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Since my triathlon days, I’ve always taken Thanksgiving to New Years’ off for reflection and rest, and to spend time with my family. I’ve never lost this habit, in fact, I look forward to it every year. However this year, I needed to extend my leave by several months.

The reasons are pretty simple – my day job turned into a nightmare. I’ve been refraining from saying anything publicly, but at this point it really doesn’t matter. To put it simply, any place that yells at you for missing a status meeting after working almost 30 hours straight to meet an arbitrary deadline is not something that is beneficial in any way. And that’s only one incident of many – and certainly not the worst.

In December, I knew that I either had to find a new job right away, or make one within a couple months. With hundreds of people competing for every opening in my industry, I decided to start a company instead, and I’d extend my break until Art of the Belly.

Art of the Belly was great, needless to say. Stick hundreds of dancers anywhere, and we’ll have a good time. I sold a ton of sparkly stuff, caught up with some of my favorite people, and watched everyone have great sets.

Now that business is doing well and I’ve got some good things on the horizon, I’m trying to return to practice. Despite what some members of Lilam would say, I haven’t practiced. Bopping around to a song in my car, running through an old choreography, or being goofy at troupe practice is not the same thing as individual practice. My body is stiff, it doesn’t want to move right, and I don’t have the muscle memory anymore. It’s amazing what four months off will do!

So the journey back isn’t going to be fun. Coincidentally, my gym started a health challenge on April 1st, so I signed up. Their challenge involves going on a super strict version of Paleo for a month – meaning no sugar, starches, processed foods, legumes, or alcohol (yes, you heard me). I decided to couple that with 30 days of Crossfit and practice, to shed the last of my post-Lyme disease weight, and give myself a practice kickstart.

For the next four+ weeks, I’ll be posting about the process. I’m only on day 3, and I’m very grumpy.

Recently, I went up to Pittsburgh to perform at a friend’s event. She mentioned to me how lucky we were in the Baltimore / DC community to have the teachers we do, and she’s absolutely right. Baltimore / DC has amazing teachers, too many to even name – regardless of your particular flavor of dance.

I have experience with a handful of local teachers, all of whom are absolutely amazing ladies, both in and out of the studio. I haven’t even scratched the surface of teachers to study from, and my list remains, and will remain, a mile long. Whether it’s “tribal” or “traditional” (and yes, we all know those labels are inadequate), we never have to travel far to get instruction from world-class performers in a variety of flavors of belly dance.

We also have amazing shows. Whether it’s yearly “showcase” shows (Shems’ 2009 Ya Omri still sticks out to me), or recurring shows like DCTC that give performers a regular outlet to be awesome. And the community regularly turns out for them. Whether they’re dancers, drummers, or long-suffering partners of dancers, there are so many people that are a part of this community that make it even more interesting.

I also think it’s great that there are more scientists-by-day / belly-dancers-by-night than I can count. It’s kind of like knowing superheroes.

Just a little love for my community today.

My hair is an issue. For the majority of my life, I’ve gotten flack about my hair. People grab it. Tell me how to style it, condition it, and care for it. Hair dressers secretly cut off more than they say they will, because it “hides my face”. Layers are put in without my consent to make it “lighter”. Despite repeatedly changing hairdressers when I’m in need of a trim and a deep conditioner, this happens *every time*.

This is all despite the fact that I don’t have what’s thought of as “normal” blonde girl hair, so most advice and cuts are not applicable. It’s wiry, coarse, naturally knotty, and soaks up everything like a sponge. Most traditional styling regimens don’t work, and often make things worse. I’ve even had hair dressers try to make me get relaxers, when I’m very opposed to chemical treatment.

I’ve pulled it back for years, just to avoid having to deal with the annoyances it brings. A few years ago I decided to stop cutting it, as my husband decided to grow his hair long. I wasn’t going to have his hair be longer than mine, because that’s just wrong. As it got longer, I just braided it back, and still rarely left it down.

