Friday, friday
Dec. 30th, 2005 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bethlakshmiLet's see...
Baby Doll Dance Practice
Dance practice with the Dolls went very well. Both dancers have definitely been practicing. Our newest dancer needed to practice particular moves - and her work shows. She's pretty slithery and moves well, but lots of belly dance is not intuitive to her. I forget how hard some of this stuff was, and I'm inundating her with information. But she's doing good with it, and does not seem to be the sort of person who panics when overwhelmed, so that's fabulous.
The other dancer is doing well, too. Her training shows in that she's more on the beat and doing the moves much more cleanly - she's had lots of excellent training, though it's been a while since she had a live dance teacher. I've challenged her, too, though. Her solo is what I call "Weird Drum Solo" - it's the theme of Istanbul done on tuned percussion instruments (my weird drum fu is not so strong I could tell you what sort of instrument), so instead of a *tone* it's more of a tuned popping noise. And it's funkified to the point of not having a clear and discrete beat. And it throws in an alteration where "why did Constantinople get the works? that's nobody's business but the Turks!" is replaced with a completely different bit that is absolutely neato, but wierd, and involves more listening and reacting than counting counting and more counting. To make matters even more challenging, her solo starts after 18 beats of the previous interval - not the normal 16 beats of everything else. Most of this music is happily square - 4 on 4 on 4 - almost everything can be counted as 32 beats or 16 beats. But they get funky at this solo.
My answer is knowing the music really well, feeling it in my gut, and being willing to cut a move out to make it meet the phrases. But... I think there's something in there about how I understand music vs. how other people may understand music that makes this easier for me. I'm hoping this will gel for my dancer and she will ease into a comfort with this music that is a new thing for her. It's a definite challenge, and we'll leave it open to other possibilities. But I'd like to see her rise to the challenge.
I also added arm and head moves to the stuff we've already learned. That made for a heavy day of practice - 2 hours not 1 hour. But both seemed to be surprised we had gone for so long - they felt it was more like 1 hour. So that's good. It's much better than feeling "full" after hour #1 and scrambling through hour #2 in desperation.
I'm hoping that this is a good "next step" as Durr would say, not "raising the bar" to an impossible level. Each dancer is different, and every dancer may well be looking for a different sort of experience. Although Scratch would intone that this isn't a hugfest and it isn't about everyone having the right sort of dance experience... even in the professional (engineering) world, I find that people do best when faced with the challenges they find most interesting. Conversely, sometimes you have to challenge folks with challenges they don't like, because it will make them more well rounded. But to get best results, as a leader, you want to pose the unfun challenge as something that could potentially be fun, as people do best when they enjoy what they do.
I'm hoping that this peice is a challenge on the right level for all involved. A challenge for Raven to learn a new style of movement. A challenge for Mina to find a new level of comfort with an uncomfortable bit of music. A challenge for me to write choreography for three different types of dancer, and to teach dancers through two different types of challenge - in a very short period of time. And for Middle Eastern dance, I don't see the rigid structure for progressing technically that Indian dnace has. So I don't have the obvious tools at hand to guide folks through challenges. Hopefully this work will have several payoffs - an absolutely adorable group number, new skills for all involved, the demonstration that a tight dance number can evolve in a month's time.
To be introspective for a minute - this is also an thing to think about for me. Doing any choreography/direction takes a certain degree of hubris, I think - probably independant of any particular performing art. When you direct you have to have the confidence that your vision and the technical decisions you make to support it are the "right" ones. And in the arts, there isn't a clear "right" the way there is in mathematics. I could probably choreograph 5 different choreographies to this one peice of music, and each one could be "right" and 5 different audience members could each wind up with a favorite one. Hell - I've worked on 4 different musical interpretations of this one melody and I like them ALL and each one says something different. Such is the way of the arts.
