It's so BIG!

Tonight was our first troupe practice in the new BreakOut Studios, and WOW! The room is so BIG! And bright! And beautiful! Wooden dance floors, new mirrors, freshly painted walls... And it was warm enough that I danced in a t-shirt. I'm in looooove.

I'm also excited because we have new troupe members! And old members who were busy are coming back! It's a nice big, robust group again. We worked hard on the new choreography that we started before the break, with hopes of having it finished soon so we can start on yet another one. I'm happy to be working on new material for all of our shows that are coming up.

Speaking of shows, Denim Day is coming up on Saturday! It's at Fluxx Studios off of 4th Ave and runs from 7pm-12am. I'm not sure where we are in that, but it's a fundraiser show with artists showing their work and probably other performers, too, so if you can, plan to be there all night :)

Hard at work

You might think that for our last troupe practice before the studio closes for the rest of the year that we MIGHT take it easy, just practice some old choreos or do some drills or shoot the breeze. You would be wrong. Instead we took the usual class time, and our troupe practice time, and crammed them together into one two-hour choreography marathon. We learned 2 minutes of a new choreography, and none of it was simple walking, posing, or doing our own thing.

I am exhausted.

But I am also happy to have something new to practice for these two weeks. I'm not traveling for the holidays, and I don't have any major plans. Even if the studio wasn't moving, we would have had to skip the next two practices anyway due to them falling on Christmas Eve and NYE, respectively. So while I'll miss seeing my troupemates, at least I will have something to work on other than drills and practicing the same old choreos (which I will also practice, because I have been slacking).

Right now, however, I just want to go crawl into bed with a book and sleep for about 12 hours.

So much dancing!

Well, I've been quite the busy dancer. On Saturday we had a 2-hour dress rehearsal for the show. Sunday was the show itself, which went really well. I'll hopefully post some pictures and video next week. Let's just say that it is really awesome having a professional photographer in our troupe!

You might think that after a big show we would take it easy, but no! Members of Fire & Gold Belly Dance and our big sister troupe Skirt Full of Fire Dance Company will be banding together to perform an awesome choreography at the BreakOut Studios feature night on June 2nd. It's probably my favorite choreography so far.

Between now and then, I will also be performing a solo at the Open Stage night at the Luxor Cafe, hosted by the Safar Dance Co. That's on May 31st.

After that... who knows? I don't think the troupe has any more gigs lined up yet, as Summer tends to be pretty slow here in Tucson. Given that it's usually still around 100 degrees when I drive to class at 7pm, it's easy to understand why everyone either leaves town if they can, or hides in air conditioned buildings.

National Belly Dance Day!

Today was National Belly Dance Day! I had some free time this afternoon, so I decided to make a treasury of some beautiful dancey-dance Etsy items.

Because it's a Saturday, I also went to the Community Class! It was just three of us from Fire & Gold, so Jolie turned it into an extra troupe practice. We finished our third choreo (and good thing too, since we have to perform it a week from tomorrow), so when the normal practice rolls around on Monday, it will be all figured out and the rest of the troupe can learn it and we can drill the heck out of it and be awesome. I actually feel more comfortable with this piece than with the second one, even though it's been done for longer. This last piece uses a lot of ITS-style moves, so the vocabulary is really familiar to me. There's not as many small accents to keep track of. Plus it's a fun song and a saucy choreo.

I'm really excited for our show next weekend, but also a little nervous. I have to admit I am not really loving my glow fan solo. I am kind of tired of my fans. I actually have a small scar on my inner elbow from where I hit myself with one while demoing for the rest of the troupe. I think I might have to wear sleeves when I perform.

Moving

Oh my goodness it feels so good to be back to things after being sick!

Tonight, Choreography class was a total misnomer, because we spent it doing a spontaneous movement meditation thingie. A little New Age woo-woo, but whatever. I just had fun exploring movement and trying some different ways of expressing myself. My meditation was mainly on how damn good it was to not be stuck at home in bed.

