fast

On! Sailing On! To Our Fate!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 157 of practice.

Decided to do the random song practice again tonight, and the iPod decided it was in a fast mood and gave me “India” by Xandria. That’s where the title of the post comes from. This is a song that I would love to do a steampunk piece to sometime, it has the perfect adventurous spirit… but it’s also fast metal, which makes it a challenge to dance to. I was shimmying, making grand gestures, spinning, and rushing across my living room, which left me in a sweat.

That was the capper to my practice, which started with a shimmy warm-up, moved into practicing my solo, then doing one of the combos Jen and I developed this weekend, but only a couple of times because my thighs don’t want to do levels today, then Anaya Tribal fast, then working on the shimmy I need to layer over my Arabic, then Anaya Tribal slow. Whew. I am going to have to practice for more than half an hour a day if I want to stay current on my skills and also develop new things. I didn’t get to skirt tonight, and I haven’t done veil, zills, or balancing props for a while! I probably also need to practice at home on days that I have other dance plans, too. I spend a minimum of three nights a week out of the house for belly dance things, which is great, but when I’m at class, or dancing at the park, or taking workshops, I’m not necessarily working on the areas that I should really focus on.

Fun with randomness

Sophia Ravenna

Day 143 of practice.

Decided to do the random song thing again. You may remember that the last two times I did it, I got songs that were really slow. Well, today was the opposite, I got Apocalyptica’s cover of “Enter Sandman”, so there I was shimmying my butt off to cellos. I think my iPod is out to mock me.

Also did various arm drills, as that seems to be my thing lately. Really wasn’t feeling 100% so it was hard to get enthusiastic about actually dancing.

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!).