Why I haven't mentioned belly dancing in a while

Well, see, I bought this townhouse. And I spent all my time either packing, cleaning, painting, unpacking, organizing, reorganizing, re-reorganizing (I did the kitchen cabinets three times and I'm still not happy)....and I kinda stopped going to class. But I did intend to go back, once everything calmed down.

And then my teacher moved to Philadelphia.

Waaaaaaah!

Oh, she didn't leave us in the lurch. She has placed us in another instructor's very capable hands. But this instructor has changed the class times, and they don't suit me. There's a beginner's class at 5:30 on Wednesday, and an advanced class at 4 that same day. I work until 5 on the other end of town.

I realize that this is a flimsy excuse. I think I may just be a little resistant to the idea of a new teacher. I've seen her dance, she's very good, so it's not that I don't trust her. It's more that I don't know her. I probably should start out in beginner again, since she may have a different style, and a different set of criteria for what she considers "advanced." I think I might be able to make that class if I flex my work schedule a little. I wish she had something on weekends, but I understand how she would want her weekend to herself.

Alexa is still out there dancing and teaching, she's just doing it in Philly now. I think it was too hard to make ends meet in our little college town. As I said to a former fellow classmate I bumped into last week, "She's too big for us. Philly's about her size."

Here she is dancing at Rakkasah East 2008 last month:



Until I pluck up the courage to go to someone else's class, I'll probably content myself with dancing along to Shimmy (on FitTV) and dance lessons I find on iTunes.

Got a chicken where?

I wasn't able to go to dance class last week, as I was on a bus heading back from Thanksgiving with my parents for most of Sunday evening. I'd told my teacher that I wouldn't be there, and (little teacher's pet wannabe that I am) asked for another rhythm or two to practice on my zills. She'd already given us five different ways to do triplets, and a rhythm that she called "3-5-1-3" because, well, it's that many beats with pauses in between: 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5,1,1-2-3. So anyway, this time she gave me 3-3-7, and 3-7-3. Since you get 8 beats when you count from one to seven out loud (go on, try it), they've put this rhythm to words. Instead of 1-2-3, 1-2-3, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7 it's: "Gotta dance, gotta dance, got a chicken in my pants."

Yep.

And of course, 3-7-3 is, "Gotta dance, got a chicken in my pants, gotta dance."

Best of all was when she was telling me, she couldn't help doing a little wiggle and shoulder shimmy when she got to "got a chicken in my pants." To which I replied, "well, thank you for the blog post."

I was practicing the zills earlier today, and when I stopped I heard a noise behind me that I quickly identified as the cat, snoring. My first thought? "Oh, God, I've deafened her!" To test this, I went into the kitchen and said very quietly, "Would anyone like a cat treat?" I turned around and she was at the door of the pantry, watching me expectantly. So apparently she's just used to the noise and has learned to tune it out.

In the basement of Irving's

Lately, I've been calling Sunday "song-and-dance day." Practice for the Bellefonte Victorian Christmas choir started up about a month ago, Sundays 2 to 4. Then I have dance class in the evening.

I joined the choir last year with a friend of mine. It was her idea. She wanted to do something that had nothing to do with writing her dissertation, and asked me if I wanted to come along. This choir is a volunteer, unpaid, single-purpose choir. We practice for 2 months' worth of Sundays, perform twice during Bellefonte's Christmas celebration in early December, and then disband for the year. It's a lot of fun. One of the few opportunities I get to sing that isn't in the shower or along with the radio, since I don't belong to a church and therefore can't join the choir. I made the mistake of saying that a fellow choir-member last year, and she tried to get me involved in her church. I finally had to tell her gently but firmly that I didn't miss being in a choir quite that much.

I should be there right now, but my friend's mother needed to be driven upstate somewhere. I have no other way to get there -- buses don't run to Bellefonte on Sunday. Instead, I've dragged my laptop downtown to Irving's, a sandwich shop/café with free wifi. Bought myself lunch, and now I'm blogging in their basement.