Then we had troupe practice, which was spent refining the finished choreography and working on the next one which is REALLY REALLY HARD. It's going to be a struggle for me to get some of those moves right! It's a good thing that I like a challenge.

Commitment!

Tonight was all about committing to things. No, I'm not talking about dedication like I did yesterday, but about to committing to what you're doing at that moment. Combos and Choreography was a freakin' crazy sad lyrical piece with pretty much no belly dance in it. It was great practice for committing to unfamiliar moves, to not being "pretty" and to getting sad as all heck.

Then we FINISHED OUR CHOREOGRAPHY in troupe practice! Hooray! It's done! So of course we had to commit to that while we were doing it, dance like we meant it. I am pretty happy and excited. Practicing all week really helped, I felt comfortable with even the difficult parts, even if I messed them up, I knew what I was supposed to be doing. Now it's all about fine-tuning.

Lastly, I am now committed to doing a glow fan solo at our big troupe show on May 20th! This means I have to practice obsessively, which is pretty much what Jolie always expects of me anyway. It's nice to have a reputation of being a person who throws herself into things, even if it means that people then expect you to throw yourself into things and you can't be lazy.

And that's the secret truth about me. I am, at heart, a lazy person. If left to my own devices, I will happily spend all day goofing off on Facebook or reading a book. But having dance goals, and having a blog where I have to write about what I'm doing, keeps me motivated to actually do stuff. Being in a troupe really helps, because if I don't practice I'm not just failing myself, but I'm letting down my director and my fellow dancers. Between that and my intense hatred of being bad at things, I get motivated to actually practice instead of thinking about practice while I read another chapter.

Work harder!

For the record, I practiced hard yesterday after I blogged. I worked on the troupe choreo, and my own solo, and drilled various things, and had an amazing emotionality practice where in one song I managed to go from being cute and playful to being moved to tears, as the music changed. So there.

That said, I obviously need to work harder on the troupe choreo, as I had a few mistakes tonight and we have a month to get it perfectly polished for our first performance. Jolie wants us to run it at least once a day. It's a short song, so I should have no problem working it in. Ideally I'll practice it a few times a day, but we'll see. I have a dozen other things I need to work on, too!

The class before troupe practice was a lot of fun, we did a choreo that focused on more belly dance technique instead of modern technique, with an emphasis of dancing with attitude, as if we were each a soloist taking center stage and putting our emotion into it. I had fun with that, since the moves were familiar and mostly easy for me, and if I messed up, it was no biggie because it was just a class exercise and I'd fix it next time.

Progress

Well, despite the fact that it was disgustingly cold, I had a good time at class and Fire & Gold troupe practice tonight! We made major progress on our choreography, to the point where we'll finish it next week. Yay! I really like practicing every week, it gives a real sense of accomplishment to put an hour into it every week, in addition to classes.

Before class, I did my emoting homework. The first random song that came up was really happy and playful, so that wasn't much of a challenge. As such, I decided to do a second song, too. That one was a bit more ambiguous so I tried being kind of arrogant. Not sure how well I did, but I don't really expect to see major progress on the first day anyway.

A community of two

I was the only person to show up to Jolie's community class today, which didn't stop the two of us from dancing! After running through the choreography of the day (which was fun and let me practice the turns that so handily defeated me on Monday), Jolie had me do a little improv practice to try to work on my facial expressions and emotions. I tend to have two dance modes -- happy dancer and Goth dancer -- so I really need to work on broadening that and being comfortable expressing myself to the audience.

Now I also have my self-evaluation form that I need to fill out with a troupe. It's a chart! That I need to fill in! Where are my colored pencils?

Back to the grind!

It's time to buckle down and get back to regular classes and practicing! Tonight I had choreo class and troupe practice, two good solid hours of dancing. It felt really good, despite some blisters making me uncomfortable (I've been making a habit of taking my corgis for long walks so we can all get more exercise, but I'm learning that my shoes kind of suck). I'm really happy about our troupe choreography and I really enjoy dancing with my troupe mates!

