Axis ... I/D tonight

[bethlakshmi]

Well... tonight's the night. Flying out the door with bag o' clothing, bag o' makeup and hangers of clothing feels almost normal now. Status:
- Jump, Jive -n- Wail is appropriately jumping, jiving and wailing. I wish I had gotten it to gel by Sunday, so Pinky and I could have worked on partner stuff and abhinaya then, but at least I don't have any "uh.. what next?" moments going into the show.
- Cuban Pete - working, after dress was fitted, had much more hip-compatibility. A few things have been changed, but that's all good.


I wish, for both of them, that I'd had more time to put in. The moves to Burlesque are not complicated - this is not like Indian dance where I'm simply shaking with fatigue after the newest, hardest peice and it takes weeks to be able to do it without it being huge tons of work... and so, the challenge is not stamina, but precision and attitude. I have to - 100% of the time - be selling the idea that I am incredibly sexy, incredibly happy to be dancing, and that isn't the audience lucky, lucky, lucky that sexy me is dancing for them? Now... doing that 75% of the time is not so hard... but my brain doesn't stay on topic for 3 minutes straight. On a regular basis my self image slithers between - I'm sexy, I'm smart, I'm creative, I'm funny, I'm clumsy, I'm bored, I'm horny, I'm sexy, I'm... - and alot of those are not Burlesque-y. I want to keep up that overwhelming sexy charisma vibe, and I want it to just grow and grow and grow.

Secondmost, I want to be *clean* - the really, really good dancers (of any genre) that I've seen are distingushed by having interesting moves done Right.On.The.Beat. It's a beautiful thing. That snap of a perfect lock between dance move and musical sound. And when it happens over and over and over - you know it's not "better lucky than good" - it's being just plain *good*. Done with the charisma mentioned above, it shows this flawless control that looks easy, but making it look easy couldn't be harder!

In a way, I find Middle Eastern and Indian far easier to do this with. Probably because I know those well, and I take lessons with fabulous teachers, who are now teaching at the advanced level - where it's not about doing the moves in the right sequence, but doing them precisely and on time as well... The mushiness and simplicity of Burlesque actually makes staying nice and clean a little harder. But I think it is still something that distingushes the best dancers from those who are simply pretty and fairly good.

I think the Baby Dolls right now offer me two interesting challenges:

- always be preparing something - with a gig a month, it means that most peices get a month lead time at best. Figure that I also do other things with my life, and the actual choreography time shrinks impressively.

- develop that technical stuff in a Burlesque way - take a loose choreographical approach, and ratchet it down to allow the freedom of focus on charisma, while maintaining clean, on-time moves.

The two are each pretty cool challenges - doing them simultaneously really throws down the gauntlet. I hope that after a while of doing this, I get both a spiffy repertoire and some interesting insight in how to choreograph quickly and still do a clean performance.

I think for next month I want to make sure I spend minimal time on costuming, and lots of time on this dance-y stuff. I want a wintry dress, but I think I will focus on some closet raiding. Maybe Filene's Basement and the Garment District will come through for me again...

Comments

[baronessv.livejournal.com]

Huh. You know, I know we've never discussed dance philosophy before, but I think it also never occurred to me that people take different internal approaches to it. To me, dancing is about feeling the music so deep in you that the timing is just there. It's one of the reasons I am picky about what songs I dance to at clubs. If I don't know it in my bones, how am I expected to hit the beats? I remember that being one of the most frustrating things about Indian dance at first: Our teacher took her sweet time getting the actual music to us, so I felt like I was starting over every week and not getting a chance to become intimate with the songs. Once I am the timing just comes to me, and I can focus on making the moves in the right sequence and cleanly.
Admittedly, I a. hate dancing with other people and b. hate dancing for an audience. A. is probably due to the fact that I like to find my own rhythm and no one ever matches it perfectly and B. I think I wrote about a while back...(will try and find entry later). I've recently started doing ATS with a troupe out here to combat both of those things and I HATE IT. OMG do I hate it. I make myself keep doing it because I know that it would make me happy to get over these things and I also really like the people in the troupe...but creezy christ, everything about it feels weird and unnatural to me. Having *someone else* dictate what I'm supposed to be doing? Are you nuts???

Anyway, that was a really long ridiculous ramble to basically say "Interesting thoughts!"