I've moved up to Belly Dance II, by the way. First class was last week, and it blew my mind. We've thrown zills into the mix, as well as doing things faster and in odd rhythms. Remember the whole steps-on-the-down ("that butt-clench thing") I went on about last March? Well, now we're doing something called a three-quarter shimmy. Instead of 1 squeeze each step, it's squeeze-left-squeeze-right-squeeze-left each step. Yeah. That's gonna take a bit of practice.

And on top of this, we add zills. Now I know why I've been holding my fingers like I'm holding a coin between thumb and middle finger. That's where the finger cymbals go! I bought a pair and was given some rhythms to practice. Here's what a zill looks like:

The safety pin is there at the suggestion of my teacher. When I bought them, I got 4 zills and long piece of elastic. You cut the elastic into 4 pieces, thread a piece through each zill, and then fit it to your finger. After a few weeks with them, once I'm sure of the fit (tight enough to keep them from falling off my fingers, yet loose enough to keep my fingers from turning purple. It's a delicate balance), I'm supposed to sew the elastic at the pin mark and trim the ends.

They make a nice, bright, loud "dinnggggg!" The cat hates them. She doesn't run from me when I practice though. She just sit there and stares at me, wide-eyed, ears back flat, wondering what this is in aid of. The way she tells me she's had enough? She starts to sharpen her claws on my rocking chair. That backfired on her, because the last time she did that I chased her away, hissing and clanging the bells.

Phew

Well that's over with, thank goodness. It appears they only notify you of the results if things need to be changed at all. All I got on my door was a little note that read, "Your apartment has been inspected," so I guess I passed. I finally got the computer reconnected last night. It's amazing how much time you have for other things when goofing off online isn't an option.

One good thing came out of all of this. I like the way the apartment looks now. I wouldn't be embarrassed to let my Mom in here. It's a bit more organized, and there's a little less clutter overall. I threw out or donated to charity a lot of things that I decided I just didn't want or need any more. And I have enough space in the front room that I practice with the belly dancing DVD I bought a while back without too much furniture-shifting beforehand.

My belly dance instructor is moving away in August. Her husband lost his job, so they're moving to a little town a few hours away from us and starting a business. She says there's no one in that area teaching belly dance, so she's going to try to get some classes started there. Our classes are going to be taken over by her most advanced student--sort of her apprentice. She and my instructor have been taking turns leading class since I started going last March, so it should be a smooth transition. I'm going to miss Barb, though.

Speaking of belly dance, I took a workshop a couple weekends ago, focusing on Turkish Romany-style belly dance--the sort the gypsies dance. It was really interesting. And fun. And tiring. Dance classes are normally about an hour long. This class was one two-hour session, then an hour lunch break, then a second two-hour session. Boy, did I hurt the next day. My body clicked and clacked like a Jacob's Ladder. The music we were dancing to was in 9/8 meter: nine beats to the measure broken down into 4 beats, so you get this slight pause at the end of each measure. Here, try this, you'll see what I mean. Count this out loud and clap on the "1's":

1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2, 1-2-3...

It sounds like this:

clap, clap, clap, clap,[slight pause], clap, clap, clap, clap [slight pause]

That slight pause is just enough time for a quick hop or kick or hip movement, or any number of things. It takes a little readjustment to make oneself pause at the end of the fourth beat. I wound up rushing the steps a few times until I got it figured out. And then at class the following week, I had trouble readjusting to plain 1-2-3-4 again.

Let's see, what else is going on? The mess at work has been sorted out, kind of. I don't think anyone is particularly happy with the result (I know I'm not), but this is only supposed to be an "interim" solution to our problem. Maybe now we can stop sniping at each other and act like civilized people again. Hope springs eternal.

I'm visiting my parents next weekend, staying through to Monday for my Mom's birthday. No word yet on a diagnosis for her problem. I don't think she's been back to the doctor yet. Maybe it hasn't flared up recently. I'll make sure I ask her about it during the next "finger and toe check," which is what she calls our weekly phone conversations.

It's gorgeous outside. Finally. It's been raining off and on all week. I'm going to go play in the sunshine now. Have a good weekend everyone!

