BellyPalooza is over!

It was both wonderful and stressful. Saturday was a haze of stress, freakouts, and trying to sleep. The show was amazing – one of the best shows I’ve seen so far. Sunday, when things were settled, I took workshops the entire day. I got a lot out of all my workshops, especially Melina’s Flamenco workshop, completely rocking out at the end.

The after party was hilarious, and there is no way I’m going to put any of that down in print.

So now it’s training time. I have my training schedule at Krav Maga plus old school tri training, my old tri diet, and my choreography ready. I figure I have just over a month for learning and conditioning, then a month for polish. I did combat training today, and I’m heading back for Thai Pad and Crossfit tonight. Dammit, I’m going to look like a fitness model again, and I’m going to nail this tough choreography.

This blog is going to undergo a bit of revision also – this will now be a dance/training only space. I am registering spiralmaker.com to document my crafty experiments, which really deserve their own space.

This isn’t my body.

This one has been ravaged by an illness I didn’t know I had, and an injury that nearly took my life. This one is twenty pounds heavier than before my illness. This one hurts constantly, and needs to be stretched every day to retain mobility. This one now has arthritis, and auto-immune reactions. This one is slower, more painful, and less adaptable than the last version, and some joints don’t work reliably any more. This one has been scarred, beat up, burned, degenerated, starved, dehydrated, and nearly destroyed twice in 33 years.

But it’s still strong.  And it will heal.

I soloed live with Vagabond Opera, in front of 200 people.

It wasn’t easy. Learning to stay stationary and entertaining was hard. Dealing with nerves was harder. But the biggest victory was that I looked wonderfully relaxed in the video, and like I was having fun.

And I actually *was*.

It was a great experience. The musicians were wonderful, and the whole show was incredibly entertaining. More importantly, I was able to keep myself relaxed enough to joke around with the audience and have some fun with interpretation. I am eagerly awaiting my teacher’s feedback on the video. I’m pretty happy with what I did, but we’l see what the experts have to say.

Additionally, Krav Maga is seriously rocking this summer. With the addition of early morning classes and the Fit to Fight program, I’m in kicky pow heaven.

I took two great workshops yesterday. One was a fun Jazz inspired choreography with Ali from N.O.madic, and the other was a workshop on expression, improv, and a tough fusion choreography with one of the girls from Read My Hips of Chicago. The Ali workshop was a pleasant surprise – I always liked Ali, but I wasn’t expecting a Jazz choreography. I’ve recently fallen head over heels in love with Jazz dance…the attitude, the explosive movement, and the sassy lines all feel “right”. When I’m feeling relaxed, that’s what I feel. Choreographing my Jazzy set was such an eye opener style-wise, where I started to learn what looked best with my particular body type and attitude. Plus, Ali is one of the cutest and sweetest teachers ever.

I missed the first half of the second workshop because, like a dummy, I left my costumes and makeup at home. I got there when the class was doing an expression exercise with a simple choreography. That turned into a challenging choreography, which I unfortunately had to sit out halfway through and just take notes (I must remember to bring more food to workshops).

There were lots of little bits and pieces I took away from this one, but the thing that stuck with me the most was seeing another girl go through the same panic at having to emote that I did. She led us in the emoting section, and kept getting frustrated when she couldn’t remember the choreography. She finally broke down, and said that she felt like she was letting us down because she couldn’t remember it. I  deeply sympathized with her, and it was extremely difficult seeing someone go through the same things that I personally felt. I offered to lead, and joked around that we would do something only vaguely like the choreography, hoping to put her at ease. She seemed to recover a bit, and did a pretty solo at the hafla later.

The hafla was great! Ali was as cute as a button, Devyani was UN-believable, Meredith’s solo was lovely, and the Lilam improv trio put on the best set to date. I have personally never felt as comfortable onstage, and as connected to Jenn and Meredith as I did yesterday. We nailed the tricky transitions, didn’t flub any movements, and grinned like fools the entire time. The ladies from Devyani also gave us kudos on our set, and I think Meredith was fit to explode with glee.

Also interesting was a very nice lady who danced to the same drum solo I do, albeit in a very different style. What amused me was that in some places, she used the same movements I did. To me, this says something about the collective unconscious and universal movement choices – in other words, there are certain parts of songs that specify certain movements. This concept can be expanded upon by including level changes according to tone, or using the complementary instinctive movement (super slow over a fast beat, or vice versa) to build up tension, but that is an incredibly complicated post for another day.