But it takes me an extra dollop of ego to have the balls to talk about "challenges". It implies that I have some better degree of knowledge than my fellow dancers. That I see something they don't and furthermore that I have the capacity to guide them to see what I see. In that way I leave the context of fellow traveler and take on the cloak of "guru". Now... that's all well and good when I'm teaching someone who has asked for lessons in a venue where I have years of training in a format that my student does not. But in Middle Eastern dance, the world is much fuzzier. After 5 or 8 years of dance, who knows more about what is a matter of some debate. In a way, each dancer has a peice of the pie, and dancers may end up with very different pieces of pie and it's hard to say whose slice is bigger or better. Some folks (like Morocco, or Rachel Brice, or Su'ad, for example) have something that comes close to an entire pie, and even those folks typically keep studying to get more fragments, or maybe to build entirely new pies. (hmm... all this talk of pie is making me hungry). And I suspect that I hover in that in-between place. I'm not a professional ME dancer, but I have some reasonable chunk of knowledge. Is it enough to put myself in the place of challenge-maker? Well... I hope so...
Bedtime for Betty
Having taken longer than I meant to on dancing stuff, my body forcibly reminded me to get some dinner. I was a little low-blood sugar by the time I actually reached a restaraunt and ordered food. Nothing tragic. But as soon as dinner was done, my body decided that it was time to go to bed, not a debatable concept. My body does this by becoming freezing, regardless of clothing or heating. I shivered home and went to bed without doing any of my other ambitious chores - like making some snap off harem pants, or paying bills, or cleaning, or wrapping up my dad's Xmas presents. argh.
I did have interesting dreams though. I dreamt I was an alien sent to Earth to visit and analyze. My species was basically homosapien in appearance, except all of our reproductive systems worked on threes. We had three breasts (the third being over the sternum) and each breast had three nipples and was more like 3 fingers than mammary glands, being that they were as moveable as one's tongue is.
During my stay on planet Earth, I became pregant, and I'm not clear whether it was from my fellow researcher masquerading as my husband or from some Earthling I was dallying with. It was a joyous thing as on my planet of origin, our race has a very low birth rate and a dwindling population. Much of our research was used to find fertility treatments, and the visit to planet Earth was part of that. I returned to our planet where I was due to conceive a litter of 3 children, being that everything is in threes. I seem to remember being a little concerned about that, as we are not any bigger in the pelvis than humans, so birthing 3 full-sized babies would be something of a challenge. That is one of the many reasons for the low birth rate...
It was very weird. I remember mostly hiding my third breast on planet Earth, interacting with Earthlings and other aliens and then returning to the Mother Planet with the joyous news. I'm not sure whether this means (A) I'm really creative, (B) I really need therapy or (C) I really need a really creative therapist.
Anyhow, I'll take it, it's better than dreaming of being attacked. This was definitely a fanciful dream!
Morning
Not having a grumpy gorilla to shoo me out of bed, I dallyed in the comfy blankets a little longer than I could have wished. I did get 1/2 an hour to practice though. I meant to do a quick Baby Dolls review and then do some Indian dance stuff... but it became all Baby Dolls. Reviewed Istanbul X 3 (the trio version I was just talking about), and played with my Russian solo, having been shamefully slack on it. I now have coat removal plans and some plans for where I will use the sword as a cane. The sword and I have formed a truce. I believe the sword's ill temper was caused by the fact that it does not like the music as much as I do. The music is pretty brassy/bouncy, which makes me want to bounce cutely. Swords + cute bouncing are not compatible! I manage to get it situated and walk around and do various things with it today, but I don't know that they suit the music. The sword may not get balanced on my head for this one. I may have to suck it up and realize that this is not the right place for that.
I'm still in debate on clothing. Scratch and I talked about doing an entirely Cossak thing - in which case I shall definitely use the sword only as a sharp, pointy thing to dance with. The shirt/pants/red sash combo will not work with the delicate moves of sword/head balancing. Now that I am writing about this, I'm kicking myself for not trying some of the Russian male dancy moves - the squatting kicking stuff - which would go so fabulously with Cossak clothes.
My other alternative, I think, is something spangly and not partiucularly Russian. It would work with the sword balancing stuff... but that may not be a big enough win to abandon the Cossak idea. Oddly, I'm pro-Cossak right now, but I was pro-evening wear in the dance room this morning. Harumph.
Finished playing with sword at exactly the time to leave, so didn't get any Indian stuff in. My body is quite sore - yesterday someone replaced my calves with rocks. That has eased up slightly only for my pecks to be replaced with barbed wire. Kind of wishing I'd had Indian dance time, as the full body workout of that would have shaken out some of the soreness.
