milestones

How did I do?

Sophia Ravenna

So, how well did I do with my goal of a year of practice? I did miss some days — maybe a week total. It’s one thing to say that I’ll practice even when I’m sick, and quite another to actually do it. I am a bit disappointed that I didn’t truly practice for half an hour every day, but I realize now that in some ways that was an unrealistic goal for me.


That said, there were days when I was perfectly healthy and I still slacked off a lot. I practiced, but it wasn’t honest, dedicated practice that would really improve me as a dancer. In 2012 I think I need to focus on quality more than quantity, especially if I want to move past some of my current obstacles.


Before I started 2011, I posted 5 things I wanted to work on in my year of practice. Let’s see how I did with them!


1: Get better at group dancing.

I must have succeeded with this one, since I’m now in a troupe! Spending time in Fonda’s class, which is smaller and more prone to having newbie dancers, forced me to spend more time leading and get more comfortable with it. I’ve also been working on my peripheral vision so I don’t have to stare at the leader!

2: Hone my solo technique.

Thank goodness for Jolie’s classes! I’m definitely a much more well-rounded soloist.

3. Improve my zill playing.

Anaya gave me no choice on this when they decided that we had to play rhythms other than a gallop! If you’ve been following my blog for a while you know that at one point I was zilling every day to try to get a handle on what Anaya was throwing at me. I’m still not good enough to comfortably zill solo, but I do better in groups than I used to.

4. Revisit props I learned this year but never practiced at home.

I revisited sword, which I’ve used twice in performances with Fonda’s class, and I learned veil, skirt, and skirt & fan. I did not, however, revisit my palm flames. Not bad!

5. Backbends!


Somehow I never got around to this! I guess I just got too busy with classes and life and things.


I also went above and beyond my goals in some ways. I pretty much expected that I would spend 2011 continuing to take whatever classes were offered on Thursdays at Plaza de Anaya. I had no idea that I would end up taking Fonda’s class, and that Jolie would come to Tucson and rock my world two nights a week. Unfortunately this level of classes is not sustainable given how much it costs, and when Jolie moves away I probably won’t be able to replace her classes with something else, but it’s been fun while it lasted.


And then there’s the workshops. I said I was going to take less of them in 2011, to save some money and maybe get to go to a festival instead, but Kim wouldn’t stop bringing amazing people to Plaza! My goodness! I had workshops with Mira Betz, Deb Rubin, Rachel Brice, Silvia Salamanca, and Elizabeth Strong. That’s just the visiting teachers at Plaza. I also took a couple of workshops from local teachers. I studied sword with Miriam Amaya at the Desert Shakedown. I had workshops with Anaya and Jolie down here in Tucson. 


I was also able to perform a lot. I performed as a soloist, I did a duet with Jen/Sata, I danced in student recitals and I joined Anaya Tribe and danced at numerous events across the Phoenix metroplex.


All in all, 2011 was an amazing year. I’m going to have to work hard to top it in 2012!

annual review, goals, milestones Leave a comment

Good bye, 2011!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 365 of practice. One. Freaking. Year!

I did it! Mostly! Yes, I missed a few days due to being sick but I never gave up. I danced every day that I could. I danced at home, at class, in New York and New Jersey. I danced in bed, in line at the post office, in chairs of various sorts, and in the car. I danced on stages indoor and out, alone and with friends. I danced regardless of my furnace breaking, my shower breaking, my cooler breaking. I danced my freakin’ heart out!

The one-year retrospective will have to wait. I’ve just finished ringing in the New Year with alcohol and dance and I do not have the focus to go back through my blog and see what goals I set at the start of this and how I did with them.

Anyway, today’s practice was good ol’ multi-tasking while I cleaned, chair dancing while I beaded, and then dancing to a song which may well be my next solo — which is funny because it’s a cover of a song I did a solo to back in May! Guess I can’t get away from Wandering Star! It felt really good to really dance, to be well enough to move and enjoy it, to rock out while I was cleaning and to sink into a new song and to just feel like myself again.

Thank you all for joining me for this journey. I started out for a year of practice but now I’m looking forward to a lifetime of practice — hopefully with less sick days 😉 Check in tomorrow to see how it starts out!

Dress Rehearsal

Sophia Ravenna

Day 350 of practice.

My new bra is done-ish (I may yet do more to it, but it’s wearable now), so I had a quick dress rehearsal to make sure that everything would play nice together and that none of the embellishments would fly off my bra if I had a sudden shimmy attack. Everything seems great and I am extremely excited about my new costume and my solo, which is the closest I’ve ever come to choreographing something.

Tomorrow is the Plaza de Anaya student recital, so I should probably also practice my zills for that, as we have to do something a little new and different. I am surprisingly confident about playing zills on stage now, as long as I am not leading and zilling.

By the way… day 350! Only 15 days left in the year! Hard to believe.

Holy crap, it’s December

Sophia Ravenna

Day 335 of practice.

