rajna

Stupid mosquito

Sophia Ravenna

Day 250 of practice.

There was a mosquito at The Dance Loft and it bit me at least 5 times… including twice on the belly! Good thing I’m not performing this weekend, I’d feel all self-conscious about big red dots on my tummy. Otherwise class was fun, there were only four of us so we got to practice dancing in a tight little group, and doing duets. Plus we did a lot of zilling, so I don’t have to practice that today.

I asked my husband to find me a new song to do some improv to while I was at class, and when I got home he’d made me a playlist of 18 songs! He’s awesome that way. I put it on shuffle and the song that came up was another one by Rajna. It’s called “Buried Philae” and it’s amazingly awesome. I think it might be a femme fatale song. I wanted to drape myself in jewels, wear smoky eye shadow and stalk across the stage.

classes, duets, femme fatale, improv challenge, rajna, the dance loft 2 Comments

Getting down to business

Sophia Ravenna

Day 249 of practice.

No more Miss Lazy Dancer! I’ve been noticing over the past week that my midsection was getting a little squishier than I would like, the results of not practicing hard enough and eating out too often. This is unacceptable! I need to dance harder and eat healthier and be the best dancer I can be.

So tonight’s practice consisted of a nice dynamic stretching warmup to get the blood flowing and everything all loosy-goosy.

Then I did the shimmy drills section from Serpentine with Rachel Brice, which built up a nice sweat and reminded me that my shimmies on the down suck.

Then I grabbed my Rajna CD, because somehow I’ve never listened to it, and I set out to do some improv. But the first song was only 2 minutes long, so I decided to do the second song too, and it was over 6 minutes long. So yay for over 8 minutes of improv to unfamiliar music! Boo for the fact that the second song had a lot of dulcimer or qanoon or some other vibrating instrument that required more shimmies.

Then I grabbed my veil and practiced my solo.

Then I came in here to update my blog and SaraBeth’s comment on yesterday’s post reminded me that I had not practiced my 3-3-7 zill pattern! So I spent a few minutes working on that and made some progress.

Now it’s time to take a relaxing shower, and do some stretches so I don’t wake up with sore abs tomorrow!

Glutes glutes glutes

Sophia Ravenna

Day 112 of practice.

It’s hot and I’m in my usual post-solo lull where I’m trying to decide what music I want to practice to next. So today I decided to practice some drills… and I made myself stand here and drill glute shimmies for almost 15 minutes straight! And I kept nice upper-body posture for most of it. I think next time I’ll put a basket on my head, that way I’ll definitely know when I’m not isolated enough :)

I did do a bit of actual dancing earlier. I found that I have five versions of “Cantara” on my iTunes list… The original Dead Can Dance and then four covers (including two different versions by Rajna). I had this silly idea to listen to them all in a row, just to see if I could and to see if any of them were bad so I could delete them. But I liked them all and I danced around a bit while I listened to them. It’s hard not to dance to it, it really pulls me in.

So with glute shimmies and dancing around, and other assorted drills, I’m sitting at around half an hour. So much for my great plan of an hour of dance a day for two weeks. *sigh* I think I’ll blame the heat.