Around that same time, I had my first couple performances (pre-Lilam) with in a studio group with tribal stylings. Everyone else was pulling their hair back and sticking hairsticks and flowers in it, so I did the same. As I joined Lilam, and was introduced to the wonderful world of wigs, I started augmenting my hair with a clip in hairpiece, still sticking lots of stuff in it of course.

Yes, with hair down to my lower back, I was wearing a hairpiece. Hi, I’m Spiral, and I often do things that make no sense.

This summer I started studying with a new teacher who’s classes are just incredibly fun. She’s a great mix of good-natured and business-like, and I’ve had a lot of success mixing in what I learn with her. I let slip in class recently that I wore a hairpiece, and she was aghast, saying we would have to have a discussion about it. After class, she made me take my hair down, discussed with me why it would be best to leave it down – that it was the fullest expression of femininity, that I was selling myself short, and that many Egyptian teachers would be equally upset by my pulling it back, and several other reasons. She was one of the first people (besides my dad, but he’s biased) who gently, but directly, challenged me to let it go as it was.

I have to admit, it was hard to just leave it down and listen to the advice she was giving me. For years I had the attitude that there was something “wrong” with it, and tried to hide it and make it conform as a result. Despite this, after she pointed out several times I was still tucking it behind my ears, I agreed to leave it down for my next fusion set to see how it felt. I added some hair tricks and a beaded headband, and figured I’d be very annoyed with it by the end of the set.

How did it actually feel? Kind of amazing. This sounds overly dramatic, but it’s accurate – I felt like I had flipped off years of conformity and people telling me what I should be, should look like, and should do. I still watch the video and am amazed that I never trusted myself to let it fly before.

I haven’t pulled it back since, other than to work out and sleep, of course. It does still like to attack my husband at night, after all.

The moral of the story? Always listen to your teachers, and let your hair down every once in a while.

*EDIT:* I just noticed something funny. My professional StereoVision shots from early 2010 (brown costume) showed the last time I had it down while in costume. I did that only for the photoshoot. I wore the same costume this past performance – it must be good karma.

So this morning, I accidentally loaded up my old post about practice. Ah, yes, the good old 2-hour+ sessions. I’ve had to let them fall by the wayside as I started picking lifting and yoga back up to help with my arthritis. In a way, it’s great, because I’m limited to about an hour a day now, but I practice more often, and it’s spread out. It’s also a lot more enjoyable.

But that’s just crazy-talk, this whole dancing thing being enjoyable.

One of my favorite workshop teachers teaches a series on Catharsis, or releasing whats unneeded and dancing like yourself. That’s really what this year has been about. At the beginning of 2011, I made a conscious decision to NOT promote myself as a performer, get rid of other’s expectations, and concentrate on finding my voice in performance. Add to this the fact that I have two teachers (and occasional teachers who I try to study from when I can) who actively encourage this line of thinking, and I had a solid direction set.

As I see it, there aren’t many (any?) Krav-Maga practicing, weight lifting, jazz/fusion/vintage-American trained dancers around, and that experience is important to tap into.

I am very happy I made this decision and stuck to it, though it wasn’t easy. I’ve gotten plenty of comments throughout my recent training about how I’m not [X]-enough, or too [X]. I had to take a lot of classes that just didn’t fit (hello Modern, you make me feel like an elephant on releve). I also felt like I had to lie low while I tried to figure out the direction I wanted to go in, because I didn’t want to experiment publicly.

This is all in addition to the personal upheaval with my partner being jobless and all, and all the injuries that forced me out of running for good. Talk about paring down and getting rid of what’s unneeded.

I do feel like I’ve figured out my marching orders, and am actually having a lot of fun with what I’m doing, and others seem to be enjoying it too. It’s nice to have that outlet, because 2011 is a pretty crappy year for the world at large.

My self-imposed dance break is over with a vengeance – October is officially insane – and this is what’s been on my mind lately.

