Dentistry

Today I added another place to the list of unusual spots to practice dance! I had to get my first (and hopefully last?) root canal today, and I spent some time while waiting between steps to do glute squeezes, finger waves, and floreos! I found that doing little isolations helped to distract me from the discomfort of having my poor jaw forced open for almost an hour. Then to distract myself from listening to the drill, I tried to replay favorite belly dance performances in my head, but unfortunately I don't have a very photographic memory. Sadly I ended up having to skip Jolie's class because of the root canal -- once the Novacaine wore off, my jaw started throbbing in time with my heartbeat. Yuck! The pain seems to be tapering off so I should be ready for two hours of dance fun tomorrow.

Not belly dance

Days 330 and 331 of practice.

Busy busy busy! Saturday's practice was a combination of stretching and glute isolations while playing games with friends. I didn't really have any downtime, I was on the go or entertaining people all day.

Today I went to Tucson Pole Fitness for their holiday open house, because one of my belly dance classmates is an instructor there and she invited me, plus there were crafts to be purchased and I am a sucker for things of a handmade nature. So part of my dance practice was a sample class of pole dancing! Not at all related to belly dance but fun anyway. I can see the appeal. The "sexy" undulations against the pole were not my speed, but sexy walks and large, swinging steps that spin you around the pole are a lot of fun. I may go back sometime next year to take a few classes just for fun and fitness.

I intended to work on my solo today, too, but instead I had to tend to my Etsy shop, so I chair danced while I edited 84 items to reflect my Cyber Monday sale. Yuck. I hate boring tasks! I may yet at least do a simple run-through of the solo before bed. I did just have a slice of leftover chocolate pie and I'm drinking a mug of tea, so it is possible that I will be awake for a long time.

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.

Paying the price

Day 233 of practice.

Well, I knew I wouldn't emerge from yesterday unscathed. I've got an ugly-sounding cough, and between the coughing and yesterday's dancing, my abs are already protesting. But whatever. I regret nothing! I had a wonderful time, and I really needed to get out and dance and meet more of the local community.

I do need to take it easy so that I can make class on Weds and Thursday, though. With that in mind, today's practice was floreos, hip slides, and rib slides. The slides felt really good, they're so much fun and it's good to stretch out the ol' obliques.

Back home!

Day ??? of practice.

Uh oh! I lost track of my days when I skipped so many updates during my vacation. I'll have to do a count tomorrow when I'm less tired.

I have been practicing, though it's pretty much been all isolations. I didn't really have the space or the energy for full-fledged dancing. This was an important lesson on how hard it is to dance away from home, and how I should really develop a specific practice regimen for trips, so I don't do such a poor job of practicing while I'm gone.

Anyway, I'm happy to be home and I have some stuff coming up that I will blog about this week!

Me and my glutes

Day 220 of practice.

I'm finding that when I get bored, I start doing glute squeezes... even if I'm in line or whatever. Which must be interesting for whoever is standing behind me. But I want to be able to work them into my dance more often. I already do to some extent, using them to sharpen and accent things in class even when I don't need to... maybe because I have minimal hips, so when I see someone with nice hips do a move and it has a lot of hip action, I have to do something extra to get the same impact.

Otherwise, it's hard to practice, as people want to do stuff with me for most of the day. I think tomorrow I'll dance in the morning before we head out, unless it's too hot and humid.

Slow laptop is slow

Days 216 and 217 of practice.

Still dancing, still wishing I was home taking classes. My old laptop isn't doing too great so it hasn't made me very enthusiastic about blogging. Between the way the text lags behind my typing speed from time to time and the way the heat of it running irritates my legs, I've been using it at little as possible.

Practice has mostly been limited to isolations. There's lots of room to dance downstairs, but the carpet is kind of thick and messes me up on turns... makes things like the Oojam Bomb a little hard to practice :)

I miss my classes!

Day 215 of practice.

