experimentation

Fan Veils Forever!

Fan Veils Forever!

Sophia Ravenna
Photo by the ever-talented Liora K Photography!
I tend to go through phases with props, where I’ll want to work with one specific prop for a month or two, then a different one, then none at all. Right now I’m in the “crazy for fan veils” stage again. I’ve really been enjoying working with them lately because they’re a beautiful prop with a lot of possibilities. Use them open, use them closed, use them like a fan, a veil, a poi…
Usually I perform with a pair of fan veils, but later this week I’ll be dancing at a party in a small room and I felt like two fan veils might be a little overwhelming, so I decided to try working with just one. Wow! With one hand free and one hand holding a prop, there’s a lot of new options of what to do, especially once I realized that just because it’s a “right-handed” prop doesn’t mean it has to spend the entire song in my right hand. I’m having a lot of fun experimenting with ways to manipulate the prop with both hands, and pass it from right to left and back again. I think it makes for an even more dynamic performance.
I’ve also enjoyed seeing how differently I dance with the fan to different songs. There’s just so much room for expression with fan veil, depending on the emotion and speed of the song. I’m really excited about the possibilities and I want to keep practicing and practicing until I’ve really mastered this beautiful prop.
In fact, enough blogging, it’s dancing time!
Open Stage!

Open Stage!

Sophia Ravenna

I’ve been really bad and I haven’t blogged the new flier for Open Stage. Isn’t it pretty?

Anyway, I LOVE the Open Stages at Sky Bar. We get such a great crowd… Dancers and their friends and families, bachelor/ette parties, trivia teams, sports fans, and so much more. To me, the best thing is when someone is there and they realize that they know one of the dancers from a different area of life! Ha ha! It’s always such a surprise.

I am especially excited for this Open Stage because I will be doing something really fun — Doing improv to a song I have (probably) never heard before. I had Chris pick a song for me and send it to Jolie, so I won’t even know what I’m dancing to until it starts!

That’s another thing I love about Open Stage… it’s a chance to really experiment, to play with something that I wouldn’t normally do at a regular gig. A lot of dancers also use it to test new material out, to get their fellow dancers’ opinions, or just to step out of their box a bit. It’s a really great community event and I hope to see a lot of you there. Here’s the event page!

DUI — Dancing Under the Influence

Sophia Ravenna

Day 16 of practice.

Even though I’m almost 29, drinking is a relatively new thing for me… I finally started experimenting with it last year, and I’m still a very light drinker, never having more than one drink in a sitting and only enjoying a small selection of alcoholic beverages — ciders, fruit lambics, and girly mixed drinks that I can’t taste the alcohol in. Oh, and absinthe with sugar, because it’s GREEN! and tastes like alcoholic licorice.

Since the first time I drank an entire glass of absinthe, I’ve wondered whether I would be a better or worse dancer with a buzz on. But most of the time when I drink, it’s with a meal, or when we have friends over for a gaming night, so there’s not really a good chance to test it. But I currently have a fridge full of lambic and cider, so tonight I decided to drink a cider quickly while putting together this week’s “Homework” playlist (more on that tomorrow) and then see how it affected my dancing.

At first I thought I didn’t even have a little buzz, but as I started to crate the puppies and get my veil, I started to feel it. During my warm-up and the first song, I felt fine. For the second song, I felt very sassy, had some fun, and thought I should be wearing my fedora to match my attitude. But then it really hit me. I started to feel slightly detached from my body, unable to fully focus on the music or remember my slow moves (actually, I always have a hard time with slow moves, but this was worse than usual). My Maya Box was a joke! I forced myself to do one song of veil after that, and really just drifted my way through the song. I wasn’t really awful, just not as involved in the dance as I should be.

And now I’m having a hard time focusing on the screen to type this, and I’ve corrected a lot of typos. I think it’s time to drink some water and write this off as a failed experiment! And to think, some people drink a shot before performing to ward off anxiety!

One week in!

Sophia Ravenna

Yes, I am posting this after midnight, but I haven’t gone to bed yet, so I consider it to still be Friday. And Friday marks one week of daily practice! Woohoo! Go me!

Although, before I get too self-congratulatory, I should admit that I did not make the 30 minute goal today. I was feeling particularly beat, cold, and prone to coughing fits, so I slacked off and only did 10 minutes of actual practice, plus various bopping along to music while I cleaned earlier. I have a feeling that Fridays will often be low-level practice days, especially as long as I am taking classes on both Wednesday and Thursday. I should devise something for Fridays that counts as practice, but doesn’t take as much energy — maybe a combination of zills and some dance-centric yoga.

Tonight’s practice was productive, even if it was short. I played with my veil to “The Gates of Istanbul” by Loreena McKennitt, not only doing the moves that Fonda taught on Wednesday but experimenting with turning them, and also with using the veil to frame other simple slow tribal moves. I suspect that on a more energetic day I will do even more tests to see what works. Then I did some fast Anaya Tribal practice to “Indiscrete” by QNTAL because I had heard it while I was doing dishes and my dance ability was limited by my desire to not break any plates. That particular song is very fast, but it has an easy, catchy beat which makes it ideal for practice, especially for someone with no natural sense of rhythm (me!).