Annoying Dance Sayings Pt 2

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to disagree with Martha Graham. That would be stupid. Obviously she knew way, way, WAY more about dancing than I ever will, and that is why there's a ton of quotes from her on Pinterest and absolutely zero by me.

The problem with this quote isn't the quote itself, its in how people interpret it. People see this quote and they think "Well, I'm passionate about dance so that means I'm great! I'm gonna sit on the couch and watch a movie instead of drilling my arm work because I'm already awesome. Thanks, Martha Graham!"

I've fallen into this trap before. I'm a passionate dancer. I go to class several times a week. I emote all over the stage. I can talk about dance until I'm blue in the face. As such, there have been times where I've gone to a show and thought "Oh sure, she has great technique, but she's not showing a lot of passion in her dance. I'm sooooo much better than here." Well, that's just plain wrong. Great dancers have technique and passion. I can't just coast along on my passion and ignore the fact that my footwork is sloppy.

Great dancers are great because of their passion, but it's because a passion for dance drives you to be great. When you have a passion for dance, it's not enough to go to class on Wednesday night and then maybe practice once or twice between classes. Passion means you take all of the classes you can afford and you practice every day (when you can overcome your natural laziness, I'm talking to myself here, can you tell?). Passion means when you're the only one in class who can't do something, you ask your teacher for advice and then you go home, and you practice it in the mirror, and you cry and yell and stomp around the house when you can't get it right, because sometimes passion is a little sad and angry, instead of beautiful and lovey-dovey. Passion means sitting on the yoga mat cursing like a sailor because you're 30 seconds into a 2 minute stretch and your glute is cramping like a mofo, but you've got to work on your splits so you tough it out.

Passion means sometimes you go weeks or months without being able to really socialize with the non-dance people in your life, because you have class on weeknights and performances or workshops on weekends. Passion means sometimes you tell your spouse you'd rather stay home with a DVD than go to the movies, because you've got to work on your new costume. Passion means that you go to class in cheap Target yoga pants but perform in custom-made velvet skirts. Passion means that you give up an international vacation so you can save your money to study with great dancers. Passion means wearing pants and long skirts all summer because your knees are always covered in bruises from floorwork. For some dance forms, passion means you never wear sandals again because your toes scare small children.

Passion does not mean "Oh, I really like dancing and I'm SO emotional on stage."

Don't agree with me? Here's another quote from Martha Graham that you probably won't see on Pinterest:

"[When I stopped dancing] I had lost my will to live. I stayed home alone, ate very little, and drank too much and brooded. My face was ruined, and people say I looked odd, which I agreed with. Finally my system just gave in. I was in the hospital for a long time, much of it in a coma."

That's passion.

The Inner Dancer taught me how to Dance Like a Queen!

This weekend I had the pleasure of taking a workshop with Samantha, aka The Inner Dancer, aka winner of the pro soloist category in 2013's Belly Dance Queen competition. I interact with Samantha on Facebook via her "Leave It On The Dance Floor" group and had seen her dance at Club Bellydance, but this was the first time I had the chance to study with her and she did not disappoint!


I signed up for the Dance Like a Queen workshop which was about the mental and emotional aspects of dance rather than physical technique. I really love classes that dig down into things like motivation and stage presence and dance persona and how you approach dance, and this covered all of those things. I feel like in the long run, this sort of workshop stays with me and has more impact on my personal dance journey than learning physical technique, which is harder to properly absorb in two hours.

It's hard to describe this workshop. It was a very personal process, with a lot of self-evaluation, group interaction, and really thinking about, well, how we think about dance. I feel like overall, the theme was about having a healthy view of where you are in dance and a good idea of where you want to go and how you're going to get there. It's about not seeing yourself as two separate people (AJ the regular person and Sophia Ravenna the dancer), but as one person who feels pretty good about herself and is able to bring a genuine expression of who she is to the dance floor. It's about intertwining your personal development with your dance practice.

As it turns out, one of the things that I love about Samantha as a dancer, teacher and person is that she thinks that technique and emotion are equally important. She knows that the really amazing dancers are the people who have both of those, and she wants to train people to bring it all to the dance floor. I'll have a couple of opinion posts in the near future that expand on my feelings on the topic, but let's just say that it always makes me happy when someone else backs up my opinion that you have to work hard and bring authenticity of emotion to your dance, too.

What really stood out to me about this workshop specifically was that my classmates ranged from really new beginners to established pros and teachers, and it seemed like everyone was getting at least a little something out of it. It's rare to be in a really good all-levels workshop.

I'd definitely recommend this workshop to just about anyone who is serious about dance, but especially those who are looking to go pro, who feel like they've got an unhealthy relationship with dance (for instance, carrying around a lot of negativity about where you are or what you can't do), or those looking to really dig deeper into how they think about themselves as a dancer.

Oh, zee drama

Another great pic from Pedro Romano, taken at Temple of Eden. I am being all dramatic, oooooh.

Ok, here's the thing... I'm not good at talking about feelings. Every now and then I'll sit down at this blog and write a deep post about issues in the community, or my struggles with dancer's block, but in general I approach things with a thick veneer of sarcasm, self-depreciation, and downright smart-assery. I am not good at letting my guard down and letting people in, so I am especially not good at really showing my true emotions on stage.

That said, I can really connect with a song, and I can really show my passion for dancing. People react pretty strongly to the solo that the above picture is from because I just feel that song so damn hard that it shows. It's very emotional, but it's mostly positive emotions.

