I'm Fancy!

I had a private makeup lesson with Jolie today and now I am looking -- and feeling -- extra fancy! I learned how to improve my contouring and blush skills, how to do a smoky eye properly and how to do a cat eye (which did not turn into a panda eye, whew!). I couldn't bear to wash all our hard work right off of my face, so I'm going to be super-pretty for dinner and troupe practice tonight.

I'm pretty excited because not only will this help me with looking nice for performances, but it also means better skills for my weekly Beauty Blogging for Bellydancers columns! If I keep practicing hard, I might even get good enough to start doing the occasional tutorial -- for instance, I wouldn't mind sharing how I did my elytra-themed look, and I'm going to be doing some hardcore woodlands faerie makeup soon.

Really, I have to admit that next to the actual dancing, and the costuming, one of my favorite parts of being a bellydancer is having the excuse to spend an entire afternoon just playing with makeup, all in the name of professional development. My inner girly-girl loves it!

Making it official

I came to some big decisions last week. One of them was to take a hiatus from the Tucson Tribal Belly Dance Collective. I've been so busy trying to learn the Fire & Gold choreos, and master my glow fans that I had not been practicing my ITS moves or working on the TTBDC set. I still love ITS but I'm finding that it's not really my focus right now. I'd rather do it casually, and break it out at parties with friends, than actually perform it in a troupe setting. Maybe I'll feel differently later, but for now my interests lie elsewhere.

And where is elsewhere? Other than F&G (which I'm really loving), I've decided that what I really want is to be a professional tribal fusion soloist. Dancing with a troupe is fun, but being a soloist gives me total creative control to express myself artistically, dance to the songs I love, and go crazy with costuming. As for being professional, well, if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it at the highest level possible.

So to make it official, I e-mailed Jolie last week and told her that was my goal, and I wanted to have a private lesson to evaluate where I was at and set me up with a good strict practice regimen (I'm pretty sure I blogged before about being baffled by how to structure my practice). Now I have a crazy amount of homework to do, focusing on drilling the hell out of my basics to undo some of the bad habits I've developed.

To give you an idea of what my days will be like now that I'm on this path, here's what today was like:

-Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, check internet things.

-Private lesson with Jolie, set up practice schedule.

-Come home, get together some beadwork, deliver to Kate's house so it can be photographed for her upcoming book. Something not-dance related!

-Come home again, do chores because they ain't gonna do themselves.

-Decide I want to go ahead and start my practice regimen today. Get into a fight with iPod while trying to set up practice playlists. It thinks that one of the troupe songs is 32 minutes. It is not.

-Go to early dinner with husband, because I skipped lunch and I am staaaaaaarving.

-Go buy groceries.

-Come home for the third time today. Finish setting up play lists, spend about half an hour doing homework. No time to practice choreos or solos before class.

-Drive over to BreakOut Studios, coordinate with a troupemate who is placing an order of tribal jewelry for the troupe. Woohoo!

-One hour of Choreo class. Fun Mira Betz/Gypsy-influenced piece where we got to channel our inner machisma. I enjoyed the hell out of it and want to find a song that makes me feel that way for a solo.

-Over an hour of troupe practice because hey, less than 2 weeks til our big show!

-Come for the fourth and final time. Realize that I still have to update my blog and stretch. Devour all food in the house like a locust.

We braved the cold

Day 353 of practice.

Another cold night at BreakOut Studios. Brooke and I were the only ones who braved it and we were rewarded for our dedication with a semi-private lesson tailored to our specific needs, and with lots of feedback on our individual solos at yesterday's performance, and how to work to be even better in the future.

I had a good time. Jolie is adept at telling me what I need to work on, while framing it in a way that makes it clear that she believes that I can and will conquer it. It was also good to be in class with Brooke who is at a similar place to me, dance-career wise. Sometimes it's just me and Fonda, or me and Kamrah (a local pro and teacher who is really amazing), and I feel like I am a bit of a lump next to the pros!

Anyway, Jolie gave me a lot to think about and work on, which is good since BreakOut and Plaza are both closed next week so I'll have a lot of home practice time.

Made of Awesome

Day 320 of practice.

This week has been full of frustrations, so I'm happy to say that the dance-related areas of my life were pretty awesome today! First I had a private lesson with Jolie, and she helped me work on my next solo, using emotion and gesture like we learned in Monday's class. It was admittedly very strange having someone there while I started working on a solo -- usually even my husband doesn't see an in-progress solo until I'm pretty comfortable with it. But it was also cool to get feedback at the very start, so that I knew what direction to go in. I'm excited and I hope I get the chance to perform it soon -- but not too soon because I need time to work on it :)

Also, having a big mirror to dance in front of was pretty nice, although it feels a little narcissistic to be staring at myself while I dance. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

Then in the evening I finally made it back to Fonda's Dance Loft class, where we had a very special treat -- Friendly neighborhood drummer Carl was there to provide live music! He's going to be a regular fixture at classes for the near future, so we can learn more about dancing to live drumming and playing rhythms on our zills. We did a lot of zilling tonight which is great, I was feeling bad because I haven't practiced my zills since troupe rehearsal on Sunday. It was also so good to see my classmates again and be in the fun, relaxed atmosphere of Fonda's class.

I can tell that I'm starting to feel better, because after all of that, and even though I'm a little tired, I still feel like doing more dancing!

A very happy Halloween!

Day 304 of practice.

What a fun, eventful day I have had so far. I worked some practice into my day, some zilling and working with the heavy friggin' veil. Then I got dressed up in my dryad costume and handed candy out to trick-or-treaters for a little bit until it was time to go to class. No one else showed up to class, so this belly dancing dryad enjoyed a private lesson with Jolie.

I have a love-hate relationship with private lessons. On the one hand it is great to find out what you need to work on and have individual attention to get it done right. On the other hand, there's always those little moments where you go "ARGH I AM BAD AT EVERYTHING I AM THE WORST DANCER EVAR!" But Jolie's a lot of fun and we chatted a lot about things while we drilled, so it kept me mostly relaxed and not stressing so much about all the ways I was messing up.

Now I am beat and it is time to remove my pretty dryad costume and makeup (I drew leaves on my face with sparkly olive eyeliner) and enjoy some faerie beer.