The problem with being on vacation is that I'm away from my classes and have to practice all by myself. So sad! Tonight I did some isolations, some drills, and some Anaya Tribal fast moves to music. During the drills I continued to work on my mayas, which feel a little better. But I'd still rather have been at The Dance Loft with Fonda and my classmates!

I did get to chat with Dawn on the phone, and I'm keeping in touch with other dance friends via FB, so at least technology keeps me from being completely cut off from my community.

Blown away

Day 186 of practice.

Well, I didn't really blow away, but we had some crazy windstorms today. Could it be because my new DVD by Tempest arrived in the mail?!? Who knows! I'm excited to check the DVD out as I really love Tempest's style and it apparently has a warm-up that is good for daily practice. My practice could use some more structure!

Today's unstructured practice included hand drills, shimmies while I washed the dishes, glute squeezes while reading, and some practice of various versions of Arabic. On Fonda's advice, I've been working to smooth out the chest lift and drop on my Arabic. I do it well enough when I'm dancing slow to medium, but apparently I get very choppy when I get fast. It's so good to have specific things to work on!

Thunder and Fireworks

Day 185 of practice.

Another rainy thunderstorm today. I like this! I don't like the humidity, and I don't like how much my pets get scared (especially Daisy, who walks through the house whining until she finds someone to snuggle up to, then she shivers. Or she hides behind/under furniture), but I like the rain. Since the storm was in the afternoon, the fireworks shows went on as scheduled. I didn't go out to see them, but I could hear them from the house... as well as all of the illegal ones being fired off by my neighbors!

Simple practice today, arm and hand drills and glute squeezes mostly, and then some slow moves because I felt like it. While I was doing slow moves, my husband started playing drum rhythms on the wall and I had fun correctly guessing each one that he played. All in all, it was a pretty nice, relaxing day, part of a lovely weekend. But I have big dance things on the horizon so I need to get into some more serious practice this week!

Half a year down!

Day 183 of practice.

More than half the year is gone and I'm still dancing every day! Go me! Woohoo!

Today's practice was nothing special, I did isolations in the car on the way to a party in Phoenix. Really too tired to actually dance, but there will be plenty of time for dancing tomorrow and Monday. Hooray, 3 day weekend!

Weird places to dance

Day 182 of practice.

What is the weirdest place that you've ever practiced dancing? So far, for me, it's Office Max.

I don't know if it's all Office Maxes or just the one near us, but it seems like every time we go there, either there's a problem ringing us up, or a problem with the person ahead of us, and there's only ever one person working the register. So annoying! Today we were there to buy some card blanks for my jewelry business, and the lady ahead of us was doing a return, which required the use of the only register. After a few minutes I got horribly bored and put the package of cards on my head and began to do mayas and hip slides. After all, if I have to be stuck in line, I might as well DO something.

Today was apparently the day for multi-tasking practice, because not only did I do that, but I also just shimmied my way through an entire sink full of dishes, and now I'm going to go lie in bed with a book and do glute squeezes. It's the lazy girl's guide to shortcuts for dance practice when it's too hot to dance and you've only had 5 hours of sleep so you really don't care!

Not quite what I planned

Day 177 of practice.

Well, I had planned to work in the garage today, to make room to dance. Instead Chris and I went out, bought a new bookcase, and assembled it. It was something that needed doing. I'd love to say that it will help with the garage project, but really, I already mostly filled it with books from the house so there's not much room for garage books.

Practice consisted of dancing while cleaning (and while assembling the bookcase, even!), isolations while watching TV, and some veil solo practice. Next time I should do veil before building furniture, because all the work damaged my nails and they kept catching on the veil. Time for a home manicure tomorrow!

Clean clean clean

Day 176 of practice.

I got really into the cleaning today, which was nice because I actually temporarily moved some small furniture out of the living room to really sweep and mop the floor, and before I put it back I had lots of room to spin around with my veil. It would have been a nice opportunity to do skirt, too, except that it was really too hot to wear a skirt.

I also got some dancing done while I cleaned, and some floreos while I gamed, and now I'm going to do isolations while I read.

Happy dancer is happy.

Days 168, 169, and 170.

