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random thinky stuff
Sep. 25th, 2007 11:08 amI'm happy to say that I think my Pedini teaching sandals will make the linoleum floor in Monday night's dance class bearable. I'm in a slight amount of knee pain today, but I think that's leftover from last week's injury and I should still baby it a little this week. The ball of my left foot keeps clicking but it's doing it less than it was last week, so hopefully that's progress. My new insoles should be arriving today, I think. (random aside: some Arabic VCDs I ordered last week were shipped on Thursday from Damascus and arrived yesterday! According to the DHL manifest, they went from Damascus to Jordan to Frankfurt to London to New York to Stoneham to me, all in three business days. It's amazing how commerce can be so simple in a part of the world where politics can be so complex.)
It just dawned on me that I have almost no weekend time between now and the Bela Lugosi tribute show, so I'd better start sewing on weeknights if I want to get this costume finished. I think I've only got about an hour left on the belt. I need to visit some bead stores to see if I can find more of the little plastic skull beads I used on the belt, they're really good skulls considering they're just cheap Halloween stuff and I'd like more for the bra and to strew about my person. Oh, I should incorporate some into the anklets! Oh. Anklets. I have to make those too. Ten Thousand Villages in Central has handheld rattles with the kind of seed pods I want, so I think I will get a rattle and cannibalize it for parts, it's cheaper than ordering anklets online and then they will be in exactly the colors I want. It looks like the seed pods are already strung and then wrapped around the wooden part of the rattle, so it should be straightforward. Famous last words, I'm sure.
Amira Jamal's class was interesting last night. After working on various things that she felt we needed to work on, one student performed for us while we used contest score sheets to assess her performance. It's hard to watch somebody and write things down at the same time, and I found being forced into an analytical frame of mind detracted a bit from my enjoyment. It affected the dancer as well, I think, to have an audience of concentrating critics. I made an extra effort to smile at her whenever she was focused my way. But it's a good learning exercise for all of us, "judges" and dancers alike. I'm doing classical orchestral stuff for my class routine next month and I know now that it's going to be up to me to raise the energy level of the room, since the audience won't have energy to spare what with all the thinking and writing. I think those are the moments when you have to have love for and faith in your music and find joy in interpreting it, regardless of whether anybody else is in the room or not. ("dance like nobody is watching"--usually I want to smack people who use that quote, but there is something to it in a way)
It just dawned on me that I have almost no weekend time between now and the Bela Lugosi tribute show, so I'd better start sewing on weeknights if I want to get this costume finished. I think I've only got about an hour left on the belt. I need to visit some bead stores to see if I can find more of the little plastic skull beads I used on the belt, they're really good skulls considering they're just cheap Halloween stuff and I'd like more for the bra and to strew about my person. Oh, I should incorporate some into the anklets! Oh. Anklets. I have to make those too. Ten Thousand Villages in Central has handheld rattles with the kind of seed pods I want, so I think I will get a rattle and cannibalize it for parts, it's cheaper than ordering anklets online and then they will be in exactly the colors I want. It looks like the seed pods are already strung and then wrapped around the wooden part of the rattle, so it should be straightforward. Famous last words, I'm sure.
Amira Jamal's class was interesting last night. After working on various things that she felt we needed to work on, one student performed for us while we used contest score sheets to assess her performance. It's hard to watch somebody and write things down at the same time, and I found being forced into an analytical frame of mind detracted a bit from my enjoyment. It affected the dancer as well, I think, to have an audience of concentrating critics. I made an extra effort to smile at her whenever she was focused my way. But it's a good learning exercise for all of us, "judges" and dancers alike. I'm doing classical orchestral stuff for my class routine next month and I know now that it's going to be up to me to raise the energy level of the room, since the audience won't have energy to spare what with all the thinking and writing. I think those are the moments when you have to have love for and faith in your music and find joy in interpreting it, regardless of whether anybody else is in the room or not. ("dance like nobody is watching"--usually I want to smack people who use that quote, but there is something to it in a way)