Huzzah

My camera's come home! Yay! In celebration (and to make sure it's working) I took the accompanying picture of the cat. The second I pointed the camera at her, she came over all coy and decided to pretend she was asleep.

The hafla was a lot of fun. Some of my (more advanced) fellow students performed -- one to Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride," which went over pretty well. My teacher and two of the members of the Tribal class did some improv dancing, the teacher playing zills the whole time. Then they did a piece of a choreography that they're putting together for a show next month -- dancing with swords! That was pretty cool. At one point they were each balancing a blade on one hip while dancing, and at another point they had the blades on their heads (like this). Wow.

After all the performance pieces were done, we moved some of the tables out of the way, joined hands, and did the "circle bellady" dance we'd been taught while our teacher played zills and her private student/apprentice played a drum. I managed to do that without tripping over myself. Then she put on some music and we cut loose. Well, most of us did. I got hit by a wave of shyness and sat down a little while after we were done the circle dance. I preferred to watch people who knew what they were doing and make mental notes.

I brought my friend the Chief Loon with me. As we were leaving the party she turned to me and said, "Now I want to belly dance." She also pointed out that you could really see the difference between our teacher and most of the students. She's right. When we dance, we concentrate on the muscle we want to move and hold everything else fairly still. When my teacher dances it appears effortless and fluid. I wonder how long it took for things to get like that.

I'm noticing some improvement in my own dancing. This past Sunday was the start of a new 8-week session. Most of the women who were in the class with me last time have graduated to Belly Dance 2 -- they'd been in BD1 for quite a while, some of them at least a year. Last Sunday we had six new people, one other woman from the previous session, and me. Our teacher went through the whole introduction again--positioning, arms, walking--and then had us walk in a circle, just like last time. I caught sight of myself in the mirrors and was pleased. I look like I know what I'm doing. I don't have to remind myself to keep my lower abdomen pulled in, or to roll my shoulders back. Looks like I'm catching on.

I'm on my lunch break, so I have to cut this short. I'll try to remember for next time to explain the difference between "tribal" belly dance and what I'm learning.

Desperately waiting for fashions to change

Clothes-shopping makes me grumpy.

All I wanted was a skirt and blouse to wear to the hafla today. The skirt was easy, I found that right off. Apparently the long, flowing "bohemian" style is back in. Great, wonderful, that'll be good to dance in. Now, finding a top, that's another story. How come all the summer tops are sheer, or have these teeny tiny little spaghetti straps? Call me old-school, but I really don't want my undergarments showing through or peeking out from under my clothes. It took 10 minutes to find a skirt, two hours to find a blouse. Thank goodness I wasn't looking for slacks, I'd probably have been in the mall until the place closed for the night.

Part of the down side of living in a college town is that most of the clothes you find in shops are aimed at the twenty-something set. I haven't been twenty-something for a while, and even if I did want to dress younger, I don't much care for the style right now. Almost everything looks like it's been shrunk in the wash. The clothes are too tight, and the waists of the bottoms don't even attempt to meet the waists of the blouses. You get about 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch of exposed skin. It looks all right on a certain body type (that of a stick insect, I mean), but for those of us who aren't a toned and fit size 6, it just looks horrible. We keep getting told that the U.S. is the fattest population on Earth, and then we're expected to wear sausage casings. Is this to prove a point? Are they trying to embarass us into looking better? 'Cause it ain't working. Most people just wear that horrible stuff whether it looks right on them or not, and when I walk down the street I wonder whether no one checks a mirror before they leave the house anymore.

I'm not what you'd call slender. In fact, I'm a bit chunky. I'm working on fixing that, and since I started a couple of years ago I've lost 100 pounds. Then my Grandma died, I got a bit depressed, and 20 of those lost pounds found their way back home again...but I am resolved. They are not here permanently.

