Belly Dance Geek Blog
What would you like to see in 2012?
My annual tradition is to spend New Year’s day clearing out the old year. I archive my old email, clean out the files on my computer, and go through my papers and other clutter. The clutter starts to build up again pretty quickly, but until it does, there’s a little oasis of clarity. That’s when I like to think about what I’d like to do in the new year. I got an early start this year, and put together a first draft of my project calendar: (click on the picture to see a larger version) Before I finalize that,...
read moreHow to Tell When You’re Ready to Make a Video
If you saw someone drowning in a pool, would you think “I’m not a lifeguard. I’m not qualified to help”? Of course not! You’d do whatever you could to help: throw them a life preserver, jump in and drag them to safety, or at least call 911. And yet we belly dancers routinely let our fear of being “unqualified” prevent us from jumping in to serve those who need us.The “Big Name” SyndromeMost dancers assume that only “big name” dancers should give workshops, write articles, and make videos. On the surface, this seems...
read more6 Reasons to Produce Your Video Resourcefully
(Hint: only one of them is about money. And only sort of.)What is Resourceful Production? Resourceful production means fully exploring the resources available to you, instead of simply opening up your wallet.That involves:Doing things yourself, when you canLearning new skillsLooking beyond the obvious sourcesAsking your communities for helpExpanding your networkClearly, this takes a lot more work than just paying someone else to do it for you. But that effort pays off in so many ways.So How Does Resourceful Production Pay Off?1) It saves you...
read moreFive Things to Do in the Black Friday Line
You couldn’t get me to go to the Black Friday* sales if my life depended on it.Fighting with crowds and standing around in the cold are bad enough. But getting up in the wee hours of the morning? Hell no. That said, I know a lot of people who enjoy the thrill of the hunt and the excitement of the event. My sister Melanie (who designs the covers for the Improvisation Toolkit DVDs) and her husband go every year. My theory is that it’s less about the sales, and more a way to get some time alone together during the...
read moreThe Psychology of Traveling Patterns
Taktaba Turns Five! Five years ago today, I released the first episode of Taktaba.I wasn’t able to get a new episode out in time for the anniversary, but I did want to give you a little something today. This video is a short excerpt from the Improvisation Mastery Mentoring Program pilot (now called Be Amazing in the Moment). It’s a quickie, not a full episode, but it should give you some ideas to geek out on. You can also download it to watch...
read moreTransparency Time
It’s been a long time since my last post. Not because I’ve been busy (although I have!), but because I’ve been hiding out.You see, I’m injured. Again.For the fourth time in three years. It’s not the injury that I’m hidingInjuries happen to everybody, especially those of us who are active.(As one of my mentors would say “it’s transparency time.”) I’ve been hiding out because not being able to dance makes me feel like a fraud.In the fall of 2008, I was just coming into my own:I was...
read moreWhat Victor Hugo Can Teach Us About Improvisation
I went to a group singing workshop last night, and we sang a song with lyrics by Victor Hugo. (That’s the guy who wrote Les Misérables.) Be like the bird, Who halting in her flight On a limb too slight, Feels it give way beneath her, Yet sings, Sings, Knowing she has wings. At first, I interpreted that as “you have everything you need to deal with the unexpected”, and that’s true. But I realized that it’s bigger than that. The unexpected is scary. But when...
read moreWhy Transitions Are Like Punctuation
Without punctuation reading would be really hard you’d have no way to know when one idea began and ended and the words would all just flow into an unintelligible mass of letters on the page you’d also have no way to know which statements are be questions and which are just regular sentences… if you’ve gotten this far you probably have a headache from all the squinting a lack of transitions can also create headaches in your dance Transitions Are Punctuation For Your DanceTransitions serve the same purpose...
read moreHow Transitions Work Their Magic
Transitions are an almost mystical concept: They’re this magical ingredient that transforms a bunch of moves into a polished, professional dance. We collect these talismans as we run across them in class or in choreographies, and if we’re lucky, we become proficient with our small repertoire. But why they’re so magical is a mystery. And that keeps us from moving from proficiency to mastery. Because the first step to mastery is understanding. Transitions Work Their Magic In Three WaysPart of what...
read morePsuedo-Venn Diagram
I created this diagram back in 2009 as a quick visual means of helping distinguish what we mean by “belly dance”, “middle eastern dance”, and “middle eastern belly dance”. I made it in response to a discussion on bhuz.com, and the current version (v3) includes input from several of the lovely Bhuzzards.(click on the image to view a larger version)This is just my opinion, not canonical. Not everybody will agree with my classifications, and that’s okay! If you’d like to make your own version, you...
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