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Belly Dance Is Back!
Last December, Nayna found herself without a dance studio, making it rather difficult to teach class. All of her students–me being just shy of one year and ready to move to intermediate–dispersed woefully. We spent all of 2011 nagging the hell out of her. Ten months later (?!), she’s back with an email to the masses the day before classes began. So tonight I dug my hip scarf out from the back of my underwear drawer and giddily bounced my way to the pole-dancing studio where she held class tonight. It was awesome. It was amazing. It was like the first time, except with that fun disjointed experience of your…
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One Song, One Move
One of the things I love about belly dance is how easy it is to practice. It’s chock-full of named moves that I can drill over and over again until I get ’em right. Because I have a deep love of listening to music on repeat, I’ve got a certain way I like to practice: one song, one move. This would probably drive some people nuts. I warm up doing a variety of moves for one or two run-throughs of a song, just doing a few repetitions of every move I know. …This might be where I sneak in some of the combo ideas I come up with on my…
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Running: Now With Hamstrings!
Folks warned me, and I should have listened–5k’s are addictive. About a week after my 5k back in October, I signed up for another 5k on December 11. It’s not a fundraiser and so is more expensive to participate in ($35), but I’m actually using a training program for this one. The classic Couch-to-5k isn’t a good fit for me–I’d be starting several weeks in, and 30 minutes doesn’t equate to 3 miles for me. Going for a distance-based training program led me to Hal Higdon’s novice 5k routine. Not the most conservative program, but it’s silly to only increase by 10% when you’re starting at 1.5 miles. I can’t…
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True Dance Technique at Work
I had the joy of seeing a belly dance show in person this weekend. Ladies from throughout the region, with international repute, different skills, and different styles. It was so damn inspiring. The costumes were top-notch, the crowd was hype, and there was a cash bar. A great Saturday night in the making. Greg and I got stood up pretty rudely for dinner at Libretto’s beforehand, but we had a great time despite my annoyance. I tried a delicious fettuccine al forno (essentially what I’d call a carbonara: pasta, cream sauce, bacon, peas, bell peppers) and Greg got an intimidating but subpar calzone. It’s rare that something has too much…
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Belly dance vs. Hip-hop: Inviting Failure
Hip-hop started again on Monday! The thing that struck me (again and again) for the entire sweaty hour was how great it was to fail again. As some folks may remember, I started both hip-hop and belly dance back at the beginning of January. Hip-hop stopped in May with the end of the school year, but belly dance kept a comin’. I took about 2-3 hours of belly dance a week this summer, but since we’re working up to a recital in December, we’ve been repeating the same couple of songs over and over again. That’s kind of becoming a problem. This month of belly dance has been a tough…