I'm nowhere near my goal weight yet. The losing of those pounds only brought me down from "obese" to "overweight." I'm still not in any sort of shape to be wearing clothes that expose my belly. Funny, then, that I should take up belly dancing as a hobby, where the end result (supposedly) is to get up and dance in front of people in a costume that shows a lot of skin. I figure by the time I'm coordinated enough to do that, I'll be closer to the way I want to look. It's a very, very long-term goal.

And in the mean time, I guess if I want to find an outfit, I'll need to take a day off of work to do it. Oy.

Must dash. Going to go paint my toenails. If I'm dancing barefoot, my feet should look happy, no?

What's been going on

There was a forest fire yesterday, on a mountain the next town over. This mountain doubles as the local ski resort. They had it mostly under control by this morning, but have lost about 400 acres of forest. Luckily, no one was hurt, though I'm sure the wildlife didn't get off so easily. The fire started when a tree fell on a power line and set off sparks. We haven't had much rain lately, which is why the thing caught as fast as it did. We couldn't see the fire at all where I live, but we got a lot of the smoke. It smelled of autumn (when people around here tend to rake their fallen leaves into big piles and burn them), and yet it looked like spring. It's an odd juxtaposition, and contradictory sensory input made for much confusion in the brain. At least it did with me.

I know it's been a while since I posted. Sorry. I've got a project at work that involves a lot of typing in Word and Excel, and the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of another computer and type some more. Not to mention that the weather has been glorious, which keeps me out until dark. All sorts of trees are flowering. There are lilacs in bloom everywhere and sometimes when I pass one I get overcome with the need to go bury my nose in the blossoms -- after first checking for bees, of course.

It's finals week for the university. A very tense hush has settled over the area. All around campus and in various eating-places downtown you will find bleary-eyed, overcaffeinated, anxious students, trying desperately to cram into their brains every stray fact from every page of notes from every class they went to over the past four months. The library is open until 2 AM this week, everyday until Friday. We close early on Friday because the last final starts at 6:15 PM. Every student who isn't taking a test or preparing to take one is either out getting drunk or has already skipped town for the summer.

I encountered my first "last final drunk" of the semester on the bus ride home today. It was approximately 6:30, she'd been drinking since 4, and I'm pretty sure she'd already hit the stage where she won't be remembering how she got home. She got off the bus looking like she wanted to hug all of us good bye, but she settled for a wave and a heartfelt (if slurred), "Have a great evening, everyone!"

My belly dance instructor has put together a hafla for this Saturday, which also happens to be my Ditter's birthday. A "hafla," as it's been explained to me, is an Arabic word for "party." There's dancing involved. Anyone who wants to can get up and perform--they just have to run it by the teacher before the event. She's taught us all a dance that we're supposed to get up and do together at the end of the party--a folk dance, done in a circle. I'm looking forward to it. I'm bringing the Chief Loon with me.

That's about it. It really has been beautiful out. I wish I had my camera. I had to send it off to Connecticut to be fixed, and I don't know when I'll get it back. Soon, I hope. I bought a one-use camera, which is what I used to do before I had my digital one. I think I've been spoiled by being able to see right away how the picture will look, though.

I'll write more after the hafla. I'm sure there will be things to tell you.

How Dancing Is Going, Among Other Things

My belly dance class doesn't meet this week--our instructor is off being taught, herself. She's at a workshop in D.C. for a few days. We also have Easter Sunday off. That's a relief. Pretty sure I'd be in the dog house if I skipped Easter weekend with the parents for a lesson in butt-shaking. I'll probably spend the time I'd normally be at class today by practicing what we've been taught so far: the stance, cross-step touch, pelvic lock, and steps on the down -- affectionately renamed by me "that butt-clench thing."

This last one involves moving your hip down when you take a step, which is against what your body wants to do. In order to do it, you have to clench the opposite side of your buttocks -- this moves the hip up on that side and forces down the hip of the walking leg. So it's step right/clench left, step left/clench right. You waddle. We have been assured that the waddling thing doesn't matter, because when you're in costume no one will see it. The skirt covers your knees and feet. The image of me in costume filled me with mingled terror and amusement, set me giggling, and made it that much harder to concentrate on what my body was doing. I swear, I have spent more time thinking about my hips and bottom the past few weeks than I have ever done the whole rest of my life.