During the retreat this year, Ava made an interesting comment about ego deaths, and I think it’s been stewing around somewhere in the back of my mind. As performers, we often have to deal with the negative side of ego, either internally or from others. Internally, I think we’ve all had these thoughts at one time or another:

What am I *doing*?
Nobody likes what I do. Hmph.
[Insert blanket poor body image statement here]
I have to be able to do X / Why can’t I do X?
I have to perform at X to be considered a “good” dancer / Why wasn’t I asked to perform?

I admittedly fall prey to the second one ALL THE TIME. I talk myself out of doing shows and sets that would push my boundaries, because I’m afraid of how it will be received. That doesn’t do me any justice as a lifelong student – rather, that attitude keeps me from progressing.

I think that most of the above statements are rooted in fear – fear of success and fear of failure specifically. So what does this have to do with ego?

Ego death is an experience that purportedly reveals the illusory aspect of the ego, sometimes undergone by psychonauts, mystics, shamans, monks, psychologists, and others interested in exploring the depths of the mind.

By purposely letting go of an expectation of success or failure, both for our dance as a whole, or for a technique or performance, we can perform in the moment, without concern for the end result. In this, I think we can more adequately become conduits for the emotional meaning behind the music we perform to. Conversely, by having an inflated sense of our own importance, we cut off that connection between the music and the audience, and diminish our performance.

In other words, letting go of the ego opens us up to channel the music to the audience through movement, without our personal hang-ups or preconceived notions getting in the way.

Dance is both non-personal and intensely personal. We’re both acting as conduits for the music and augmenting music with our emotions through our movement. At the same time, we’re constantly training those movements to be exacting and precise. I know from experience that it can be all too easy to stop progress due to some internal block. At some point, we have let those blocks go to realize that there is no end result of “perfect”, and the progress is what’s worthwhile.

It’s difficult to do, and I’m certainly not the zen master of belly dance (HA!), but I know that letting go of expectations and self-imposed limitations is important.

At the beginning of the year, I came up with a lot of ambitious plans as to what I wished to do with my practice. Since it’s nearly August, I figured I would re-evaluate those goals and see where I was with them.

• Daily stretching practice – I entered into a pledge to do 365 days of stretching. I had a regimen planned out, heavily spine-focused, in an attempt to counteract my arthritis. Where this practice is now: I am not practicing this regimen every day, but I AM still doing SOMETHING every day, be it foam roller, longer stretches during classes before and after, and more attentiveness to posture. I also have a much better awareness of stiffness, which is helping to treat my arthritis when necessary. I’ve found that the foam roller is still the best tool I have to treat my limitations.

  
  

• Classes – I had a plan to try out a slew of new classes to see what stuck. I tried hip hop, modern, jazz, and had some plans to study with some new belly dance teachers. Where this practice is now: Taking new classes really helped me get out of my funk earlier in the year. In belly dance, I really enjoyed my new teachers, and plan to keep studying with new ones. Having a new perspective on a small set of movements has been very valuable. I also got a lot out of my western classes too. Modern is helping me tremendously with arm position and internal lift, and I’ve found it to be simultaneously relaxing and challenging. My taqsim has definitely benefited from Modern.

  Hip Hop has kind of been a mismatch. My favorite teachers so far have been very jazzy (more on that in a bit), but unfortunately I’ve had problems devoting enough time to class due to performances, injuries, and the fact that classes occur at odd times for me. The most accessible class occurs the day after my marathon Krav Maga day. It’s hard to do anything the next day, much less a class in a style I don’t know well. As for the dance style itself, I have had a hard time matching my energy to hip hop. Azhia made an interesting point a few months ago about matching our dance to our natural energetic inclinations, and I feel like my energy is both upward and inward, whereas hip hop is energetically grounded and directed outward. In practical terms, I am having a very hard time overcoming my natural (ahem, stiff-backed) lift and dropping into the movement. I haven’t decided if I’m going to continue next year, but I am going to give it a little more time.