Dancing

[baronessv.livejournal.com]

Here is the thing I was looking for (from a post-GWW post last year):

A note, lifted from the convo with A. on the way home. I LOVE dancing. I really really do. It feels fantastic. I love dancing so much that it's nearly as good as sex. And you know what? I don't really like having people watch me have sex either. I'm not a performer or an exhibitionist. So if you see me at a dance circle not dancing and start pressuring me to get out there and I politely refuse, do not be offended. And if by some chance you actually do see me dancing "for fun" I am NOT open to criticism of my style. If I'm in a class and trying to learn specific moves that is one thing, but if I'm trying to enjoy myself it just does not fly to have someone say "Maybe you should do this..." no matter how diplomatically it's put. Such things are the emotional equivalent of saying "Maybe you'll improve..." to your lover right after having sex.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Interesting... we have very different reasons and 'payoffs' to dancing. I do like dancing for and by myself - and I do so, at home. Not just practice, but sometimes just letting loose and moving around. Often it's very different from what I do in public, as I have no fear of (A) looking like a lunatic & getting mocked (B) accidentally beaming someone else in the head (C) simply stopping for a few and creating a dance floor hazard.

So then, in clubs, circles or stages - I'm at least partially dancing for others, as well as myself. In clubs and circles - everyone else is dancing, too, so it's on like 100% of my focus is being interesting to watch, but there's definitely some sort of payoff there to having people watching me. There is, also, a bit of "if you don't like it, don't watch", too, but I do like being interesting and worth watching.

On a stage - even more so - it's not just a bonus - it's an obligation to be entertaining. Entertainment doesn't have to be sexy/funny - it can be tragic, it can be thought provoking, it can be a sort of guided meditation of movement - but it is focused *at* the audience. Sometimes this puts me in aesthetic disapproval of some types of New Agey Belly Dance - the kind where the performer is really doing a ritual that celebrates her own inner feminity or inner spark or what have you. I don't deny her right to dance this way - but I do not believe she should expect to perform it on a public stage - if it is an internally focused ritual, do it at home or with those with whome there is a personal connection. A stage is not the right place to do it. Conversely - if the ritual intentionally draws others in, and is aimed at bringing the audience somewhere particular - then I'm all for it.

If the audience is kind enough to do nothing else but watch me, then I owe to them to provide an experience targeted at them. But - those are the situations I choose to be in. There's some emotional, energy-related feedback to getting that attention from other humans. And I readily admit to being a HUGE exhibitionist. :)

But... that does change the perspective. I'm totally happy at home or on a dance floor to let the music just move me. To find a vibe and move to it, and to mostly just work on blending moves one into the next with no hesitation. But on stage - there's some intentional crafting. It may not be a deep message - "I'm cute and I love sex!" will certainly suffice. But even that message has to be crafted. Not everything that occurs to me to do with a beat is the right thing for a given message I'm trying to send.

I'm suprised you liked Indian dance as much as you did... I find that it really makes me aware of all my body parts - in that there's a crazy little Indian woman there to tell me that I haven't moved this or that part correctly. I didn't realize that I could, or should use my eyeballs while dancing, for example. Or that there's a reason put my pinky finger here or there to give a certain connotation to my abhinaya. I really like that - it makes me more aware of all the ways I can move and use my body to express a peice of music. But there is definitely an expectation of doing Exactly This Move at Exactly This Time. More so than with any other form I ever studied... although it could be that I never got deep enough with those other forms... but Indian dance started pretty deep, pretty early on.

[mermaidlady]

That snap of a perfect lock between dance move and musical sound.

Taj's piece "War Drums" is a beautiful example of this principle. It looks like the music is moving her. No, wait, her movements makes the music happen...

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

You didn't have to delete the comment. I was amused/amazed at what the pertinant parts of that post became.

[lakshmi-amman.livejournal.com]

Ah well.. it seemed both trivial and off the point - which was a meaningful one, and I didn't want to distract.

[baronessv.livejournal.com]

Summing everything you said into the following quote:
I didn't realize that I could, or should use my eyeballs while dancing, for example.

And see, maybe I am just lucky that I had some awesome dance teachers when I was a kid. At my elementary school even our main "PE class" was "Movement". So it's always been important to me to use my entire body while dancing. Indian dance was a great way of learning more new ways to move all those parts.

I also learned "interpretive dance" pretty young, and Indian dance was just another culture's way of looking at it. I'm not sure where it fits in to all these things I'm trying to say, but abhinaya came to me really easily...nritta was way, way harder. Finding the emotion and character and story in a song is something I've always done and the rhythm just flows from that. If I'm thinking of anything besides dancing while I'm dancing, it's to think of how I relate to the story/song.

Enh. I dunno. I'm gonna give up trying to explain this for now. It does really make me want to start bharatanatyam classes again though!