I think I've decided it's time to go buy a coin scarf. I've only had two lessons, but I'm pretty sure this activity is a keeper. I also think I need to join a gym again. I need better muscle control than I have. I also need more exercise. Once a week isn't nearly enough.

In other news, I got an email this week from one of my old college roommates. She's going to be in town the first week of April, and wants to know if I want to get together. Well, yeah! I haven't seen her since before she had kids. She has three now. At least, the last time I heard from her there were three. There may be more by now. We haven't corresponded for a while. Last time I tried, my email message bounced. Apparently she switched providers and forgot to tell me.

My sister and her hubby are busily packing their possessions into boxes, prepatory to moving into their new house. They've gone in on a large one with his parents. There are in-law quarters, so the households don't have to worry about tripping over each other. And my sister and her mother-in-law get along very well. Though the cynical voice in the back of my head wonders how long that will last with everyone under the same roof.

I should probably think of a name for my sister instead of calling her "my sister" all the time, shouldn't I? Gets a little tedious otherwise. How's this: When my mom and my aunt were growing up, my aunt (who was 7 years younger than Mom) used to call Mom "ditter" instead of "sister." It's become family slang. So my sister's name in this blog is now officially "Ditter." There.

While I'm thinking of it, here's another couple of pieces of family slang: napkins (serviettes, to some Europeans) are called "nakips," because that's what my cousin Doug used to call them. And that high-pitched noise you hear in one ear when there's a pressure change occurring? "Tuning in Mars." No ideas about that origin.

So anyway. Ditter said when she called our parents and told them the bid was accepted on the house, Dad broke down and cried. He was in the background shouting "I'm happy!" while Mom was telling Ditter what was going on. The big softie. It took years for us to figure out that when we gave him presents or Valentine's Day cards or things like that, he got all gruff and grumpy because he didn't want to cry. Now he might as well do it. We're onto him.

A note to anyone who was here earlier--I thought better of what I'd written ahead of the belly dance report. It made me a little too identifiable, and certain opinions were hinted at that are probably best kept to myself. Paranoid? Youbetcha.

First Belly Dance Class

When I was talking to the Chief Loon about this dance class, I joked about someone teaching me how to shake my behind. Well, it turns out that "belly dance" is a misnomer. The abdominal area stabilizes you. It's everything else that's in motion, particularly the hips. And the hips are controlled by the "glutes."

Yep. I'm learning how to shake my behind. I'm not going to go into too much detail, except to ask this: can you clench and release one half of your bottom independently from the other? My teacher can. Me? Not so much.

The stance is odd. Knees are always bent slightly, feet are together, lower abdominals are held in tight -- head up, arms up over your head (or out to the sides, depending upon the step), shoulders back, chest out, fingers arched (as if you're holding a coin between your thumb and middle finger)...and now try to do all this and walk. Roll through the foot, don't stomp. Heel to toe. You're a walking S-curve.

This is definitely going to take some independent practice. I was talking to some of my fellow classmates afterwards. One woman who's been coming for a year was very encouraging. She said at some point, your body has an aha! moment, where suddenly it understands what you've been asking it to do and the movements you've been struggling with start to happen naturally.

Great! In the meantime, I'll work on my stance and that (ahem) other thing with the glutes.

And I found out what a coin scarf looks like. A couple of the women in the class were wearing them. All the little coins jingle when you move. If I decide to stay past the current session, I think I'll be getting one of those.

Shake, Shake, Shake...

Every person I tell I've signed up for belly dancing lessons has the same reaction:

"Belly dancing?" (Stifling a giggle.) "Really?"

Yes, really. What's so funny?

It's probably the mental image of me, dressed like Barbara Eden from "I Dream of Jeannie," gyrating and undulating and making all sorts of movements that would just not be proper for a nice, quiet, bookish, middle-class, repressed, thirty(mumble) white girl. Apparently I come across as a bit prim. Ha! That's because no one heard me swear like a sailor this past December when I stepped barefoot on a piece of broken china in my kitchen and almost took off the back of my heel. I even shocked the cat, and she's pretty unflappable. But I digress.