  Jazz. Sigh. I am now OBSESSED with it. The execution of quick movements and then the easing into the spaces between those movements is so incredibly appealing, as are the requirements for strength, attitude, and a little bit of quirkiness. This is also aided by the fact that I have found an absolute gem of a teacher who is the perfect combination of tough and accessible. I feel as if I’ve found something that fits me energetically, and can be brought into my belly dance practice almost effortlessly. I WISH I had studied this as a child, and I have plans to study it even more intensively in the future. And no, of course this has nothing at all to do with my absolute love of The Herbaliser. I’m having a fangirl moment.

  
  

• Personal Practice – My personal practice is going very well. The beginning of the year saw me completely lost as to what to work on, and eight months later this is definitely not the case. Technical proficiency isn’t the all consuming obsession I had last year, and as a result, I’m getting better feedback from my teachers. It has become more about executing an idea rather than executing the perfect 3 part layer. I think I can be satisfied with this.

I’ve reached my self-imposed break that I decided upon at the beginning of the year, after a very enjoyable set at a local hafla. Despite still essentially recovering from the flu, I had a great time, and danced with some musicians I hold in the highest regard. Notably absent was stage fright, for a change. Maybe it was the flu that kept it away. More reflections on that later.

Today’s topic is training! At the retreat this year, a popular discussion topic was the practice regimen. I brought up a couple concepts that other participants had never heard of before, that are common to other sports.

Training in my community of Middle Eastern dancers seems to follow a pattern. I want to master X, so I’m going to keep working on X until I master it, and then I’ll move on to something else. Often, when we move on to something else, we inevitably forget some of what we learned originally, so we have to backtrack repeatedly to pick up what we lost. Prior to studying with Lisa, this was mostly I practiced, or it was completely unfocused.

Training for races was the opposite. I knew at a specific date, I had to be able to swim X meters, then bike X miles, followed by an X mile run. Counting back, I’d make sure I slowly ramped up to those distances, so that I could comfortably meet my goal at the appropriate time, while training in each discipline regularly. The same holds true for Krav Maga – I knew when I would have a test, and would work backwards to make sure that I was spending enough time on the appropriate techniques, while continuously practicing my basics upon which everything was built.

As great minds think alike (or, my teacher is some sort of mad genius), during my break I’ve been asked to fill out a list of goals, and working backwards, analyze what needs to take place to master them in the next few months. If I hadn’t been in such a grumpy mood due to the flu, this would have been kind of fun. So now I find myself in this process – instead of a race, I am coming up with a self-imposed goal, but the process is essentially the same.

So, how to apply practical training to meet my as-yet-unnamed goals?

One of the most striking things my martial arts instructor ever said to me about training was that in order to master something, you needed to practice the basics for 5 minutes or so on every training day. Given his freakishly scary skills, I decided to give this a try as the first step to my practice template, and started incorporating a warm up involving all my basic movements at every practice.

As a result, I saw my movements clean up, my range of “go-to” movements increase, and my layering become easier. This drill has morphed into a long tabata interval since I started doing this, but it remains my most important aspect of practice. Every basic movement is drilled, plus some specific layers, before even starting practice, much like scales are used prior to practicing music. “Practice” is when I string these together to make something.

Another often-ignored aspect of training is the “rest week”. The rest week is easily the most important aspect of race training – it’s where you simply take a week off and let your muscles recuperate. It’s also beneficial psychologically, as a way to just evaluate the previous weeks’ work or avoid burnout. As applied to dance, I spend more time on writing choreography, stretching, or slow movement during my rest week.

Burnout is a big factor in dance, as we’re constantly drawing on emotions that aren’t always pleasant, or are doing the same choreography over and over, or some other repetitive drill. Dance can be both exhausting and mind-numbing, and taking a week to refocus or simply take a step away makes it more rewarding when we come back.

Once again, the yearly Asheville retreat proved to be revolutionary. I’ll need months to process the information, and the process pushed me into a new, scary place. We’ll see what the end result will be by this fall.