Tribal Belly Dance Class #3
Nov. 5th, 2004 05:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenOkay, taking a break from the political for now. There's been really good discussion though. I like it. Even when I don't agree with somebody, it's interesting to hear their point of view. Plus it's always nice to know that people care enough to talk =)
Anyway, onto more personal stuff.
Dance class last night was fun. Tiring, but fun. We definitely did a workout, no question. My muscles are still feeling it today. Also? Very interesting working your thigh muscles to exhaustion, then trying to walk down stairs. Don't try that one at home is all I'm saying.
It was three people total again, including me. This time the owner of the school couldn't stay, but one of the students from the first class showed up again. I don't know why she missed last week, but she seemed to indicate that she wanted to keep up with the classes in general so maybe we'll see more of her. The teacher's dance partner was also not there again, but this time we knew why (she's still dealing with the aftermath of moving to a new house).
Having another student there made for an interesting dynamic, as suddenly I'm the one who knows how to do stuff while she's the one struggling to learn. It was a nice boost to the anti-nervousnessness (I know that's not a word, but you know what I mean... er, I hope). Plus I got feedback from the teacher which was good. My hip bumps are much better, and I'm apparently much better at keeping my knees bent. This is amazing, as I did absoultely no practice between last week and this, but maybe simply knowing about it was enough to help out.
She also gave good feedback on some things that I could do better, like how I move my hands while doing an Egyptian so that they don't go above a certain height. I've been giving her feedback on her teaching skills (not in a bitchy way, but in the complimentary "It really helped when you did this, that, and the other." kind of way) so I'm wondering if maybe that was a positive influence on how she's been doing more and more of those kinds of comments as the classes go on.
Because the other student was there we did some review work, but the teacher also confirmed that the goal of the classes is not to get the steps perfect by the end of the class, but rather to expect to do them over and over again as the classes go on. She also said that the classes are there to help us get the feeling of what it's like to dance in a group, and when we did actual improv dancing with signals she stressed that the goal was not to get the moves perfectly, but rather to have fun and to feel the flow of energy when we're all moving together.
We did learn some new things. She showed two new arm movements that can be done with hip bumps and choo choos, and we expanded on the three-quarter shimmies from last week to work our way up towards doing them faster. She had some good suggestions here for how to feel the baby steps between the slow way we were doing it (which is a legit way of doing it in its own right) and the way we do it when it's faster and more flowing.
We also did more work with signals, again with her sometimes helping by saying out loud that she was signaling (though mostly this was for the very subtle Egyptian turn signal. The other ones have more obvious arm movements.) We also learned a bit about how to keep in sync, especially when we can't see the leader.
I also found out that a few of the things that were giving me some problems were again due to me coming at them from a Caberet perspective. So that was helpful to find out.
All in all it was a lot of fun. I'm glad I went, as pouring down rain made driving and traffic a bit iffy. It'll definitely be interesting to find out what this is like once the snow starts falling. Next week is currently up in the air as she's doing a class somewhere else that was scheduled before we moved our class up to 7pm. It's possible that I can join in on the other class, but I still have to find out the info on where it is and what time of night it'll be happening. If not, hopefully I'll have my DVD to practice with by then. =)
And that's that. The rest of tonight is going to be spent relaxing and doing fannish things. I'd like to get some writing in there too, if possible, but we'll see how that goes.
Anyway, onto more personal stuff.
Dance class last night was fun. Tiring, but fun. We definitely did a workout, no question. My muscles are still feeling it today. Also? Very interesting working your thigh muscles to exhaustion, then trying to walk down stairs. Don't try that one at home is all I'm saying.
It was three people total again, including me. This time the owner of the school couldn't stay, but one of the students from the first class showed up again. I don't know why she missed last week, but she seemed to indicate that she wanted to keep up with the classes in general so maybe we'll see more of her. The teacher's dance partner was also not there again, but this time we knew why (she's still dealing with the aftermath of moving to a new house).
Having another student there made for an interesting dynamic, as suddenly I'm the one who knows how to do stuff while she's the one struggling to learn. It was a nice boost to the anti-nervousnessness (I know that's not a word, but you know what I mean... er, I hope). Plus I got feedback from the teacher which was good. My hip bumps are much better, and I'm apparently much better at keeping my knees bent. This is amazing, as I did absoultely no practice between last week and this, but maybe simply knowing about it was enough to help out.
She also gave good feedback on some things that I could do better, like how I move my hands while doing an Egyptian so that they don't go above a certain height. I've been giving her feedback on her teaching skills (not in a bitchy way, but in the complimentary "It really helped when you did this, that, and the other." kind of way) so I'm wondering if maybe that was a positive influence on how she's been doing more and more of those kinds of comments as the classes go on.
Because the other student was there we did some review work, but the teacher also confirmed that the goal of the classes is not to get the steps perfect by the end of the class, but rather to expect to do them over and over again as the classes go on. She also said that the classes are there to help us get the feeling of what it's like to dance in a group, and when we did actual improv dancing with signals she stressed that the goal was not to get the moves perfectly, but rather to have fun and to feel the flow of energy when we're all moving together.
We did learn some new things. She showed two new arm movements that can be done with hip bumps and choo choos, and we expanded on the three-quarter shimmies from last week to work our way up towards doing them faster. She had some good suggestions here for how to feel the baby steps between the slow way we were doing it (which is a legit way of doing it in its own right) and the way we do it when it's faster and more flowing.
We also did more work with signals, again with her sometimes helping by saying out loud that she was signaling (though mostly this was for the very subtle Egyptian turn signal. The other ones have more obvious arm movements.) We also learned a bit about how to keep in sync, especially when we can't see the leader.
I also found out that a few of the things that were giving me some problems were again due to me coming at them from a Caberet perspective. So that was helpful to find out.
All in all it was a lot of fun. I'm glad I went, as pouring down rain made driving and traffic a bit iffy. It'll definitely be interesting to find out what this is like once the snow starts falling. Next week is currently up in the air as she's doing a class somewhere else that was scheduled before we moved our class up to 7pm. It's possible that I can join in on the other class, but I still have to find out the info on where it is and what time of night it'll be happening. If not, hopefully I'll have my DVD to practice with by then. =)
And that's that. The rest of tonight is going to be spent relaxing and doing fannish things. I'd like to get some writing in there too, if possible, but we'll see how that goes.