So this brings us to next week's Open Stage and my special challenge for it. I have to dance out some of my feelings. I am still struggling a bit with the loss of my friend Marilee. It's weird, because I've never struggled with a loss this much, but I've also never lost someone that I talked to almost every day, and who had given me lots of little things (beads and books, mostly) that I see around my house all the time. I think this sadness is one of the issues that has really kept me from being inspired to dance lately. I was talking to Jolie about it, as part of a gripe about how little I've been dancing at home lately, and she suggested that I work on something for Open Stage that would express those feelings. The funny thing is that I almost did so for the last Open Stage, but it felt too raw.

I have a song tentatively picked out, a song that has a small connection to my friend -- it's a song I like, but also a song that was used as the theme for a TV show she told me about, one she really enjoyed and which I would watch too, when I got a chance. And it's a beautiful song, a song that feels like floating, flying out, reaching towards a goal and never quite reaching it.

But I am scared to do it. I'm really scared of stepping out onto the dance floor and baring my soul to a bar full of people, people who range from my fellow dancers to my gaming friends to random people just out for a drink. I mean, what if I start crying? I feel like crying on stage would be the most awful and awkward thing ever.

For most of my dance career, I've focused on dance as entertainment -- either as a way to entertain myself, or an audience. And over the past year I have stepped out of my comfort zone a little bit, trying moody and sad music, but not music that actually made me sad. Not music that had any real deep meaning to me. To take that leap from entertainment to performance art, to try to make people really think and feel, it's a little scary. There's more chance of failure, more vulnerability. And I just don't do vulnerable well.

We'll see how this turns out. It may be beautiful and therapeutic or I may end up crying in a bar bathroom.

Open Stage Again!

Last night's Open Stage was pretty awesome. We had even more dancers than last time, and another great audience. Aside from having to start late due to the UofA basketball game running into overtime, it went pretty flawlessly. And since UofA won, the crowd was in a good mood (college sports are a big deal here, if you are into sports. I am not).

Sky Bar is proving to be a pretty ideal venue. There's a lot of room to dance, which makes it nice for big troupes like ours, or for using props like veil. Since it's not a restaurant, the dancers don't have to vie with dinner for peoples' attention. And after the show, we can all relax with an adult beverage and chat it up. I had a really nice time last night catching up with dancers that I hadn't seen in a long time, and meeting new dancers.

I feel really happy with how my solo performance went last night. I wish I had gotten video of it, as I was emoting like crazy and I really just left it all out there on the dance floor. If I can get my technical skill to match my passion, I think I will be pretty awesome. As it is, I'm still really proud of my progress, I've grown a lot from my previous "SMILE FOR THE AUDIENCE, OMG, DON'T STOP SMILING!" dance persona.

Last night I also hit a new milestone: I wore full-size false eyelashes all night! I was actually pretty disappointed with how small they were. I'm ready to try some great big over the top dramatic lashes. Good thing I am going to Sephora on Sunday!

Hard to stay sad

My husband often jokes that our little corgis, Daisy and Maggie, are the best investment he ever made because I can never stay upset with them around. This is an old picture, but this is pretty much the exact faces they were making at me when I came home from class today.

It's also hard to stay sad with so many good friends in my life. I hesitated to post last night because I didn't want to seem like a drama ball, rolling around and soaking up the drama and needing attention from my friends -- but I kind of did need it. Maybe not the ego boosts (which ARE nice), but I really, really needed to hear other dancers and artistic types saying that they have gone through the same thing. I needed to know that this is something that I need to push through, instead of letting it keep me down. I needed to know that I am not just being a drama llama, but that this is part of the normal growth of a dancer.

Anyway, I am still feeling down, but getting better. I danced this morning. I mean. really. f*cking. danced. (forgive my asterisked language, but it was that intense) I danced so hard that I was honest-to-gosh crying, and that doesn't really happen to me. I danced so hard that I'm amazed I didn't hurt myself. Most importantly, I danced so hard that I remembered why the hell I do this -- I do it because I love it. I do it because the music moves me, physically and emotionally, and while I still need to work on technique, I can dance up a storm and I can let everything I'm feeling come out, and share that with the audience (in this case, an audience of corgis).

And then I did some spot turns and some chaine turns. And they still sucked. But I am going to do them until they don't.

A big thank you to everyone who put up with my drama, and took the time to reassure me, or give me a pep talk, or tell me to just get through it. I love you all.

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.

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!

Working hard

It was another cold night (despite being the first day of Spring!), but I actually got warm because we did burpees and squats! Woohoo! I am feeling worked out tonight. I feel pretty good with how I did, both with the working out and the dancing.

Once again I did some practice before class. Two songs of emoting. The first was an old Drain STH (dark girl metal), so I did a kind of distant, detached thing, and the second was Abney Park, from the album where they were transitioning from Goth to steampunk, so the music is pretty melancholy and I think I did a good job of dancing said. I started to feel sad, so hopefully I looked sad. I tried to channel some of that into practicing my Wandering Star solo, too. It's a pretty sad song, but when I performed it at The Luxor I started smiling because I was having FUN! I'll have to work on balancing that. I also did a quick run of the Fire & Gold choreo, but I messed up the count somewhere. Oh well, I at least remembered everything, I think I just did a couple of things as a 4 count instead of 8, which threw me off. I'll try again tomorrow, and every day after until it's PERFECT!

Sadness

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.