These classes are offered by a place downtown that's not quite a dance studio and not quite a gym. They teach yoga, belly dance, African dance, pilates, (which I have a hard time remembering is pronounced pill-ah-tays. I always want to say "pilots.") and something called Jin Shin Jyutsu, which I've never heard of before. I've been thinking about joining a class for a long time, but my timing's been bad. Usually I decide to pursue it when the current session is half over, and they don't put out the next schedule until the current sessions are through, so then I'm out of luck. Unless I remember to check the schedule again later, which doesn't happen often.

Also, I do drag my feet quite a bit before I take on something new. I have a tendency to talk about doing something for a while, then to stop talking about it for a while, and then to shock everyone by plunging headfirst into whatever-it-is long after it's been assumed that I gave up the idea. Example? You're looking at it. It took about 6 months of "Could I? Will I? Oh, I dunno..." before I finally decided to try blogging. Two posts and one positive comment later, and I was hooked.

I need exercise. I used to walk at lunch time with a friend who worked in my building, but that fell apart last summer. She had foot problems. Then when those cleared up, she decided she'd rather spend her lunchtime surfing the 'net and catching up on her email, so she begged off. Having someone depending on me to show up at a certain time really was important. I just can't seem to get out of my chair to go walk by myself most days. I also joined a gym a while ago, though I haven't been there in a few months. I like working with the weights, I like that I'm only competing with myself and how well I did the last time I lifted. There are no permanent lockers in the place, though, so I had to schlep my workout clothes with me to the office, and then down to the gym, then back on the bus home, and it got tiresome. The membership contract runs out this month, and I don't think I'll be renewing.

I like to dance. Most of my gym classes in college were dance classes, and that's not just because I gravitate towards things that aren't very competitive. I have no one to dance with, though, so I need a style of dancing that doesn't require a partner, and doesn't expect you to have been dancing nonstop since your first ballet class at the age of three.

Belly dancing seems like it would be good exercise. Kind of like an aerobics class, without the annoying, chirpy leader shouting, "And four more! Three more! Two more! One more! Aaaaand one more set!" It's supposed to be really good for toning the abdominal muscles, and I sure could use that. I like the music from the Middle East. I find myself moving along to the rhythms of it when I hear it somewhere, so dancing to it should be fun. It's an exotic enough style of dance that no one expects you to have much experience when you start in a class, so I have that going for me. And there's the social component (getting out and meeting people with whom I don't work), which I'm hoping will be a good experience.

When I went to the studio last week I saw that the current session would be over on the 26th, but there was no information about the next start date. There was, however, a flyer listing the instructor's email address, so I wrote that down and contacted her about when the next session started (Sunday the 12th of March), to see if I could pre-register (yes, and I did), and ask some questions, the main one being: How am I to dress for this? Here's the answer I got:

"Dancers should wear comfortable, close-fitting clothing that permits viewing of body movements. It is also recommended that dancers wear something around the hips to make hip movements visible. A shawl, short beach sarong, coin scarf, or fringed scarf works well for this purpose. Dancers may take the class in bare feet, socks, or ballet slippers."

Comfortable and close-fitting clothes? Isn't that a contradiction in terms? I don't own any of the things she mentioned to put around my hips, either. What exactly is a coin scarf, anyway? I guess V has to do some shopping before next Sunday.

I'm wondering if there are going to be a bunch of women in there like me (see description above), or whether the room is going to be full of what my friend the Chief Loon calls "The Garlic and Tofu Set"--new-age women, I mean: vegetarian, wearing clothes made of hemp, practicing alternative medicine and really into crystals, things like that. Not that I'm against any of that. I find it all very interesting, on an intellectual level, and if I wasn't so lazy I might try some of it. Thing is, if you get enough new-age women in a room chances are at least one of them will be wearing patchouli oil, and that sometimes triggers my asthma. I should make sure I have my inhaler with me just in case.

I'll let you know how it turns out.