There’s just one month left of my year of practice! Can’t believe 2011 is almost over.

Tonight’s practice was 2 hours of Anaya Tribal classes. I’m happy that they’ve been adding more challenges for the level 3-4 students in the level 1-2 class. Tonight we had to play 3-3-7 on our zills while the newbies learned 3s, and we had to layer shimmies over our Turkish and Arabic. I am slowly getting better at that. Turns out that most of my problems with dance all stem from just being too tight, so as I relax more and stretch all my tight places more, these problems will go away. Also I have to keep practicing, of course.

I also added some items to my Plaza de Anaya gift registry! Yes, that’s right, Plaza has a registry this year, so that your friends, family, and significant others can make sure to buy you the right dance pants. Wait… there are no pants on my registry! What is wrong with me?

Three hundred!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 300 of practice.

Woohoo… 65 more days to go until my year of practice is complete!

So anyway, I lied when I said I was doing 8 hours of class this week… it’s actually only 7. I’m going to have to forgo sword in favor of keeping my carpool going. It’s a shame, because I love sword, but gas is just too expensive to keep making the drive myself. Especially since I have to drive up twice a week until Thanksgiving week, when I will finally have a respite.

Class tonight was good… It was the start of a new session, which means lots of new faces in the beginner class. Level 3&4 consisted of perfecting the zills and lead changing with one specific move for 50 of the 60 minutes of class. Needless to say, those muscles are pretty tired, and so am I.

9 months!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 273 of practice.

9 months of daily practice under my jingly green belt! I bought myself a present yesterday, beautiful teal lace harem pants (swoooooon), and I let myself take it easy today because DANG am I tired! Went to bed at 1:30am and woke up at 4am, 6am, 8am, and 9am. That sort of bad sleep is not acceptable after 3 hours of dance class and three hours of driving to and from dance class.

Anyway, I am SUPER EXCITED about my dance future because starting next week I’ll be taking classes with a new teacher! Not that my current teachers aren’t awesome, but these classes will be more focused on technique and solo material, which I really want some formal education on. My solo stuff is really a combination of isolations, basic tribal moves, and crap I made up. I get lots of compliments on my solos, but I know it’s mostly because of the energy/emotion of my pieces and the fact that people like the veil work I’ve been doing lately. I want to take it to the next step beyond that!

More later… Now I need to sleep, and I’d better not wake up repeatedly!

Half a year down!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 183 of practice.

More than half the year is gone and I’m still dancing every day! Go me! Woohoo!

Today’s practice was nothing special, I did isolations in the car on the way to a party in Phoenix. Really too tired to actually dance, but there will be plenty of time for dancing tomorrow and Monday. Hooray, 3 day weekend!

One Five Oh

Sophia Ravenna

Day 150 of practice.

Woohoo, 150 days of practice, despite burn out and frustration and questions on where I’m really going with dance!

Just as I planned to, I spent today’s practice working with my skirt, after tearing down the table that was taking up valuable living room space. I printed up the descriptions of the moves we learned in class last week and stumbled my way through them, then put on some music and danced them to the best of my ability. I did well on some, but the really long combo is going to take weeks, possibly months of practice to work into my muscle memory, and my memory memory.

I also did spins, to practice my spotting, and worked on my Arabic shimmy (still sucks, but I haven’t been practicing it as much as I should). That didn’t quite total up to half an hour, so I think I’ll do some arms or abs or something before bed.

Fast and slow and a third of the way there

Sophia Ravenna

Day 122 of practice.

Wow, is a third of the year really behind me? I guess it is!

Today’s practice was a little bit of dancing while cleaning earlier, working on my fast layered shimmies homework, and doing some really slow arm drills and floreo practice. Mira Betz talked about tempo changes during the workshops last month, so that’s been on my mind lately and has me listening to music a little differently and working on the sort of syrupy slow dancing that Cari exhorts us to strive for in Anaya Tribal classes. Usually I dance too fast, because I’m an impatient person, but I’m starting to understand the dramatic impact of moving super slow, and then throwing in something fast where the music calls for it, then slinking back into slow. I played with it a little bit in my Convivio solo, but I didn’t get super-slow because I wasn’t thinking that way yet and also I always dance faster when I’m nervous!

Saturdays are hard!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 120 of practice… four months!

I find it hard to get the necessary practice on alternate Saturdays, as we host a roleplaying game at our house (did I mention I’m a nerd?). Today was especially hard because instead of spending the afternoon at home, cleaning for the game and dancing, we went out for lunch with my family.

I did get some practice today… I did some sloooooooow hip circles while talking with my husband. I’ve been into doing things really slow the past couple of days, now that I have more muscle control it’s fun to take advantage of it. I also danced a little bit while doing some quick cleaning. And I drilled knee shimmies and did some arm drills while actually playing the game.

Also I got a cool gift today from my brother! He got me a Fire Fans DVD! It has how-tos and inspirational performances! I can’t wait to watch it and then start learning!