I performed a demo with Drew tonight, which I expect to be online tomorrow. I also saw the Rose City Sweets perform a different type of routine than I had seen them do before. That was awesome and makes me excited to choreograph.
I also had a breakthrough with my arms. Last Saturday, I asked my ballet teacher how to get my arms in the proper position in second. My shoulders were always popping forward, and I could never make it feel right. She explained that I needed to roll my elbows forward. I was thinking about it all week, but I couldn't find the right position. Yesterday, I asked her again (and she told me I'm too much in my head...) and for the rest of the day, I kept my shoulders in that position. Tonight I danced tango trying to keep the position, and I found that suddenly it was much easier to let my shoulders relax, to place my sternum in the right place, extend my spine, lift my head... only I wasn't quite understanding the movement of the arms. All the same, tonight I was oozing music - just letting things fly out of me. My grounding was on, my technique was feeling solid.
I went to another dance that plays alternative blues - hip hop, pop, trip-hop mixes... and I danced solo for quite a while. In fact I danced for so long and started to let things go so much that I looked around at one moment, and no one was on the floor dancing. They seemed to be just watching me and a friend dance. It was strange, but I could feel energy radiating from me.
Suddenly as I played around with my arms, I felt the movement extending from my core. I felt the rhythm of my arms. This was one of the most exciting things since I moved to Portland. My arms have been a continual struggle - they flopped around like broken wings. But I just started the process of really owning them.
There have only been two nights in Portland that I have really felt the music and danced. One was after a nice dinner (earlier blog) with live music. Tonight, the music that really grabbed me was Candombe - tango with African influences still in it. It mostly comes from Uruguay. I remembered how badly I wanted to dance in Uruguay so many years ago... But there was another factor in my dance, I believe. I was meditating today - not for incredibly long. I was trying to focus on healing my knees and feet, but for a while there - just for good measure - I followed the lead of Isadora, placed my hands on my solar plexus and started searching. I can't say I found the "motor in my soul," but something certainly affected my openness to the music tonight. IT's odd that my dancing seems so intimately related to seemingly external factors. It makes me wonder if I should reconsider my whole process of learning.