Baby Doll Dance Practice
Dance practice with the Dolls went very well. Both dancers have definitely been practicing. Our newest dancer needed to practice particular moves - and her work shows. She's pretty slithery and moves well, but lots of belly dance is not intuitive to her. I forget how hard some of this stuff was, and I'm inundating her with information. But she's doing good with it, and does not seem to be the sort of person who panics when overwhelmed, so that's fabulous.
The other dancer is doing well, too. Her training shows in that she's more on the beat and doing the moves much more cleanly - she's had lots of excellent training, though it's been a while since she had a live dance teacher. I've challenged her, too, though. Her solo is what I call "Weird Drum Solo" - it's the theme of Istanbul done on tuned percussion instruments (my weird drum fu is not so strong I could tell you what sort of instrument), so instead of a *tone* it's more of a tuned popping noise. And it's funkified to the point of not having a clear and discrete beat. And it throws in an alteration where "why did Constantinople get the works? that's nobody's business but the Turks!" is replaced with a completely different bit that is absolutely neato, but wierd, and involves more listening and reacting than counting counting and more counting. To make matters even more challenging, her solo starts after 18 beats of the previous interval - not the normal 16 beats of everything else. Most of this music is happily square - 4 on 4 on 4 - almost everything can be counted as 32 beats or 16 beats. But they get funky at this solo.
My answer is knowing the music really well, feeling it in my gut, and being willing to cut a move out to make it meet the phrases. But... I think there's something in there about how I understand music vs. how other people may understand music that makes this easier for me. I'm hoping this will gel for my dancer and she will ease into a comfort with this music that is a new thing for her. It's a definite challenge, and we'll leave it open to other possibilities. But I'd like to see her rise to the challenge.
I also added arm and head moves to the stuff we've already learned. That made for a heavy day of practice - 2 hours not 1 hour. But both seemed to be surprised we had gone for so long - they felt it was more like 1 hour. So that's good. It's much better than feeling "full" after hour #1 and scrambling through hour #2 in desperation.
I'm hoping that this is a good "next step" as Durr would say, not "raising the bar" to an impossible level. Each dancer is different, and every dancer may well be looking for a different sort of experience. Although Scratch would intone that this isn't a hugfest and it isn't about everyone having the right sort of dance experience... even in the professional (engineering) world, I find that people do best when faced with the challenges they find most interesting. Conversely, sometimes you have to challenge folks with challenges they don't like, because it will make them more well rounded. But to get best results, as a leader, you want to pose the unfun challenge as something that could potentially be fun, as people do best when they enjoy what they do.
I'm hoping that this peice is a challenge on the right level for all involved. A challenge for Raven to learn a new style of movement. A challenge for Mina to find a new level of comfort with an uncomfortable bit of music. A challenge for me to write choreography for three different types of dancer, and to teach dancers through two different types of challenge - in a very short period of time. And for Middle Eastern dance, I don't see the rigid structure for progressing technically that Indian dnace has. So I don't have the obvious tools at hand to guide folks through challenges. Hopefully this work will have several payoffs - an absolutely adorable group number, new skills for all involved, the demonstration that a tight dance number can evolve in a month's time.
To be introspective for a minute - this is also an thing to think about for me. Doing any choreography/direction takes a certain degree of hubris, I think - probably independant of any particular performing art. When you direct you have to have the confidence that your vision and the technical decisions you make to support it are the "right" ones. And in the arts, there isn't a clear "right" the way there is in mathematics. I could probably choreograph 5 different choreographies to this one peice of music, and each one could be "right" and 5 different audience members could each wind up with a favorite one. Hell - I've worked on 4 different musical interpretations of this one melody and I like them ALL and each one says something different. Such is the way of the arts.
