rhythm

Zills. Sick of them yet? I sure am.

Sophia Ravenna

Day 263 of practice.

It’s going to be all zills all the time around here. I can’t stand how bad I am with them. I think maybe I should put on my zill mufflers so at least my bad playing will be less offensive.

I am getting marginally better at playing rhythms while doing basic tribal moves, which is to say that I succeed occasionally instead of never! Still pretty ugly though. I think I don’t really have a good natural sense of rhythm, which is born out by the fact that I also sometimes have a hard time finding the “1” in a 4-beat song.

But whatever. Dancing is what I love to do, and if I have to zill, too, then that’s what I gotta do.

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!

Drilling those zills

Sophia Ravenna

Day 247 of practice.

Got my practice done early today! My friend Dawn invited me to join her and a few of her troupemates for some zill practice, because we’re all pretty unhappy with our zilling right now. So we spent a good 45 minutes talking about them and practicing, working on triplets and beladi. Much more fun than practicing at home, being around other people helped me stay upbeat and focused, instead of giving up and doing something else.

Small animals fleeing in terror!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 242 of practice.

Oh no! I’ve once again decided that I really need to work on my zills! Anaya Tribal has recently decided to start adding more variety to the zilling that accompanies their dance moves, and they’ve passed that along to those of us in their classes and the student troupe. No more getting away with simple triplets, now we have to be able to play baladi, saiidi and more! Oh no! I’m familiar with all these rhythms, and I’ve learned them before, but that doesn’t mean that I can reliably play them without having a stronger player nearby for me to lock in on. This would probably be much easier if I was one of those people who had gone to an actual school, and played in a marching band. Then playing music and moving at the same time would seem natural!

In order to actually have some fun tonight, instead of just tormenting all of the ear drums in the house, I then put away my zills and worked on my solo for an upcoming benefit I’ll be performing at (more details later this week, but it’s at Plaza de Anaya on Sept 17th, so save the date!). I plan to do some veil work, as that was specifically requested (could this be my specialty? I guess it is for now!) but I decided to dance sans veil tonight to get a sense of the song and what moves work well with it. I found myself playing with nice, deliberate walking, and sinking down into poses. Feeling very slinky tonight.

Successful Solo!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 111 of practice.

Whew! What a night! I performed my solo… you know, the one I’ve only been practicing for a week. I was unexpectedly super crazy nervous while I performed it… so nervous that I felt like I was visibly shaking and I was sure that everyone could see it. But they thought I looked happy and beautiful. The fact that I loved the song really shone through and overpowered the fact that I was suffering from an unusual bout of nerves. The song was a big hit. Hooray for having a husband who finds obscure songs for me :)

This was the last night of the session. We had a review and quiz for the Rhythm class, which was a lot of fun. I’m going to miss that class! Elissa Nova and Amanda Rose are both great teachers, and I enjoyed the fact that they gave us tests to keep us on our toes. And there were cupcakes! Hooray, cupcakes!

Also… daaaaaaaaance paaaaaaaaants! Next session I’m taking a skirt class, so I got some poofy green pantaloons to wear under my skirt. They’re nice lightweight cotton so hopefully I won’t feel too hot with two layers of clothes.

Class, class, and more class

Sophia Ravenna

Day 104 of practice.

Ahhh, Thursday. Three hours of dance class at Plaza de Anaya. I had fun. I tried to put a lot of the basic technique stuff that I learned from Mira’s workshops into play. I watched a couple of my classmates perform solos. I learned drum rhythms. And then I drove home.

Along the way, I contemplated doing a completely different song for my solo, which would require a switch to slow moves instead of medium/fast. The truth is that after two friggin’ months of practicing to it, I am kind of tired of Turbo Tabla 4, and I have a new song I absolutely love. I’ll practice both this week, and if I feel comfortable with the new song by next Thursday, I’ll use it instead.

Interspersed throughout the day

Sophia Ravenna

Day 78 of practice.

Practice today was mostly simple shimmies and bits of dancing throughout the house as I did some major cleaning. It’s hard to get real practice right now because it’s too warm without the ceiling fan on, but with the fan on I live in mortal fear for the my fingers (stupid low hanging fan!), and forget doing veil. Hopefully my husband will get the evaporative cooler up and running, so I can turn the fan off and practice. Otherwise I’ll have to stick to practicing moves where my arms never go overhead, and that really cuts out a lot of my vocabulary.

The fun thing lately has been slowly learning to pick out the Middle Eastern rhythms in the songs I listen to — although I’m also noticing now that a lot of them have a simple, boring drum machine playing a basic backbeat, instead of a drummer on the doumbek playing rhythms. Basic drum machine beats are easy to practice ITS to, because they don’t change, but I think it may be time to occasionally challenge myself a bit more as I try to improve my musicality.

No Irish jigs here

Sophia Ravenna

Day 76 of practice.

I spent my St. Patrick’s Day the way I spend almost every Thursday — at Plaza de Anaya, taking classes! Sadly, this meant no alcohol for me, green or otherwise, since I was making the long drive home all by myself. But I did wear lots and lots of green.

Classes were good. Well, I am really quite bored repeating Fun-Duh-Mentals over and over again. I know it’s good to practice the basics, but relearning them is boring. In Performance Prep, we got to practice different formations, and pretending to perform. Next week is apparently going to be a “zill throwdown” whatever that means, and we’re supposed to practice our zills at home all week. Good thing Fonda is covering zills at The Dance Loft! Extra zill training for me!

In the Rhythm class, we covered Ayoub, also known as the rhythm used for the zar ritual dance. The class was half the size it was last week — I guess everyone else was out partying. Oh well. I had fun, even though the ab/chest pop that we were supposed to do in one combo was really hard for me.

Tomorrow is Dance Anywhere Day! Whatever you’re doing, drop everything at 1pm PST and dance! Whatever sort of dance you want!

Because I’m hardcore!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 69 of practice.

This session, I’m taking all three classes offered on Thursday nights at Plaza de Anaya. That means that I leave the house at around 4:30 and don’t get back until around 11:30. People always act shocked and amazed that I make the round-trip drive once a week, more often if I’m also doing a weekend workshop, but hey — some people commute from Tucson to Phoenix 5 days a week. And in the past, when belly dance was less common, dancers would upend their entire lives and move to another city/state/country to be near good teachers. So yes, I am a little hardcore, but I’m not the most hardcore.

And the three hours of classes won’t be too bad this session, because Performance Prep now starts off with some seated Q&A discussion time, about performing and dance and such, and the class I’m taking on Middle Eastern Rhythms for Drummers and Dancers starts off with everyone seated for a drum lesson. So I don’t feel nearly as beat up as I did when I was taking Anaya tribal and palm flames and sword. That was a rough session!

We have to come up with a tribal solo for Performance Prep class, so I need to pick a short, fun song to work with… but first, I’ve got to get through Saturday’s veil performance!

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!).