no bravery

It’s funny how a small break from routine can really cast a lot of light on things, isn’t it?

I decided a few years ago that I needed to reprioritise things – it’s not that I was unhappy with my life, but I felt like I didn’t have anything in it that I did purely for myself, for selfish enjoyment. I balance friends and work and caring for our home and (most importantly!) our marriage, and the cats and and and… I needed something in there that was just for ME. And dance is good exercise and it makes me happy.

Over Easter, there was a local dance festival called Jambalaya. I decided that if I wasn’t good enough this year, I was never going to be, so I summoned up courage and went to the advanced zouk immersion course. The teachers were Rodrigo Delano and Adriana Coutinho – and Adriana was the world champ in 2011. I was feeling pretty brave to go at all – I’ve only been doing this for a year, how can I think I’m good enough to learn from people that good? But it was utterly, utterly FANTASTIC.

They are amazing teachers, as well as amazing dancers – not necessarily skills that go alongside each other. It was a three day immersion – six hours Friday, three Saturday, three Sunday, plus other workshops if we wanted, plus dance parties every night. All up I spent 20 hours dancing over the three days, plus putting 330km on the car to get there and back again. I was EXHAUSTED on Monday. But oh man, it was so so so worth it, just utterly amazing.

I really love dancing. I wish I’d started years ago, but I didn’t have the confidence then. Dance in itself has given me confidence, though – the more I do, the more I learn, the more I go out on my own to dance socially, the more my confidence improves.

Sunday night, as part of the festival all the immersion courses performed. There were about 300 people in the audience – and I actually got up on stage with the rest of my zouk class to perform too. And you know what? it was really fun. Two years ago I would never have had the courage to do it.

I don’t think that I’m brave. I just care less what other people think of me than I used to. I still have “oh no I will be mocked” moments, but I can usually work out that I’m being silly.

There’s a salsa congress in Wellington over Queen’s Birthday, which I just bought my tickets for this week. I have signed up for a salsa performance course (first rehearsal was last night actually), to be performed at the congress.

I’m pleased for another reason – my salsa teacher invited me to join the zouk performance course that starts in June. We’ll be performing in August. I went to the event we’ll be at last year; in fact it was the first ‘real’ dance event I ever went to (other than social nights), and it was a lot of fun. Mostly I’m stoked that I was asked! My salsa teacher is also one of the first people that taught me zouk; I hopped studios mid last year, when the female zouk teacher went overseas. I danced with him a few times at Jambalaya – I guess he’s realised that I’ve learned a lot in the intervening months. And more importantly, that I love zouk as much as I do.

I had time to get to a zouk intermediate class last night after salsa rehearsal. It turned out to be a small class – me plus one man, who I have danced with before – so I had an utterly fantastic lesson. They taught us a combination that includes moves which I already knew, so I got to learn them PROPERLY. The hardest bit was suicidio – the suicide move. (That’s the best video I can find on YouTube, but it’s actually not done very well.) Although it looks like the woman is throwing herself down (suicidally), it’s quite the reverse. You have to be led into the drop, and that bit was REALLY hard for me to learn. When I was first taught suicidio, I didn’t have the core strength, or understanding, to do it properly, and I constantly fell on my knees or on my butt and of course, the more I did it wrong the more nervous I got, so I kept doing it wrong! Last night, I finally got it right, and consistently enough that my teachers could help me improve on it. So I learned all sorts of things about maintaining connection with my partner, how to support my weight more with my glutes/quads than core/knees, lots of things like that. In fact, at the end of the class my teacher complimented me on how far I’d come as a dancer. Happy glow.

I come home from lessons like that really pleased. Partly the physical aspect, the .. whichever happy chemicals it is you get from exercise, partly the mental aspect of learning, partly the sheer pleasure of music/dancing that I’ve always had. It’s nice to be achieving something, however small.