But it takes me an extra dollop of ego to have the balls to talk about "challenges". It implies that I have some better degree of knowledge than my fellow dancers. That I see something they don't and furthermore that I have the capacity to guide them to see what I see. In that way I leave the context of fellow traveler and take on the cloak of "guru". Now... that's all well and good when I'm teaching someone who has asked for lessons in a venue where I have years of training in a format that my student does not. But in Middle Eastern dance, the world is much fuzzier. After 5 or 8 years of dance, who knows more about what is a matter of some debate. In a way, each dancer has a peice of the pie, and dancers may end up with very different pieces of pie and it's hard to say whose slice is bigger or better. Some folks (like Morocco, or Rachel Brice, or Su'ad, for example) have something that comes close to an entire pie, and even those folks typically keep studying to get more fragments, or maybe to build entirely new pies. (hmm... all this talk of pie is making me hungry). And I suspect that I hover in that in-between place. I'm not a professional ME dancer, but I have some reasonable chunk of knowledge. Is it enough to put myself in the place of challenge-maker? Well... I hope so...
Bedtime for Betty
Having taken longer than I meant to on dancing stuff, my body forcibly reminded me to get some dinner. I was a little low-blood sugar by the time I actually reached a restaraunt and ordered food. Nothing tragic. But as soon as dinner was done, my body decided that it was time to go to bed, not a debatable concept. My body does this by becoming freezing, regardless of clothing or heating. I shivered home and went to bed without doing any of my other ambitious chores - like making some snap off harem pants, or paying bills, or cleaning, or wrapping up my dad's Xmas presents. argh.
I did have interesting dreams though. I dreamt I was an alien sent to Earth to visit and analyze. My species was basically homosapien in appearance, except all of our reproductive systems worked on threes. We had three breasts (the third being over the sternum) and each breast had three nipples and was more like 3 fingers than mammary glands, being that they were as moveable as one's tongue is.
During my stay on planet Earth, I became pregant, and I'm not clear whether it was from my fellow researcher masquerading as my husband or from some Earthling I was dallying with. It was a joyous thing as on my planet of origin, our race has a very low birth rate and a dwindling population. Much of our research was used to find fertility treatments, and the visit to planet Earth was part of that. I returned to our planet where I was due to conceive a litter of 3 children, being that everything is in threes. I seem to remember being a little concerned about that, as we are not any bigger in the pelvis than humans, so birthing 3 full-sized babies would be something of a challenge. That is one of the many reasons for the low birth rate...
It was very weird. I remember mostly hiding my third breast on planet Earth, interacting with Earthlings and other aliens and then returning to the Mother Planet with the joyous news. I'm not sure whether this means (A) I'm really creative, (B) I really need therapy or (C) I really need a really creative therapist.
Anyhow, I'll take it, it's better than dreaming of being attacked. This was definitely a fanciful dream!
Morning
Not having a grumpy gorilla to shoo me out of bed, I dallyed in the comfy blankets a little longer than I could have wished. I did get 1/2 an hour to practice though. I meant to do a quick Baby Dolls review and then do some Indian dance stuff... but it became all Baby Dolls. Reviewed Istanbul X 3 (the trio version I was just talking about), and played with my Russian solo, having been shamefully slack on it. I now have coat removal plans and some plans for where I will use the sword as a cane. The sword and I have formed a truce. I believe the sword's ill temper was caused by the fact that it does not like the music as much as I do. The music is pretty brassy/bouncy, which makes me want to bounce cutely. Swords + cute bouncing are not compatible! I manage to get it situated and walk around and do various things with it today, but I don't know that they suit the music. The sword may not get balanced on my head for this one. I may have to suck it up and realize that this is not the right place for that.
I'm still in debate on clothing. Scratch and I talked about doing an entirely Cossak thing - in which case I shall definitely use the sword only as a sharp, pointy thing to dance with. The shirt/pants/red sash combo will not work with the delicate moves of sword/head balancing. Now that I am writing about this, I'm kicking myself for not trying some of the Russian male dancy moves - the squatting kicking stuff - which would go so fabulously with Cossak clothes.
My other alternative, I think, is something spangly and not partiucularly Russian. It would work with the sword balancing stuff... but that may not be a big enough win to abandon the Cossak idea. Oddly, I'm pro-Cossak right now, but I was pro-evening wear in the dance room this morning. Harumph.
Finished playing with sword at exactly the time to leave, so didn't get any Indian stuff in. My body is quite sore - yesterday someone replaced my calves with rocks. That has eased up slightly only for my pecks to be replaced with barbed wire. Kind of wishing I'd had Indian dance time, as the full body workout of that would have shaken out some of the soreness.
