Today's Inspiration.

Sadie once again shares a great performance.  Her muscle control and musicality truly makes one want to get up and dance!

Today's Inspiration

I don't like to watch Sadie when she is dancing with her partner.  Watch one video of her with her partner and one without and you will see why.  In this solo video, I find nothing to fault and a lot to be inspired by.

BDQ recently stated that if your dance wouldn't thrill without a prop then it is a crutch.  Sadie uses not only a regular veil but her costume's arm drapes to accent her dance perfectly.  Put that together with the great use of skill and musicality, this is a must watch video.

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. 

Today's Inspiration

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

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. 

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!

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

Today I was picking mostly white costumes for some odd reason.  Not only was this a great dance piece showing pauses and musicality but her white costume was not shocking in it's sheerness.  I also love how the skirt moved.  I found two videos with the same costume.  I really love her musicality and that costume!

Today's Inspiration

Fahtiem used simple but effective veil moves. She shows that it does not have to be difficult to be exciting and captivating.