90 days of dance - getting started

I am doing Alia's 90 day Dance Party. I tried it last fall and didn't get very far, so I'm starting with a different goal. My goal is to increase the amount of time I spend on my dance in all its aspects. Whether that is the DVD I'm working on making by taking the My First Belly Dance Video with Nadira Jamal, the online class I'm taking with Rosa Noreen, Delicious Pauses, or the classes I teach. It might mean doing website updates, it might mean working on costuming. I just want to spend 20 minutes a day on dance or dance related projects. Hopefully, as I progress through the 90 days, I'll modify that and get more actual dancing in, but I figured I should start with what I'm know I can do.

So day one which was Feb 7 - I taught tonight. My troupe was choreographing a new number together (group choreography is always fun) so lots of improving while playing with the music to figure out what we liked. The good news is the routine is choreographed AND I think most of it have it memorized! Usually we finish the choreography portion and then I have to "teach" the number to the troupe even though they helped create it.

And in response to a question about how we group choreograph:I choreograph through improvisation. Dance to the music, find things I like that fit the music or that I find myself repeating in the same spot and that becomes the choreography. I tell my students that if they listen to a song I have choreographed they can almost hear the song saying the steps. When learning the choreography we will sometimes sing the steps while doing them which reinforces the ability to hear the music saying the steps. I've never had a student who couldn't hear the step once the instrument that is "saying" the step was pointed out.

So to do a group choreography, I put on the music and we all dance a section. Then we stop and talk about things we did that we liked. We dance it again trying out some of the things others came up with. Discuss again, keep what the majority liked (which might just be a 2 count step) and then repeat until we have a musical phrase choreographed. Then we move on to the next phrase. We always start the song at the beginning so we are dancing the part that is choreographed together and then all improvising together to the unchoreographed section. I hope that made sense.


Day 2 - Feb 8: I set up to shoot, shot my video journal for the MY-FBDV class and posted it to the forums. I also read through the forums to see what others were doing.

Day 3 - Feb 9: I worked on designing some costuming I have had the components for for a while and not done anything with it.

Hopefully tomorrow I will get my at home dance space cleared out so that I can actually do some dancing during the coming week :)