Where I’m At ~ September 3rd 2009
I hope to do a post like this at the beginning of each month, to assess my progress and to look back later and see where I’ve improved.
This past week was really not a good one for bellydance practice. I got one practice in the day after my troupe meeting, and then the next day my throat started to get sore. I came down with a cold that seemed like a lightweight at first, but ended up knocking me down for most of the week. (It probably didn’t help that on day two of said cold, I had to go on an all-day shopping trip. I don’t regret it, because I got stuff to organize my studio with, but it sure made the cold come back full-force.) I didn’t get to practice again the entire week, and missed my troupe meeting last night.
I spent my practice today reviewing basic moves, to see what I needed to work on. So here’s a little list of what I noticed:
- I finally have snake arms down.
- I seem to have upper-body undulations down. It’s a move I took to naturally and so I’m suspicious that I’m doing it wrong, lol.
- I need to work on upward rib circles.
- I need to continue to work on lower body stability for upper-body isolations.
- I need to work on hip lifts and drops, especially on the left side.
- I need to continue building muscle strength. My left leg shook like crazy today supporting my hip drops on that side.
The truth is, I really only have a small handful of moves that I’ve “mastered”, so I need to keep working on everything. I’m considering how to best schedule my practices, and whether to stop learning new moves for the time being and just rotate the basics until I have them completely mastered.
I didn’t work on zills today but I’m finally able to walk around playing a Gallop rhythm, and if I hold still I can play a Beledi rhythm. For footwork, I think I figured out the cha-cha-cha movement the girls were trying to teach me at our meeting last week, and I have the traveling step I learned down (I can’t remember the name; we use it during zill drills) but I need to check the direction of the arm movements to make sure my hands are pointing the right way.
I have a long, long, long way to go, and I can definitely see how a week without practice set me back, but I’m having fun!