I have a lot of things I need to work on  to get better at the choreo though, especially my taxeem which is embarrassingly bad. So I need to spend more time practicing at home, even on class days -- since almost every day is a class day!

Time flies

Class and troupe practice really flew by tonight! I'm pretty excited about the choreography we're working on, and the song that we'll probably be using as the second part of the number, too. We already have a few gigs in the works as well, so I'll post about them once the details are firmed up.

I danced up one heck of an appetite though, so I'm going to go fuel my body and maybe make some choreography notes, since we don't have practice next week and I'm worried about forgetting what I learned tonight.

Choreo!

Just got back from Jolie's Monday night combinations and choreography class. Time really flew tonight, and for the most part I really got into the choreography and had a good time. It was a good way to start off the week!

I'm trying to learn to enjoy choreography. I'm such an improv girl at heart, and I'm not sure that I ever see myself being too interested in developing my own choreos, but it is good to be able to learn them to dance with a group, or to be able to semi-choreograph an improv performance if I feel the need to.

Almost bearable

Day 346 of practice.

It was 15 degrees warmer tonight than it was for class last week, which meant that our little room at BreakOut was not painfully cold this time. That's not to say that it was warm, or comfortable, but at least my fingers didn't go numb.

Tonight's choreography was to a song about marijuana. I do not smoke anything, and never have, so I decided it was the same as dancing to the song about alcoholism... and thus very sad. But the choreography was fun because it involved some crazy non-belly dance moves. Over all it was a good class and I'm glad I decided to go instead of letting the cold scare me away.

Now to decide if I feel like working on my solo at all tonight!

What a difference a week makes

Day 339 of practice.

I don't know what happened... maybe I broke through a wall. Maybe I just needed some introspection. Maybe I was holding myself back. But whatever happened, tonight I felt frickin' awesome at Jolie's class. We did 2:16 of a relatively difficult choreography and while there were a couple of parts I was a little iffy on, over all I felt really comfortable with the non-bellydance elements and like I was on top of it, fully committing, and most of all having FUN even when I was really cold. I really really enjoyed myself and I feel like I danced at my potential and didn't let my mistakes keep me down.

And of course, part of the fun was that it was just Jolie, Fonda and I so it was a kind of relaxed, intimate atmosphere and Fonda and I were having fun joking around about alternate choreography and how we should do a Gothic Fusion Horror Circus piece. More and more adjectives kept piling on throughout the night.

I felt so good when I got home that I also did a quick run-through of my solo and played with some different moves and ideas. I'm starting to feel better about the possibility of performing this piece at the Holiday Belly Dance show here in Tucson on the 18th, although I need to work on the emotional part as well as the moves. I'm great at roleplaying, but I have no acting experience so I don't know how well I'm going to do at portraying different moods on my face. Plus there's the costuming... I want to buy lots of new bits for it and the budget just ain't there!

Like a rockstar

Day 332 of practice.

Tonight's choreography class was about owning it and being a rockstar... which was hard for me because I honestly had a pretty lousy day and a pretty lousy dinner before class and I kind of just wanted to be a lump. But I did my best and I guess I wasn't horrible. I even learned some new tricks to add to my arsenal!

In a bit I'll try to get out of my lumpy funk and work on my solo. But maybe a snack first, to make up for the lousy dinner.

On the floor!

Day 290 of practice.

In tonight's class, Jolie had a small piece of floorwork in the choreography, which means I'm probably going to have bruises on my knees. But it was worth it to learn a cool way to get down to the floor! Besides, while it may still be 100 degrees here, I don't think I'm going to wear shorts this week so what does it matter if my knees are a little battered?

At first I didn't want to take this class, but I'm glad I did. Learning choreography isn't my thing, but Jolie uses it to teach us certain concepts. Tonight, for instance, was about switching between fast and slow, and also learning to be still. Good exercises to stretch my brain!