veil

So tired!

Sophia Ravenna

Mondays and Tuesdays are the hardest for daily practice. I have to fill an hour with stuff that will improve me as a dancer, but not leave me too tired to keep up with class/troupe practice. Even when I take it easy, I am still pretty tired by the end of the night. Three hours of belly dance is nothing to sneeze at!

Played around with veil and zills today, trying to freshen myself up on skills I have been neglecting. I actually prefer to dance without props in most instances, because my personal style relies a lot on the expressive capabilities of my hands and arms, which is limited if I’m holding a prop… But the truth is that audiences like props, and if I want to be a professional someday, I will need to be able to fill up an entire show, and that means having a variety of skills to draw on. It’s different when I am doing a < 5 min solo and can thus do whatever inspires me the most.

Drums and zills

Sophia Ravenna

Day 327 of practice.

Tonight’s class was once again lucky enough to have awesome drummer Carl providing live music for us! We also had Carl’s father (also named Carl) but he did not have a drum. It was a small class so it ended up being more like a practice and jam session after we got our zill torture out of the way. We also got to do some veil work which was nice. I haven’t been practicing lately and clearly I need to. After all, I have a pretty new veil so I need a pretty new veil solo to use it for!

A very happy Halloween!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 304 of practice.

What a fun, eventful day I have had so far. I worked some practice into my day, some zilling and working with the heavy friggin’ veil. Then I got dressed up in my dryad costume and handed candy out to trick-or-treaters for a little bit until it was time to go to class. No one else showed up to class, so this belly dancing dryad enjoyed a private lesson with Jolie.

I have a love-hate relationship with private lessons. On the one hand it is great to find out what you need to work on and have individual attention to get it done right. On the other hand, there’s always those little moments where you go “ARGH I AM BAD AT EVERYTHING I AM THE WORST DANCER EVAR!” But Jolie’s a lot of fun and we chatted a lot about things while we drilled, so it kept me mostly relaxed and not stressing so much about all the ways I was messing up.

Now I am beat and it is time to remove my pretty dryad costume and makeup (I drew leaves on my face with sparkly olive eyeliner) and enjoy some faerie beer.

Cat as a prop?

Sophia Ravenna

Day 302 of practice.

Today’s practice was more work with the heavy veil (to Apocalyptica, layered over shimmies), and also working on various traveling moves from the various classes I’m in. Some of those moves involved holding a cat. Well, the cat wasn’t officially a prop, she just didn’t understand why she couldn’t jump on the bathroom counter when there was cleaner on it, so I had to keep her out of the way and she enjoyed being held while I danced.

Heavy veil!

Sophia Ravenna

Day 301 of practice.

I was out at Savers the other day looking for a fake head (no, I’m not dressing like Salome for Halloween, I need it to display hairsticks). While my fake head quest was unsuccessful, I did find a really pretty veil for only $6! I do so love thrift stores. It’s a nice purple veil and the color scheme for the All Souls Procession next month is purple, so I thought it would be nice to do veil during the parade.

The only problem is that while I am used to using a silk half circle veil, this is a synthetic rectangle veil… with a border of sequins all the way around the edge. It’s HEAVY! I think it would be much better suited for Bollywood-style finger veil, but I don’t know anything about that and I can’t learn enough in a week not to look like a dope. So instead I’m trying to get used to the weight of this new veil, so I don’t get it stuck on my head and also look like a dope.

I also practiced gliding back and forth on my floor. It’s much easier on tile in socks than on that awful black rubber floor at the Dance Loft in Vibrams.

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!

No class for me :(

Sophia Ravenna

Day 230 of practice. I think.

How many vitamins do I have to take to get rid of this cold? UGH. I’d just better be over it by Saturday, so I can enjoy the workshops and hafla that I’m already signed up for. I mean, they’re actually in Tucson for once, I barely have to drive at all. It would be ridiculous to miss out on them. Plus I really, really want to actually see some dance friends. It’s been weeks.

Practice today was more easy hand isolations, but I also broke out my veil and found that I can still use it. My thumb is healed up enough that I don’t even need a bandage. I guess all of the vitamins went to that instead of fighting the cold? Who knows. But playing with my veil made me happy and helped me feel more dancerly.

Time for more sleep! Healing sleep!

Veil + Fan

Sophia Ravenna

Day 187 of practice.

Nope, not fan veils. My veil, and the fans at The Dance Loft. It’s really tricky doing veil with really lightweight silk when fans are blowing on you. Otherwise, class was fun. Just hot and loud with all of the fans going! Fonda is planning a student performance sometime in September and we’re practicing hard for it. Also I bought myself a sweet hip scarf/belt, almost everyone in class has them and we’re going to wear them for the performance.

Dancing with my new veil

Dancing with my new veil

Sophia Ravenna

Day 181 of practice.

Ok, this is not the best picture because my camera apparently thought that it should focus on the doumbek on the counter, even though it’s at the edge of the frame instead of the center. Really, my camera doesn’t like taking pictures of dancers in dim rooms. It’s used to an easy life of well-lit jewelry. But I like this picture, because it shows my veil a bit, and my cool pants that everyone liked, and it gives you an idea of the space I was dancing in.

I had a lot of fun dancing tonight! The Luxor is a nice spot to perform at because they have an open “stage” space, but there’s also room to go between the tables if you want. Also, customers can see the dancers from pretty much wherever they sit, but some spots are better than others. And the food is delicious! And the other dancers were really good! There was a nice mix of soloists and student troupes, and a good variety of tribal, fusion, cabaret, and folkloric styles. Big thanks to Gina for organizing the event and letting me dance!

And even though I was busy getting ready for a performance, I actually practiced today! I did a dress rehearsal of my solo, and I also danced around to a few other songs because I felt like it and I wanted to practice. I’m already thinking ahead to future solos, although I’ll definitely continue to perform to the song I did tonight, and Convivio, too. I just want to build up a nice arsenal of solos… but I’ll discuss that more tomorrow!