Dance Hard!

Whew. What a night. We did leaps and turns and extensions. Since we were doing leaps we had to do a major warm-up, which included stretching and splits. I have the worse splits of anyone in class. When I have to do splits, I just hate my body. But then Jolie said "Ok, run 5 times around the room as fast as you can" and you know what? I owned that. I outran everyone and I was ready to keep going. I guess I could have ran faster than I did.

My turns are also getting a lot better, which is a nice feeling. It's really good to feel like I am making progress on things that have been difficult for me for a long time.

The weekend is too short

How is it already 11:30 on Sunday night? This weekend flew by.

I didn't end up performing at the Circus Farm fundraiser after all. The weather was far too icky to drive all the way up to Mesa and dance outdoors at night. Instead I ended up going to a holiday party, which was nice. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in dance (and this time of year, my jewelry business) and I just don't make enough time to socialize with my friends.

Today I went to dance class in the too-cold studio. Two more nights of cold classes and then I am FREE! The studio is closing for 2 weeks starting on the 21st and moving to an exciting new venue with more room and best of all, HEAT! Oh, I can't wait to no longer shiver my way through dance classes. I hope that the nicer, bigger studio also results in more new faces in class, and maybe in the troupe, too.

Then I went jogging, and it was also too cold, but you do what you gotta do. I did pretty well, until we stopped jogging and suddenly my calves decided to entirely cramp up. But that's sadly pretty normal. Maybe if I didn't subsist off of tea all winter long I would be less prone to calf cramps, but water is cold and tea is not. I guess I could drink plain hot water but that would be awful.

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!

More Jogging

I have to admit, I haven't been practicing much lately. I've been in a big funk, plus dealing with the fact that my calves have hurt all week since I went jogging on Sunday. So what did I do today? More jogging of course!

I will really be happy when my legs adjust to being re-trained. I spent 3 decades walking on my toes, and this led to me having really bad dance posture -- my weight was always tipped way forward of center, which leads to things like falling down when doing levels. So I've been training myself to walk properly, and adjusting my posture, and it leads to pretty much constant leg soreness and tiredness as my muscles get used in slightly different ways. I've been stretching them a lot, too, to improve my flexibility.

I'm tired of it, but I know eventually it will all be better.

Running went pretty well, not as well as Sunday but I still completed our little training program, so that's what matters.

Feeling Competent

Sometimes I feel like I am just totally overwhelmed by dance, or by my goals. Today is not one of those days. Oh sure, we did a gliding exercise which my legs would not cooperate with, but we also did a new layering exercise and I actually GOT IT a few times. Most of the time when Jolie throws new layers at us, I am just completely messed up, but I made this one make sense to me and it feels attainable.

Then I went jogging tonight. I don't know if I've mentioned it on this blog before, but I hate running. I'm really bad at it. Or so I usually thought. Tonight, for the first time ever, I out-ran my husband. Usually he is the one jogging along happily while I am proclaiming that I am about to die, but today I was almost chipper about how well I was doing. I suspect maybe I have been replaced by an alien pod person, but I don't care. I ran and I did well and I completed the running training exercise we were doing for the night. Will I turn into a person who likes running? Well, we'll see how I feel as I continue this training, but tonight I am feeling pretty proud of myself. I feel like my dedication to class and home training has improved my base fitness and maybe running will be more accessible now.

My hideously ugly running shoes might help. They're a brand I've never heard of, and they are silver, sunny yellow, and bright purple, but they weigh pretty much nothing and fit my feet perfectly, so they were easy to run in.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow throws at me!