Green Makeup and New Material

This image is here to remind you to come back to this blog tomorrow for my biggest cosmetics review yet! It's pretty insane. Don't miss it!

Anyway, my inspiration is slowly coming back. I'm working on some new solos at home, and new choreographies in class. I'm playing with skirt and sword (separately, not together) because I haven't been doing those lately and I feel like I should be able to whip out any of my props at any time. I'm still not practicing as much as I should, but I'm working up to it. At least I don't hate all of my music anymore.

Oh, and you know what I just realized? TWO MONTHS UNTIL TRIBAL FEST!!!! If that's not enough to get me excited about dancing, I don't know what is.

Sword

Did a lot of slow and sword in Fonda's class tonight. It was a really small class, only two other students showed up. It seems like a lot of classes have been small lately, which is sad. I wonder where everyone is?

Had a couple weird moments when I was leading slow when I realized that I was just dancing really badly, I got into this zone where I was just waving my arms around like a freak. Glad I caught myself, and doubly glad it didn't happen at a performance!

Sword challenge completed!

Day 241 of practice.

Well, it's been a week of spending five minutes a day with a sword on my head! I discovered a few things... Five minutes seems like a long time when you have a sword on your head. If I didn't hold my head just right, my neck hurt. And all this time that I thought my sword didn't balance well because it sucked, well, it turned out that I was the one who sucked. I have to be tighter with my isolations! After just a week I noticed less wobble. I think I'll keep up the sword practice, although I might not do five minutes at a time every day.

Yesterday's practice ended up being fun. I walked into the office with my sword and my husband had pulled up a drum solo song on YouTube, and I started doing isolations to the song... I basically did a very simple 2.5 minute drum solo while balancing my sword. It was FUN! I think I might work on a very short drum solo that I can do with my sword, to pair with the Convivio solo, since that one is only 3.5 minutes long. I wouldn't want to do a whole routine as a sword-balancing drum solo, too limiting and too gimmicky, but it would be a fun way to impress a crowd, and even if I never end up using it after all, it will be fun to practice.

The rest of today's practice was hand and arm isolations, since I was busy getting some things caught up, but tomorrow I plan to get tons of practice -- including going to the park if it's not storming or over 100.

Smorgasbord

Day 238 of practice.

Worked on all kinds of things tonight... sword balancing, a new solo, stretching, rib taxim homework from Anaya class.... I was all over the place! Probably would have danced even more but I'm tired. Well, there's plenty of time for that tomorrow.

It's a shame I'm not currently good enough to do a rib taxim with a sword on my head, because then I could have been much more efficient.

Worn out!

Day 237 of practice.

I'm beat, and I only did 2 hours of class tonight! Skirt and Fan was doing a choreo, which I missed the first part of, so I had to skip the class. I miss it so much! :( Next session we'll be back to just skirt without fan. So sad!

Anaya classes were fun, we're changing up our zills more, which makes my brain hurt. And I had to lead a move that I didn't really know. Good thing other people in my group did, so I had them tell me what to do so I could pretend to lead ;)

Most importantly, it was good to see my Tempe dance friends who I had not seen for a month!

Then I came home and did my sword practice. Note to self: do sword practice before class, when your muscles aren't tired!

Back to class

Day 236 of practice.

It felt so good to just go to class today! I've missed the structure, and the friends. Plus it's nice to dance for an hour and a half, especially while the rain pounds on the roof of the studio. All in all, a lovely night. And we did some sword, so I got my 5 minutes in, though it wasn't specifically chest isolations.

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.

On my head.

Day 96 of practice.

Today I went to call at The Dance Loft, and we started working with balance props. I had intended to go out shopping for a basket or tray or something last week, but I forgot, so I had to take my sword with me. Other than Fonda (the teacher!) I was the only one with a sword. I really do need to get a different prop as we had a lot of people in class tonight, so a smaller prop would be better. Preferably something that actually fits in my dance bag, so I can leave it there. I almost forgot my sword!

Class was fun, in addition to balancing props, we did some drills and some 3/4 shimmy work and some practice with zills. Definitely what I needed to fight the funk.

Sword!

Today's practice was an hour and a half long double sword workshop. I only had one sword, so I got to have fun improvising on the one combo that required two swords, much to the teacher's delight. Hey, I'm an improv girl at heart! A lot of my friends were there, so it was a social occasion as well, and one of my classmates custom-ordered a necklace, so it was lucrative as well. What a great day!

I love sword dancing in theory, but in practice I really hate my sword. It's supposedly designed for dancing, but it doesn't balance well and I don't like how it looks on my head. Of course, I liked it a lot better back before I met people with cooler swords, so it's probably partially envy and partially the fact that I have one of the cheapest possible belly dance swords ever. I keep telling myself that I need to practice with the cheap sword and get better, and then I can reward myself with a nicer sword to actually perform with!