Yesterday was also the first time I wore ballroom shoes during dancing, and I found that they helped tremendously. Since I can no longer go up in releve on my right foot, it helped me keep those lines while keeping the pressure off my bone spur, which kept me in the game longer than I could have done otherwise. I found them to be extremely comfortable, and the stiff toe box not allowing me to roll over my toe toward the instep helped me center my weight over the middle of my foot, and helped me keep my lift without straining my bad toe. An additional bonus was that they really, really boosted my spins, while the suede soles allowed me to grip or slide with the slightest pressure.

I am aware of the irony of being an advocate of barefoot running, and being forced to wear ballroom heels during dance, thank you. I think years of racking up the mileage in constricting running shoes gave me this problem, which originated before my return to dance. Plus, the movement involved in running versus dancing is the opposite – dance involves lift, while running involves impact down. Perhaps the combination of my night splint, exercises, and shoes will strengthen and correct my feet so that I no longer have to wear shoes unless I want to.

My personal practice now makes up about 2.5 hours of my day. This includes approximately 45 minutes of flexibility work every day. The rest is drills, choreography creation, arm work, and extension work, with a leftover day for video work. Then of course there is 2 hours of troupe practice once a week.

This is by far the most intense practice schedule I’ve ever set up (I’ve often joked that Lisa is trying to kill me.) The strange thing is, it doesn’t feel intense at all. Sure, 20 minutes of hip downs over port-de-bras makes my hips ache and my toes angry, but none of this feels like a burden. Which is strange.

Usually setting aside such a large chunk of time for anything would have my obsessive nature going into fits about a perceived lack of efficiency or waste of time, but the complete opposite is true. Lengthy dance practice, while being physically intense almost on par with Krav Maga practice, has become the most chill part of my day, and a non-issue both time – wise, and intensity – wise. Every day, at 7 AM, I practice for 2.5 hours, after my meditation and random morning stuff.

Finally, my dance practice has become both as fulfilling and as automatic as Krav Maga, and I’m seeing the same steady improvement. Plus, more chill is always good. The question is now, other than that thing in November, what am I going to do with it?

I haven’t written much lately despite all the activity in my life. I should change that.

I’ve been dealing with an interesting issue lately on the topic of emoting in dance. When I started studying with a new teacher, one of my goals became conveying emotion as part of my growth as a dancer, as opposed to throwing together fancy steps to the same types of music.  What makes a good performer to me is the connection with the audience, and the interpretation of the music, none of which can be done without a strong grasp on emoting and expression. Additionally, seeing a performer who repeatedly dances to the same type of music with the same expression makes me lose interest. So, I set out to change that in myself as a performer.

Enter the problem. Generally, I’m not an outwardly emotional person, which isn’t very compatible with expression in performance. I like to keep my interactions somewhat superficial, which again doesn’t work with the concept outlined above. I crack wise and remain aloof, and don’t let the deeper emotions appear in public. So when I began tapping into the deeper emotions of passion, anger, fear, and exhilaration, I promptly freaked the hell out and started having panic attacks.

Now this was on top of extremely annoying classes and getting over Lyme disease, as well as my traditional post belt test freakout. So there were other factors in play. But the attacks were primarily around my teachers, classes, dance partners, and performance.  I found myself tearing up at performances and songs that I particularly liked, which is so far out of character it’s almost ridiculous.

This all happened exactly when I was forced to admit that I was actually… *gasp* …good at Krav Maga and Dance.

I perpetually frustrated the hell out of my mom for “not living up to my potential” when I was younger. I’d start an activity, and drop out as soon as I started moving beyond the beginner phase.  In fact, I dropped out of belly dance the first time around in 2005 (?) not only because of my nasty knee injury, but because I was getting ready to move up into intermediate.

Because you know, success is an anathema to the altruistic martyr who works hard for the sake of working hard.

I’m sure when all is said and done, I will be a better performer after this. I can’t exactly bottle back up what has been released, after all. And I’m sure I *can* be altruistic and humble while acknowledging my hard work has paid off in some way. In the meantime, I think I should learn to use the panic and fear to make me stronger, channeling it rather than running from it. After all, that’s what I’ve done in Krav Maga – when something scares me there, I sign up for six weeks of it and come out less afraid.

I think I owe myself at least that much in dance.