Just try it.

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If you have been taking dance from me even a few weeks, you already know this: I love digging in to the minutiae of movement. I could talk all night about precise foot placement, body line, muscular impetus, how it should look, how it might feel, where your energy is flowing, what the audience sees, your stage alignment, your gaze, your hands, your hands in relation to your torso...the list goes on and on.  And if you ask for more detail, sometimes I can't help myself, and I explain it away...

But the truth is, sometimes you just have to try it. And fail. And try it again. And struggle. And curse. And try again.

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Doing vs. Teaching

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A teaching metaphor: I am a pretty competent cook. When people eat my cooking, I get lots of compliments, and I know my way around my kitchen. But if someone asked me to teach a six week course on cooking, I am not sure I would do such a great job. I think the best I could offer would be to teach a different recipe every week.  I would definitely teach the ones I know best, not necessarily the ones someone should learn as a foundation for strong cooking skills. I wouldn't be able to talk very competently about what went into making the recipe, be able to clearly explain why the flavors balance the way they do, or confidently suggest what substitutions one might be able to make to tweak the flavors or caloric contents. 
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On Music and Passion

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I loves me some TEDTalks, and this one is no exception.  I dare you not to be moved and inspired by this talk by conductor and musician Benjamin Zander.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
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Simple Back and Neck Pain Relief

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A newer student to my classroom, the beautiful Sukie Baxter, is a Rolfer and bloggess extraordinaire.  She wrote a blog post about back and neck pain and simple ways to relieve the aches and pains, and improve our daily posture.  As a lover of all things posture-related, I really enjoyed her take on this topic, and wanted to share it with you.

I have found that being a tribal bellydancer, my increased awareness of my posture, and knowledge of the anatomy which supports good posture, has been a boon to me.  But it hasn't saved me from falling to the same bad habits at times in my everyday life.  Sukie makes an excellent point about our everyday awareness of the back of our bodies and why we lack it in this day and age:

"Look around you and you’ll notice a lot of people who sit with their heads forward, rounded shoulders and a collapsed chest. Computers, television, driving, and almost everything else that we do during our daily lives, make us focus forward and forget about the back half of our bodies. We lose awareness of this space entirely and fall into our front halves.
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