How I feel when I dance

Photo by my wonderful troupemate Ashley Grove

 

Sometimes I look at pictures from my performances and I go "ugh, is that really what I looked like?" but not this time. Ashley managed to capture this image that just perfectly expresses how I feel when I dance. Graceful, blissed out, and dare I say beautiful? I like the lighting, too.

 

I'm especially happy that this picture is so nice, because it's from my improv solo, where I was dancing to a song I had never heard before. I was worried that I'd have a thinking face, or a panicked face, or that I'd be doing something really weird with my arms. But nope. I look like I'm dancing, not freaking out.

 

Speaking of freaking out, I'm leaving for Tribal Fest in SIX DAYS and I have so much to do. Ahhhhhh!  

Always doing something!

Don't let the quiet around here fool you into thinking that I'm not a busy, busy dancer! Friday is the only day this past week when I didn't do anything dance-related, and that was because my dog had minor surgery and spent the night recovering from anaesthesia while sprawled out in my lap.

Yesterday I didn't dance, but I did go to BreakOut to see their Street Fair show (well, part of it... lunch was a SNAFU!). Not only were the junior and senior troupes amazing dancers, but I got to watch Jolie do an entirely improv number in her sparkly purple costume. She's such an inspiration on how to own the song and the crowd. Oh, did I mention that it was totally improv because she had never heard the song before? I'm in awe of dancers who can pull out an amazing show to unfamiliar music. Bravo!

Today I also haven't danced yet (but I will!), however I spent a couple of hours at a joint meeting of our local belly dance community group SABDA and the AZ chapter of MECDA. It's so important to be an active member of the community if you're even remotely serious about dance! Otherwise you'll never know what events are going on and where to see people perform and who is teaching what. I really liked the fact that today, most of the members of the MECDA board came down to give a presentation and answer our questions. We want to have a better connection with the Phoenix community and AZ as a whole.

Also there were Lebanese sugar cookies which are delicious.

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?

Good, good, bad.

Day 248 of practice.

Today's practice was broken up into three parts.

First part: Partial dress rehearsal for my upcoming solo. While digging around in my closets, I not only found a pretty blue silk scarf big enough to be used as a veil, but I also figured out my costume for the solo, too. So I put it on and danced in it, making sure that the veil was going to get along with the costume. I just wore the clothes, though. I need to decide on hair and jewelry and put all those on with it next time, to make sure nothing will catch on the veil or otherwise not work out. But so far, pretty successful!

Second part: Awesome local dancer Kamrah posted a challenge on her blog to do improv every day. Well, I already improv all the time so I decided to try the advanced challenge, which is to do improv to songs I've never heard before. Today I danced to "Aim for the Head" by Creature Feature -- yes, I did belly dance to a song about shooting ghouls. It was a whole lot of fun! But there was a part in the middle where it was just someone talking, and I had to just kind of pose and I found myself wishing that I had my sword or some other weapon to make me look badass. Of course, no one was watching, not even the cat, so it didn't really matter.

Third part: Zills. Ugh! Why am I having so much trouble with the 3-3-7? Anaya wants us to layer it over a Turkish, and I can fake it in class when I'm following the better zill players, but at home it turns into 3-3-what was that awful clatter? I'm going to have to work on it every. single. night. until I can do it on my own.

Just wow.

Day 108 of practice.

Wow. What an experience I just had! I decided that one of the things I would do this week, to keep my practice dynamic and help me really work on strong improv skills, would be to dance to one random song a day. After working through my playlist of homework songs, switch over to the giant melting pot that is my iTunes collection, hit shuffle, and dance to the first thing that comes up! I have some pretty weird stuff on there, so who knows what I'll have to work with.

Tonight, I got "Gotta knock a little harder," which if I remember correctly is from the Cowboy Bebop movie soundtrack. Yeah, a song from an anime. But what a powerful song it is... kind of soulish, and it starts out "Happiness was just a word to me, and it might have meant a thing or two if I'd have known the difference..." It's a very sad song about locking the world out so tightly that once you finally find someone you want to let in, you can. I've always identified pretty strongly with the song, as I'm negative, introverted, and socially awkward (when I'm not dancing!). To have this song come up, randomly, on the first night of really throwing myself back into dance was a strangely moving experience. I danced hard, and passionately, and beautifully (at least, it felt beautiful from the inside, and since I wasn't dancing for an audience, that's all that matters). It was fun, and emotional, and I just allowed myself to connect to the music and do whatever moves felt right, whether or not they were technically belly dance -- just focusing on keeping my posture and dancing powerfully.

Before that, I did a whole bunch of other practice. My solo, of course. Anaya Tribal fast, with and without zills. Anaya style slow. Slow with veil. Slow with a basket on my head. I did it all! And throughout the day, I danced while I cleaned. Not quite my hour goal, but pretty good for the first day, since I also had to run some errands.

For my dance immersion, I watched a lot of videos on-line, and picked up a Belly Dance Superstars DVD while I was out, to watch later this week.