Annoying Dance Sayings Pt 1

I found a meme picture with a cute dog to soften my annoyance.

 

We've all seen and heard this one a lot, right? It's sometimes attached to a few other things, like living like there's no tomorrow and loving like you've never been hurt, etc etc. This can all be great and inspiring for normal life, but as a dancer I get so sick of seeing "Dance like nobody's watching."

 

Now don't get me wrong. There are times when it IS appropriate to dance like no one's watching. They include:

 

1. When you're a newbie in class and you're super nervous and you have to just tell yourself no one else is watching you.

 

2. When you have a new song you want to dance to, and you want to just FEEL it and see what movements work with it, before sitting down to really formalize your choreography or structured improv.

 

3. When you've got some emotions you need to work out, and you just turn on some music and dance so freakin' hard until you've danced it all out.

 

4. When you're at a party or a club and you want to just get down (but even then you have to be careful, because if you've told people you're a bellydancer, you don't want them to say "Oh, she claims she's a dancer but did you see what she was doing with her arms at Aunt Jane's wedding?").

 

However, there is a place where you should not "dance like no one's watching" and that is on stage. Once you've made the decision to be a performer, whether as an eternal amateur or a someday pro, you have made a commitment to always be "on" when you're dancing for other people. You've chosen to perform, so that means you have to perform. That means acknowledging the audience. That means that if you DON'T acknowledge the audience, it's because of a deliberate artistic choice*, not because you just felt like dancing for yourself. That means that if you're terrified of making real eye contact with the audience, you learn the tricks of faking eye contact.

If you get up on stage and dance like nobody's watching, you'll likely find that they aren't watching. Because if you don't dance for the audience, then they don't feel engaged. Likewise, if you're not dancing for the audience, you're probably not thinking about proper angles, and taking up space, and moving around the room/stage so that everyone gets a chance to see you in your full glory.

When you dance like nobody's watching, you do both yourself and the audience a great disservice. So if you've decided to dance for other people, then dance for other people! Acknowledge the audience. Share with them. To sum up the concept that I've heard from numerous great teachers, your dance doesn't have to shout "look at me!" but it should say "Hey, I know you're watching."

*Also if you're presenting a form of spiritual dance that isn't normally a performance art, and acknowledging the audience would be inauthentic, you should obviously make the authentic choice.

What a weekend!

I've had quite the busy weekend. On Saturday I went to the Tucson Belly Dance/Tucson Tribal Collective student recital to see my friends from those two groups dance, and my friend Martha from Phoenix met me there. The recital was held at the Cushing Street Bar and Restaurant which was a GREAT choice! The food was really good, and the outdoor courtyard was beautiful (and it was sunny and 80 degrees, so a perfect day to be outside). It was great to see what all of the students was working on, and there was a nice variety of performances. The show was just the right length, and I really appreciate that it was held at lunch time, so that Martha and I could hit 4th Ave to kill the rest of the afternoon, and then I could attend the art show that my troupemate Liora was in that evening!

Today I got back into the swing of things by attending drills and ITS and going for a jog this evening with some friends and my corgis. I felt good in class, happy with my current progress. I was worried that with how little I've been practicing lately, I would have lost a lot, but really, it's only been a few weeks. Jogging went pretty well, too, and now my dogs are nicely tired out and lazing around the house instead of chasing the cats.

And on top of all of that, I have TWO more gigs coming up! I'll be part of a group piece at BreakOut Studios as part of their Street Fair show on Saturday, and on Thursday I will be dancing at the VERY FIRST SKY BAR OPEN STAGE!!!! Woohoo! I am super excited because not only have I really been missing open stages, but Sky Bar is the perfect venue! I think people will be a lot more enthusiastic about coming out to see the dancers if they don't have to plan their dinner around it. Besides, it's such a pain to eat dinner while watching a show! Much better to kick back with a drink, and more affordable, too.

So far it's looking like December is going to be pretty awesome!

One more day off

Day 311 of practice.

I had originally planned to go to class today, but I'm still coughing and rundown, and it is really COLD outside, so I decided to stay home and huddle under a blanket with a giant mug of rum-spiked hot cranberry cider. Tomorrow is supposed to be warmer so I should be able to go to class.

Did some gentle practice at home, working on my mayas, rib taxims, and Turkish Rom finger snapping. As it turns out, that last one scares one of my dogs away. She's scared of the silliest things.

Orange dog says "Less practice, more petting!"

Day 142 of practice.

Tonight I was sitting on the couch watching Dr. Who Season 5 and practicing some isolations. I decided I felt like doing more super-slow arms, so there I was, sloooooowly pushing my hands in and out. Well, my little orange corgi Daisy was lying next to me, in hopes of getting some belly rubs, and she couldn't stand the fact that my arms were doing something other than petting her! She started pawing at me with her little stubby legs. So of course I had to take a puppy break. Orange dog will not be denied!

I also practiced knee shimmies and glute shimmies and did the exercise to eventually get my layered Arabic shimmy, and did some shoulder exercises from the Deb Rubin workshops. Plus of course my tooth brushing shimmy drill this morning, and I also demonstrated a few different shimmies for my husband when he thoughtfully asked how my 3/4 layered shimmies were coming along. It was a veritable smorgasbord of practice today!

Lackluster practice

Day 94 of practice.

Today's practice consisted of dancing while doing housework, more floor shimmies (with more corgi help! This time they both tried to pile in my lap), and running my solo. Not very exciting or noteworthy. I'm hoping for a more intense practice tomorrow, maybe during the day. The house is actually cooler in the day sometimes -- it cools down in the wee hours of the morning, then takes a while to heat back up, but when it does heat up, it takes a while for it to dissipate. We'll see.

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!

Dancer vs. Dogs

Once again I forgot to put my corgis in their crates before dance practice -- they were napping so it slipped my mind. During my practice they slipped out into the living room and sat together on the couch, watching me. I was impressed by their good behavior and thought they were finally used to my dancing... until I did a sudden spin, and suddenly they were barking and trying to wrestle me again! *sigh* But I was really into the song, so I didn't want to just stop. I decided to make crating them part of the dance -- shimmied and strutted my way into the bedroom, turned my arm movements into imperious points and finger-snaps in the direction of the crates, and a deep, graceful bend to throw the latches. I only broke character long enough to tell them they were good girls for obeying my mostly non-verbal cues ;)

I had a fun breakthrough, where I discovered that layering a hip drop over a downward level makes it appear like my hip is pulling me down with the music, and then I POP up with the beat. Wee! It really fit the particular Beats Antique song I was dancing to, I'll have to see if it works with anything else.

Otherwise, because I was pretty tired it was a mediocre practice, my veil practice was especially bad, I kept getting tangled up, throwing the veil in my face, grabbing the wrong edge of the semi-circle. My head just wasn't in it!