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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.

I haven’t had much time for writing lately, due to major life / work things happening – some good, some bad. It’s at times like this that I like to revisit my dance roots and think about why I dance.

Earlier in the year, I got in a total funk about dance in general. Could not enjoy it, hated practice, and was questioning why I was doing it at all. I couldn’t do Egyptian style well, my fusion was more bouncy and glittery than dark, and I had very little exposure to the folkloric side of Middle Eastern dance. I felt awkward and directionless. At the same time, major developments were happening with my day job and I was being asked to teach dance, so I was conflicted about whether to make a more serious commitment to dance than I already had.

This seems pretty funny in retrospect. I placed in the 2010 Nationals, and a few months later suddenly had a crisis about whether I wanted to continue dancing.

To get out of my funk, I started gathering songs that I was very excited about creating choreography for, and started learning new technique some familiar props. A sword workshop by the lovely Belladonna also helped me discover a new prop that I had previously never worked with. I also started dropping in on non-Middle Eastern dance classes, just to shake things up a bit. I met some incredible teachers, and found some seriously inspiring classes that forced me to think of movement in a different way.

The reason I was in a funk because I was just bored with belly dance. I had worked on the same set and movements for months, burned myself out, then was suddenly in the situation where I had to look at becoming a teacher and performing as a source of income, having not taught before and being rather freaked out by the whole idea.

How often do we stagnate in our practice because we don’t do things that challenge us, or learn a new (or old) way of interpreting our standard vocabulary? For me, the combination of western classes, new props, and a focus old-school folkloric technique with multiple teachers helped me learn to start enjoying my practice again. It’s vitally important to constantly study with multiple teachers, regardless of current skill level or style, just to get a different interpretation of what we do. We all do the same steps, regardless of what branch of belly dance we’re on, but a new way of interpreting them makes us well-rounded. Even a simple concept can be revolutionary if we haven’t heard it before.

Another question is, do we restrict ourselves creatively because we are faced with earning a living off of art? As a professional designer, my art is reserved for work hours. I haven’t made any fine art in my free time in over ten years, and I was concerned that making middle eastern dance a large part of my profession would make it suffer in the same way. I like my day job, so leaving it completely isn’t an option.

On that same token, how much do we cheapen what we do when we perform for free? I get requests to perform for free regularly, and I’m occasionally open to it if it’s for a charity I agree with, but the assumption is that I’ll perform at the drop of a hat just for “fun”. People don’t see the 2 hours of prep work that goes into just getting ready, not to mention the 20+ a week of training, classes and creating sets, and the long hours spent making costumes or treating injuries. Performances are HUGELY stressful, especially for me, and time spent doing free shows can often be better used for training, spending time with cool people, or you know, actual paying work.

I like what I do. I belly dance because it entertains and amuses me to be an professional type during the day, and this shady character dancing in a bar at night. I like the constant training and the perfection of the crisp movements of a drum solo to the deceptively difficult fluidity of taqsim. Some people like what I do, and I am grateful for their support, and if they want to give me money, that’s even better.

But it’s still a job. Renewing and reclaiming my practice on occasion has to be part of the job description.

(Thanks to Alan Iverson)

I have strong opinions about practice. It’s true, I do. Obviously, none of us reaches our full potential as performers without dedicated and regular practice. Teachers like when they see improvement in what we do, and I believe it’s our duty as perpetual students to take what they teach us, and develop it on our own for their later review.

What am I currently doing for practice? Every weekday morning I get up at 5:30. It sucks, I hate it, I’m in pain and grouchy for about an hour, usually moaning about both. After I’ve had my breakfast and tea, I stretch intensively for 30 – 40 minutes, and get my Daily Show fix. Then, I practice for at least an hour and a half, nonstop. I arrange my drills and things to work on, create a playlist, and go. No stopping, ever. I’m usually ready to collapse at the end. When I’m not practicing dance, I practice slow martial arts drills, or go for a slow run.

That’s just the morning. In the evening come the classes. Monday 3 hours of Krav Maga. Tuesday through Thursday, Hip Hop, Jazz, and Middle Eastern classes at 1.5 hours a pop. That’s at least 3.5 hours of training per day. And yes, I still work a solid 8 hours per day. Weekends include 2 hours of Krav Maga plus 1.5 hours of Modern on Saturday, then 4 hours of practice on Sunday.

It seems insane. Writing it down makes it look insane. But it feels normal, and I’ve been doing this for months, and in different configurations in previous years.

It seems that many middle eastern AND western dancers I know don’t practice this way. There are a few notable exceptions, almost all of which are people who are performing at a level I aspire to. Using their example, this is what I’ve determined I need to do to succeed at the level I have set for myself. There have been times when I’ve hated practicing at all, usually due to some kind of external thing going on, and times like today, where I can barely move. But my goal of being exceptional drives me forward through the pain and negative emotions, towards something greater.