workshop because Mahin introduced me to some shimmies that I don't often see in tribal fusion and some foot patterns that I never use. It definitely got my brains and muscles working! Plus she has a really smart way of breaking down 3/4 shimmies to help you remember how to do each one and to diagnose the problem if you're not getting it. I highly recommend this one for anyone struggling with the 3/4 shimmy or looking for some new versions to add to their bag of tricks.

Hot! Hot! Hot! Combos for Palm Flames covered palm flame basics since we were all beginners to working with them (well, I took an 8 week session years ago and haven't practiced since...), then concepts for working with them such as framing, tracing, and negative space, and then combined all of those ideas into a long combination. We also spent some time discussing nice ways to travel and turn with palm flames. It was a really good introduction to the prop. It also reminded me that I have not been working my arms and shoulders enough lately. Yikes! I'm a little sore today.

Over all, my head is full of new knowledge and new ideas, and my body is full of the pleasant aches and pains of a busy day of dancing.

Weird ways to practice in weird places

Days 363 and 364 of practice.

Blargh! This cold is still lingering on, but I am pretty much functional. Yesterday I even did some shimmies while I washed the dishes, before retiring to bed with a book to do more glute squeezes.

Today I felt well enough that my husband and I went on a spontaneous New Years Eve Eve date. We had a really decadent dessert and I felt the need to burn it off right away, so I started doing oblique-driven hip-bumps in my chair. Later on, it was such a nice night out that we decided to walk around the outside of the mall to get back to our car, and I walked the entire way in bent-knee belly dance posture. You really can practice dance any where at any time! Well, I suppose they would probably get mad if you started doing shimmies in an MRI, pretty sure you have to hold still for those.

By the way, I was really honored today to receive a shout-out from Mahin in the Daily Bellydance Quickies! Thank you for watching my journey, Mahin, and for sharing my blog with your readers!

Tomorrow's the last day of my full year (minus a few sick days) of practice, and I think I'll send 2011 off in style, with some actual dancing and zilling and maybe I'll throw in some veil or sword work, or play with my glow fans. I should probably also post some sort of reflective look back at the year, if I'm feeling deep and introspective.

Sword on my head!

Day 235 of practice.

On Saturday, I took a sword workshop with Anaya Tribal and it reminded me that I had not worked with my sword for a while, so I really should practice more. Then today Mahin issued a practice challenge... five minutes of practice with a sword on your head every day for a week. How perfect! That Mahin, she's psychic or something.

Tonight I decided to spend 5 minutes doing rib isolations with the sword on my head, because it was around the middle of the difficulty list and I like rib isolations. I'm happy to say that I didn't lose my sword, but it did wobble around a lot. I especially need to clean up my rib circles. Well, that will give me something to aim for this week!

I think I actually got half an hour or more of dancing done today. I had a lot of beadwork to do, and since I had music playing while I beaded, there was a whole lot of chair dancing going on. Plus I did some hand isolations while I read -- hey, my left hand has nothing to do while my right holds the book, I might as well exercise it.

Knee shimmy complication

Day 93 of practice.

A while back, Cari showed us an exercise to improve our knee shimmies: sit on the floor and rapidly try to slam the backs of your knees into the ground. Now, I'm pretty happy with my knee shimmy, but there's always room for improvement and it seemed like a fun thing to do while watching DVDs. The only problem was that my corgi Daisy was very excited about me sitting on the floor, and decided she had to help... by flopping across my knees! My legs are pretty strong, but not strong enough to shimmy with 23 lbs of dog muscle draped across them :)

I did manage to chase Daisy off of my lap, but afterwards she sat right next to me and stared deeply into my eyes, as if trying to fathom why belly dance is more important than puppy snuggles. Poor dog, she just doesn't understand my art!

In addition to shimmies, floreos, and belly rolls while watching DVDs, I did a quick run-through of my solo, which is getting better and better. Practicing it would be even nicer if I didn't have to stick to a tiny part of the living room floor so as to avoid the Ceiling Fan of DOOM!

Anyway, since it's only 1:15am instead of 2am, and I've had a mostly relaxing day (other than a short moment of panic when our dogs escaped, luckily unlike cats, they come when they're called), I can tell you all about my fun and exciting trip to Phoenix yesterday!

A while back Mahin announced that she was putting together a Belly Laughs show! Belly dance comedy, something that I've seen videos of on-line and kept wishing someone would do here. It turns out that my friend Dawn also wanted to go, so we agreed to carpool! Then we found out that Aura (a black light party at Plaza de Anaya) was planned for later in the evening, so that was an added bonus -- comedy + party + dance + friends = perfect Saturday night!

Despite getting a late start, we had a smooth drive up to Phoenix and found the Rhythm Room, a blues club that was hosting Belly Laughs. We were even early, so we were able to grab seats right next to the stage, and order some pizza to be delivered during the show, because we were starving! The show was reasonably crowded but not sold out, and sadly I didn't see any of my Phoenix dance friends there -- well, they missed out!

Belly Laughs was hilarious! Lots of talented dancers performing skits about all aspects of belly dance, from crazy customers to over-eager students to ridiculous props. I laughed so hard! In addition to the dancers, there was an all-female improv comedy troupe that did some skits between the dance performances and shared the emcee duties. They were quite funny and had clearly taken the time to learn some of the in-jokes of the belly dance community. Mahin really put together a great show, and if she does it again, I might just have to come up with a funny number to perform, too!

The show ended earlier than we expected and we had an hour and a half to kill before Aura, so we had a pleasant chat over coffee. It was a lovely night up in Phoenix, so it was nice to just sit and talk outside, and get to know Dawn better.

We got over to Plaza just as Aura started, and it's one of those events that starts off slow then gets more crowded as the night owls come out. I was able to introduce Dawn to some of the Plaza crew, and we checked out the retail floor lit only by dim blacklight, which was an adventure of "Is this brown or purple?" And since the dance floor was almost empty, I got to twirl around with my silk veil. Weee!

After a bit, more people showed up and they brought their props, so we alternated our time between dancing, and just sitting back to enjoy the glow poi and LED hoops and staffs. The hooping community is especially always well-represented at Aura and it's so fun to see the amazing moves they can do, and admire the different patterns of LEDs.

All too soon it was time to head home, and it was so nice to have a friend along to chat and keep me company for the long, boring drive through the dark. All in all, our road trip adventure was a blast and I look forward to doing it again... maybe someday soon!

The 5 minute challenge

Day 88 of practice.

In today's Daily Bellydance Quickie, Mahin offered a challenge to her readers -- for the next 7 days, spend 5 minutes a day practicing something specific that you need to work on. Well, since she mentioned my blog last week in a DBQ that later inspired this week's challenge (thank you, Mahin! You doubled my followers!), you know I have to play along! I've decided that every day this week, no matter what else I am doing for my practice, I am going to practice my zills with Anaya Tribal moves for 5 minutes a day -- and not just easy stuff, either! I'm going to do every combo that comes to mind, and keep powering through even when I mess up.

Anyway, I started on that today, and I also worked on my solo, and I also danced during the day while doing housework. I plan to run my solo one more time before bed, as I feel like I should probably run it 2-3 times a day now until I really get it, but if I do it over and over again in a row, I'll get sick of it and not really feel it.