I am back from my internetless sojourn to Scottsdale! My husband and I decided to make a long weekend out of the recital, and have some fun in the Phoenix area. Unfortunately, while we got a great deal on a resort in Scottsdale, the resort found it acceptable to charge through the nose for internet. And not even WiFi! I guess I'm spoiled but I feel like there should be free WiFi in every hotel, coffee shop, and bookstore. Anyway, I figured I could go ahead and post quick blog updates from my phone, but no. No matter how many times I touched the text box it wouldn't bring up my keyboard! I have no idea what is up with that but I did not approve.

Anyway, the recital was a lot of fun. I'll post some pictures from it tomorrow, maybe even video eventually, if someone got a good recording.

The happiness mentioned in the title comes from getting kudos not just from Tiffany* who was there to watch the recital, but also Cari* who is away in TX and just heard about the performance. Cari has a lot going on, so the fact that I not only made her proud, but that she took the time to let me know just fills me with warm fuzzies. Plus it's always a good feeling to have external validation that my daily practice is paying off.

Speaking of daily practice, the past three days of practice were...

168: Over half an hour of arm drills while watching stupid reality TV in our hotel room.

169: Warming up with shimmies and isolations before the performance. 7 minute long performance of fast with zills and slinky slowness. Playing with my new veil back at the hotel room.

170: Today! Lots of drilling. Did 25 reps each of calf raises (Fonda likes to make us do those), various arm isolations, floreos to the inside and outside, and hip drops on each side. Then some shimmies!

*My Anaya Tribal teachers, in case you didn't already know.

Fun with isolations

Day 163 of practice.

So, today I learned that I can do belly rolls and chest circles while drinking tea, and execute a pretty floreo with my left hand while my right holds the mug. That was a fun little bit of practice while rearranging my iPod playlists. I'd had the same "Homework" playlist since probably around when I started working on my Convivio solo and I was way beyond bored with those songs.

I decided to combat my usual post-performance blahs by jumping right into working on my next solo, which as it turns out will be a veil piece. It also turns out that I will need to buy a veil to match the costume I want to wear.

Tomorrow my plan is to practice during the day and try to get a really long, really good session in with some solo practice, and recital practice, and skirt practice, and some drills. I also need to get into practicing the moves from Fonda's class, because with the new format we're learning more things that I don't already do in Anaya classes, or that are done differently.

Burned out

Day 149 of practice.

I think it's time to admit that I'm burned out! I mean, I'm not going to let it stop me or anything, but I just have no enthusiasm for dance practice right now. I know I should be practicing moves from class, and working on my Convivio solo, but all I do is drill isolations and exercises while doing other things, because I just don't feel like dancing. I'll dance around if a good song comes on while I clean, so at least I still like dancing. I just don't like practicing.

Today was lower abs and pelvic floor muscles and glutes and obliques and floreos. All good things. Now if only my passion for really dancing and practicing and being at my personal best would come back. I think tomorrow I'll tear down the extra table and force myself to practice some DC skirt combos no matter what, otherwise I will really fall behind in class!

Working and dancing

Day 147 of practice.

Today was a house cleaning day, which means that most of my practice was dancing around while I folded laundry or put things away around the house. I did work on some ab and hand isolations while reading, too. I wanted to get some skirt practice, but there isn't room to really do skirt combos in my living room until I can take down the extra table on Sunday.

Exciting!

Day 144 of practice.

I had to miss dancing at the park tonight due to my husband's job keeping him late, thus pushing dinner back to an unreasonable hour. So I stayed home and practiced isolations. I got bored of doing hands and arms and decided to work on my abs, and I'm very happy to say that I can now push out just the upper portion, and pull it back in, while keeping my stomach relaxed. It's the first step to a flutter! YAY!

Aside from missing the park, today was a good day. I went up to Phoenix for a bead show, where I got beads for some new tribal necklaces, then I met a few dance friends for lunch, and we hit a couple shops in downtown Mesa. In one, I got a t-shirt with Catwoman on it, which says "Femme Fatale"! Perfect!

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!