Today's Inspiration

I love how she not only shows great skill and musicality but also personality.  She gets off the stage so the audience feels more connected to her.

Today's Inspiration

Shushanna is a great individual I have become acquainted with on Bhuz.com.  I love the skill and showmanship she shows here.  Even though it is a big stage and the audience is not near her she gives enough attention to them that I bet it felt a lot more intimate than it was.  Her opening veil work while wearing zills is something I need to work up to.

Today's Inspiration

Beautiful arms and flow.  I will definitely want to watch this again when I am working on a drum solo to see the different accents that they used. 

Low Points and Working through Them

I have definitely hit a low point.  The bad thing about low points, at least for me, is that they tend to lead to actions that cause more low points.  I have been eating way too much and hardly working out.  This leads to me feeling just that much more depressed and also bloated.

The only way I know how to kick myself out of this is to literally kick myself out of it.  As such, I plan to have my workout clothes ready before I go to bed and go for a walk with my dog right after my first alarm goes off in the morning.  We will see how this goes as that dreaded alarm goes off at 4:30am.  YUCK!!  But it has been unseasonably warm here in Kansas and neither me nor my dog are used to the heat yet so this is the best time for any outside activity.

I got strawberries at the store today so I am planning to make these strawberry protein pancakes for breakfast tomorrow.  Cassey's recipes are always so good!  I can hardly wait.  That should get me up for the walk. lol  Then I will just try to focus on eating well the rest of the day.  Each day is a new chance to make your life better, I plan to make the most of that.

Huggs!!

Stretch a Little Deeper, Release a Little Sweeter

Today had its good points and its bad points.  Really every day has them.  Really every day should have them.  Workouts have never really been my problem.  I love to move in general.  I love to feel the burn.  I love to log the calories burned.  So it is no surprise that I got my workouts done today.  I did two rounds of BBC month one.  I went to yoga class and got my hips to REALLY open oup.  I even accepted the Sweaty Betties challenge for May and did 3 minutes of jump rope today, I broke it up to one minute before, during and after my strength, but I got it done!

My food intake though was bad, real bad.  Like twice my lower calorie limit bad.  1,200 calories over my upper limit bad.  I really need to get my nutritional intake on schedule and stick to it.  When I start thinking of going off it I need to really think about why I am doing that and what I could do instead.  I think the only thing holding me back is fear.  Weird enough, I think it is the fear that I will turn into the mean person I was back in high school if I loss the weight.  Still not sure how my brain came up with that one, but it did. 

Now to prove to myself that my new found love for life and the differences between people is not dependent on my weight.  The only way I can see to do that is to loss the weight.  To loss the weight I have to prove it to myself.  I'm in a canoe with only one paddle!  Now if I could just trade it in on a power boat.

Today's Inspiration

A great performance by Rachel Brice showing great muscle control as well as the great Rachel style. 

Today's Inspiration

Funny at how we baulk at certain costuming that was prevalent so long ago as being scandalous.  What would truly make this scandalous now when it wasn't then?

Today's Inspiration

Besides just great dancing, I love the spunk she shows and her costume.  I have some pearls in my costume supplies that have been waiting for a design.  I think I have found it here.

Today's Inspiration

Blanca has always been an inspiration of mine.  This piece is great to see not only her musicality and dance skill but also how to present a balance number to an audience.  She goes around and the audience gets a chance to see it is not an illusion but a real tray with real candles. 

The Joys of Dancing in the Heat

So tonight my trouped performed at an award ceremony for the middle schoolers that helped out with our military salute number at the last studio show.  The auditorium was supposed to have the a/c on.  It is also not typical for Kansas to be in the 90's in May.  Add the a/c not on to the temperature outside being above 90 and you get a hot stage.  Add stage lights and our makeup melted off.  Other than the heat and cutting down our performance due to the heat, it was a blast.  The kids loved that their ROTC teacher was also a belly dancer and that the troupe came out to perform just for them.  Best audience EVER!!!

While I said my makeup melted off, not all of it did.  For my lips I used NYX lip jumbo pencil and it did not budge a smidge.  My eyeshadow didn't budge either using NYX's HD eye base and eye shadows from the Crimson Amulet collection.

Muscles That Hurt and Flying Skirts

I was so tired after troupe practice last night I forgot to post a blog.  I'll get this out before my day starts and we'll just forget that it is a few hours late.  Okay?

So I did Shape's Bikini Body Countdown workout for only one round.  I think I should be up to two rounds starting next week.  It is still kicking my behind, and abs, and back.  Okay, every muscle hurts right now, but in that delicious after burn sort of way.  I also did one round of HIIT during my walk.  Once again, I should be able to up that next week to 2 rounds.  I'm going to up it one round a week til I reach 4 round of HIIT with each walk.  Each round of HIIT I am doing is 14 sets of 10 second sprints and 30 second rests.  This happens to correspond with how my GymBoss is programed for BBC so I don't have to sit down and mess with the programing, I just have to get my dog on his leash and go.

Troupe practice was loads of fun and hard work as always.  We are working on a new piece of choreography that Ariellah started but never finished.   It will be added to our steampunk set for this year.  So far it is pretty fun and I love being able to use our gothic moves.  Up to this point, we have used a lot of West African and Romani dance moves.  As we are a gothic troupe, getting to use our foundation move excites me.

Also last night I bought a skirt from my troupe leader that she no longer wanted.  It was a normal 25 yard skirt but she had added satin trim to the bottom hem of it.  This addition turned it into a flying skirt!  A simple way to do this is to use satin blanket binding at the hem.  This is actually what a lot of belly dancers did back in the 60's and 70's for their skirts.  Right now my only other 25+ yard skirt is all satin so I don't want to add a heavier weighted fabric to the hem.  It is already an arm workout!  Any cotton skirts in the future will get this treatment for sure.

Well, off for another day.  I have to get my costume together for a preformance tonight as well as my normal Thursday.

Huggs!

Today's Inspiration

Soheir Zaki performance from the 1970's shows classic bellydance.

Burning Can Be Good

   Today I was running a little ragged after yesterday's activities.  It used to be that this would cause me to take it easy and do nothing.  Instead I pushed myself.  I helped my mom load up her truck with downed branches between my split shifts.  After the work day was done I used Rachel Brice's Practice Companion DVD.  I did the 30 minute session.  This is where the burn comes in.

    Tribal Fusion: Yoga, Isolations and Drills - A Practice Companion is a great DVD if you have not come across it yet.  The only thing I wish is that a DVD exactly like this would come out for classical Egyptian as well.  It is broken down into time increments that you can chose from; 15, 30, and 45 minutes.  There is also a play all feature, but I don't know the run time on that or how it differs from the 45 minute practice. 

    After a yoga warm up, Rachel started in on the drills and isolations.  Since they are all done without level changes or foot movement, my thighs started to notice.  Not just notice, they started to BURN!!  I actually had so stop some of the drills because my thighs needed a break.  I guess we know where my weakness is now.  It was also not that bad in the calorie burning arena for me as well.  According to my heart rate monitor, I burned 249 calories during this session.  All in all, it will be in my regular rotation at 30 minutes till my thighs get up to par.  Then I'll try taking it up to the longer practice.

Today's Inspiration

I love the double veil introduction.  I'm sure the costume would be too distracting from close up with that many cutouts in the bra but from the distance filmed I can focus on the dancing.  I also liked how she seemed to be using only a few moves.