Entrée

Tonight, I am on a dancer high. I finally nailed my Luigi jazz choreography we've been working on for three weeks now. It's wicked fast so the slightest mistake will mess you up for the rest of the piece. And it just wasn't clicking, not even at a slower tempo to learn the steps. Tonight it clicked.

And Dianné even ratcheted up the tempo by .1 on us while we were working through it. The goal is to have it up to actual speed by mid-April since there's a high likelihood we'll be using it for our recital piece (May 30 in Madison) AND out exhibition piece at the Luigi jazz conference (June 13-14 in Chicago). I'm crazy excited for both of them. As an adult dancer, I dance every day and in multiple forms but it is rare for others to get to see my work unless they attend classes with me or happen to be around when I'm practicing. And as any dancer, musician or gymnast will tell you, a practice session is NOT the same as a performance. It's far more repetitive and persnickety. In practice if you mess up, you redo it. Ad nauseum. Until you've done it right enough times you're satisfied. In class, you get critiques to improve your minor faults and improve your technique. In a performance, if you mess up, you cover it up and move on. There is no do-over in a perdormance.

Now I need to master the arabics for my belly dance piece. That was just introduced to me tonight. It's a bit of layered choreography I've not done before. It has 4 layers to it, each of which is difficult enough on its own. You can think of belly dancing as being the dance of veils. You texture each movement in dynamic patterns, often in syncopated or unrelated time. So for example, your feet can be doing one step, your hips a second, your torso a third and your arms/hands a fourth. Confused yet? Now, imagine that your feet are doing a 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 flat foot, toe, flat foot, toe keeping time stacatto. Now your torso is doing an upward undulation. (chest up, rolling around and down through your spine back into a neutral place, see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC1XlhRwhsU&feature=channel ; the first way she teaches it. Only again my choreography is wicked fast) The chest lift is on the flat foot count, and the undulation is done by the second count on your toe. This is done 4 times. During those 8 counts, the arms are moving fluidly and treating the movement as one unit across the entire 8 counts. After that, the entire thing is repeated BUT the steps (still going flat, toe, flat toe, flat toe) are now used in a sideways traveling step to the right, not just stationary. And the arms have a completely different new movemnt, running at yet another time signature than the feet and the chest. Belly dancing is really defined by the independence of the movement. Then a sideways step to the left with yet another set of arms. Then a 4 count in the center undulating with the Egyptian steps. Confused yet? Once I get it down, I'll post a video.

Well, now I've talked about two COMPLETELY different forms of dance. So, perhaps a bit more about my dance schedule right now?...

I am currently actively dancing: 2 different schools of ballet (classical Cecchetti is preferred but it's only available once a week), Luigi style jazz, 2 different styles of belly dancing, Irish social dance, Irish solo performance (think Riverdance) and Bollywood dance. These are the forms that I am currently working hard at on a daily basis, attending classes in each of tehm at least once a week. I want to get back into Brazilian dancing, but I won't be able to until the schedule of my belly dancing shifts in a few weeks. This doesn't count randomly dancing my movements, going out dancing with friends (salsa, techno, hip hop or swing -- but I can only swing dance when I have a good partner leading me) or just having a dance party to whatever music I have on. Don't worry if you can't keep track of it -- my own mother can't. She yelled at me recently because I was dancing on TV and I didn't tell her so she could watch it. Oops?...

This blog is really about my dance journey and wherever it takes me. It's about discussing my choreography, points of technique and my personal interaction with dance, in whatever form that's taking. I also plan to include video links on here to a youtube account, both showing when and where I'm having problems, demonstrating the technique or just deomnstrating a particular move or choregraphy I'm really enjoying. I may even break it down to "teach" it.

I guess you could say I'm trying to keep my other blog from getting TOO over-run by the dance facet of me.

And of course, I suppose I should explain the address/title. Saubresaut is French for "sudden leap" -- it is a ballet term. Think of it like an excited child jumping up and down, but more elegant. The title is from wisdom printed on a Yogi Tea ginkgo tea bag. A tea and a bit of wisdom I am very fond of it. Semi-related, Vivian, my ballet instructor, always tells us "fill the Universe" during port de bras -- to continue the extension of the movement and the emoting of the music beyond our fingertips and outwards and onwards across the universe.

I'm so excited to have the Luigi jazz choreography down!!!!!! I'm a giddy happy little girl about it right now, running over it again and again just because I can!!!!!!