Choreowhatgraphy?

Wow!  There is so much more to this than I could ever imagine!   I am planning my first dance to do in front of family at our Christmas gathering this year.  Two years ago, without any prior lessons other than some Shimmy fit DVD's, I found a teacher willing to teach me a VERY simple choreography that consisted of a couple turns with a veil, a shimmy and some side to side steps.  I think there were like four steps in the dance to a 2 minute song that she even slowed down for me on her magic machine.  I had 3 lessons with her, that pretty much destroyed my confidence in anything that I thought I had learned. 

Last year,  I was going to try to dance again and really did start working out a choreography with the ONLY local belly dance teacher. She is wonderful and I asked the impossible of her- help me work out a whole choreography in 3 hours- and by this time, I had 8 lessons in a real class.  Christmas was super busy and we didn't do our show because we were missing key family members.  But this year, we will nearly all be together again.

I am working on the same song I planned last year, but I can't remember what all the notations of the choreography mean. So, I am working it out on my own with last year's notes as a guide.  There are many things that make this undertaking complicated for me.

Firstly, I don't yet understand music and often have to have someone else count out the beats for me. I will hear 6 or 7 when everyone else clearly hears that 8 count.  ( I actually just learned about 8 counts last year).  I am not yet comfortable with improvising at all, so I need to work it all out and memorize it.  I don't know how to write the music or dance notes down.  I am learning.

Secondly,  I am learning that one can not just string together 8 count phrases because one phrase must lead to the next. I have to figure out how to end up where I want to be, that is, which foot, facing which direction in order to move to the next step.   I have been working out the expression of the lyrics and know in my head what I want to do, but when I start practicing, I realize..oh, that doesn't work because in the last move I ended on DSR with arms in second.  Wow! I can't believe that came out of my mouth.

Thirdly,  my eyes are bigger than my belly.  I mean, I imagine moving to the music like I saw in Rachel's DVD, but um, I actually can't DO sidewinder.  So, the challenge is to either learn some things that are not yet  in my scope ( that is what I say as a nurse practitioner, not sure what a dancer would say) or learn to express myself in a much simpler way, but with moves that are actually graceful rather than forced when I do them.

It is fun and challenging.  My family will have no idea if I mess up. Well, one of my daughter in laws has taken up belly dancing, so SHE will know, but she will laugh with me, not at me.

Star-struck

I can't even remember the first time that I saw a youtube video of Rachel Brice, but I, like many of her fans, was mesmerized. I played them over and over and searched for every video that I could find of her.  As a novice to all forms of dance, I was fascinated by her control of her body. She could isolate muscles I did not know that I had.  In the year that I have been actually taking lessons off and on, I use her DVD's to practice.  At home, I often pause her DVD's and play sections over and over until I can understand the movement.

When I found out that she would be giving workshops at Jamballah, I marked my calendar to get tickets the very first available moment to get tickets. Then, finding out that she was the surprise yoga instructor before the workshop, I was worried that I could not keep up.

I knew that she not very tall from her videos, but was surprised at how tiny she really is.  Without makeup or costuming she is a completely different woman, and I doubt anyone who had only seen her in performance would be able to recognise her.  She was warm, friendly and most surprisingly very funny.  She has adorable names for yoga poses that are not nearly as funny is you are not there in person.

I was prepared to stay in the back left corner of her dance workshop, so I would not get in the way of other students who are professional dancers.  I was still so star struck that I would get so caught up in watching her move that I was not as self conscious as I usually am.

There was a point where everything shifted for me.  There was a new combination that she was teaching us in reverse and it wasn't flowing as she had it written in her book.  She called a friend/student/dancer up and just walked it out with her.  I know that I am not the only one who could not imagine that the best dancer ever actually has to practice. She told me that sometimes she would get so frustrated when learning something new and was pretty hard on herself.  Like me she thought she was the only one that wasn't getting it.  Yes, I said just like me.

Wow! An amazing shift in my feelings about dance happened hearing that.  She works hard to be able to use her body so artfully.  Sometimes she isn't perfect.  The way she was able to laugh about it and solve the problem by just talking it through with Shanti made me finally feel that I could actually learn to dance one day.

She is human and it made me have even more appreciation for her talent.  Somehow I thought that all the dancers that I see are just amazingly gifted and it comes easily.  They don't show youtube out takes. They don't show hours and hours of practice to make it look so effortless on the instructional DVDs.

This moment with her completely shifted the way I see my practice. I am more encouraged and excited about learning that I have ever been. Not because I think even with daily hours of practice, I will be as wonderful as Rachel, but I now believe that I will be the best dancer that I can be.