Saturday felt off-kilter and unbalanced. I awoke with a start from a bad dream. I arrived at the dance studio half an hour early in order to work on a choreography for an upcoming show, only to find a newfangled super keen sound system and it took me half a fucking hour to figure out where the "on" switch was hiding. I did indeed cuss.
No sweat, okay, no time to practice before students arrived, fine, I'll practice after class. I taught my class with veils, nine dancers and nine veils, navy blue, black, silver, red, white, burgudy, iridescent midnight, mosaic patterned sage and purple, and gold with green.
It was a fluttering flapping fanciful; cone spins, reverse flips, angel wings, crossovers & walk-throughs, spiral downs, envelope and harem eyes. Most of the girls seemed to enjoy the change of pace, and I had fun teaching the tricks. We looked at the basics and I had just started to discuss the music appropriate for dancing with a veil
when the music quit.
Kaput. Zilch. No sound. Nothing I did could get that damned machine to play music, and we still had an hour's worth of class. It is difficult to dance without music. That may be an understatement. Dance is the embodiment of music, the physical expression of music, and without it, well, it's not really dance. One of my favorite students joked, "Now we get to see how good a teacher you really are." So I did my best.
Rattled though I felt, I pulled myself together and asked if anyone had questions about moves we'd previously learned, which led us to the intricacies of a walking shimmy, also called a three-quarter shimmy. Oblique sit-ups are a necessity; abdominal strength is important, the pelvis is tucked, back is long and strong, knees are soft and slightly bent. The motion begins with tucking the right hip up underneath the right ribs, and the right foot lifts off the floor. The right foot and hip then drop back down, hip below the horizontal, while the right foot lands flat on the floor. The right leg straightens and pushes the right hip back up above horizontal, which also slightly drops the left hip. The left foot is then lifted off the ground by tucking the left hip up and underneath the left ribs... which repeats the motion just executed on the right side. Repeat. Ad nauseum.
After I saw that some of them were managing to perform the move, I explained that it was a component for a Turkish shimmy, which adds a box step. We marched in place and then back and forth and then around in boxes for twenty minutes, first painfully slow to show the essential up and down rocking motions of the hips, and then gradually increasing the speed. With coin belts it makes its own music, CHING-chick-a CHING-chick-a CHING-chick-a CHING, all feet stepping in unison.
It helps me more than I know to teach this class; it makes me learn the true anatomy of each move. And I'm pleased to find I can keep time without music.
No sweat, okay, no time to practice before students arrived, fine, I'll practice after class. I taught my class with veils, nine dancers and nine veils, navy blue, black, silver, red, white, burgudy, iridescent midnight, mosaic patterned sage and purple, and gold with green.
It was a fluttering flapping fanciful; cone spins, reverse flips, angel wings, crossovers & walk-throughs, spiral downs, envelope and harem eyes. Most of the girls seemed to enjoy the change of pace, and I had fun teaching the tricks. We looked at the basics and I had just started to discuss the music appropriate for dancing with a veil
when the music quit.
Kaput. Zilch. No sound. Nothing I did could get that damned machine to play music, and we still had an hour's worth of class. It is difficult to dance without music. That may be an understatement. Dance is the embodiment of music, the physical expression of music, and without it, well, it's not really dance. One of my favorite students joked, "Now we get to see how good a teacher you really are." So I did my best.
Rattled though I felt, I pulled myself together and asked if anyone had questions about moves we'd previously learned, which led us to the intricacies of a walking shimmy, also called a three-quarter shimmy. Oblique sit-ups are a necessity; abdominal strength is important, the pelvis is tucked, back is long and strong, knees are soft and slightly bent. The motion begins with tucking the right hip up underneath the right ribs, and the right foot lifts off the floor. The right foot and hip then drop back down, hip below the horizontal, while the right foot lands flat on the floor. The right leg straightens and pushes the right hip back up above horizontal, which also slightly drops the left hip. The left foot is then lifted off the ground by tucking the left hip up and underneath the left ribs... which repeats the motion just executed on the right side. Repeat. Ad nauseum.
After I saw that some of them were managing to perform the move, I explained that it was a component for a Turkish shimmy, which adds a box step. We marched in place and then back and forth and then around in boxes for twenty minutes, first painfully slow to show the essential up and down rocking motions of the hips, and then gradually increasing the speed. With coin belts it makes its own music, CHING-chick-a CHING-chick-a CHING-chick-a CHING, all feet stepping in unison.
It helps me more than I know to teach this class; it makes me learn the true anatomy of each move. And I'm pleased to find I can keep time without music.
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