At Crossroads

Things my new dance teacher (Joanne) shouted at me tonight:

• Take your time!
  
• Hop back two three!
  
• Knee, knee, knee!!
  
• Straight legs!
  
• Pull UP! UP!
  
• Cross your feet!
  
• And turn your toes out.
  
• Think about where your weight is. Which leg are you on?
  
• LOOK AT YOUR KNEE!
  
• Slow down!

I need to:

• Stop babying my right ankle and bending my knee when I come down from jumps.
  
• Have some more confidence in my dancing.
  
• But also get over myself and stop thinking I'm hot shit and should grasp steps instantly from divination.
  
• Get used to dancing with distractions.
  
• Practice like a mofo this week.

I am:

• Seriously out of shape.
  
• Lazy with my pointing my toes.
  
• Sore.
  
• Minging.
  
• Exhausted.
  
• Frustrated.
  
• Overly critical of myself.
  
• Inspired.
  
• Happy.

My new dance teacher is tough. I like that about her. Last week she threw me in the mix super quick and had me learn their second slip jig step. And tonight she had me learning the first step and continuing on the second step. Slip jigs are hard (but my favorite) and these steps are especially tricky because she has a different dance style than Colleen and the Coyle school. The hardest thing is her cuts. She hates, and I mean HATES that I open my hip up during cuts. Which is what I thought I was supposed to be doing and so I practiced it wrong all week. It's also how I learned it with Coyle. This is one of the biggest style differences between the two schools and seeing my hip open is tantamount to fingernails on a chalkboard for Joanne. It's going to take a lot of practice and patience to get this right.

Joanne doesn't lead the class like a normal class. Instead we're all broken into groups around the room, each doing our own thing. This is both good (everyone moving and working at their own pace) and bad (very distracting, especially with different music and hard shoe dancing). Joanne meanwhile moves about the room watching dancers and working with them bit by bit. She has eyes on the back of her head though, and half the stuff she yelled at me, she yelled from across the room. I am very encouraged by the other dancers in the class, who all seem very talented and proficient. Some of the girls getting ready for the feis in two weeks were amazing at their treble jigs tonight, and I'm excited for when I get to their level. I also learned that two of Joanne's students are going for their TCRGs, a rigorous process to say the least, and this I also find very inspiring and encouraging about the school.

I got to class early tonight and Joanne and I worked together briefly to go over the first slip jig step. When I didn't do it perfectly after the first time and got frustrated, Joanne berated me slightly, "Well you only learned it 35 seconds ago! Give yourself a break!." It is so much harder this time around, but I can only imagine it will be that much more rewarding.

I have a lot of work ahead of me.

What helps

Mike of Renal Failure commented on my last whiny entry, telling me that Indian Buffet Lunch would help with all my problems. He's not wrong. I am overdue for some Indian Buffet healing.

You know what also helps? This:




Matt Smith and Karen Gillan dorky dancing. I ship them in real life for shit like this.

Also: THAT SWEATER.

Want/Need

Currently craving and desperately seeking:

• Money. I am so across-the-board tired of being poor.
  
  
• A new laptop. So much more of my creative work would actually get done if I had a laptop. I had planned on buying one with my tax return, but a good chunk of my tax return went towards car insurance. See above about sick of being poor.
  
  
• Stamina and grace for dancing. I know I need to adjust and my body needs to adapt again, but I am quickly learning that dancing at nearly 30 is considerably harder than dancing at 17. So much so that my new dance teacher told me to "throttle back" lest I hurt myself.
  
  
• A teleportation machine. How have we not figured this out yet? It would greatly benefit me in getting to dance class and the Scotsman in a timely fashion, not to mention be environmentally conscience. Also: swift jaunts to London and Dublin.
  
  
• The ability to correctly predict World Cup winners. I've bollocked myself in my pool. There's $10 I'll never see again.
  
  
• Someone to do the Table of Cases indexing for my law book. It's annual law book time so that means it's time for endless case indexing. I'm only on chapter 4 and I want to EAT my FACE.
  
  
• An endless supply of Cobb Salads from Salad Stop. They're my new addiction.
  
  
• The latest episodes of Doctor Who already torrented for me to watch. See above about not having a laptop, and thus having to sneak episodes on other computers. I'm two episodes behind and it's making me antsy.
  
  
• Not to be spoiled on True Blood. I just finished season 1 via Netflix and I'm trying to avoid season 2 spoilers which is hard when season 3 just started and everyone is talking about "where things left off."
  
  
• Amanda Palmer's Radiohead Ukulele cover album to hurry up and be released already. The first single has me very excited about the entire album.
  
  
• This week to be over already.
  
  
• Inspiration for writing, both in this blog and other places, on topics other than Irish dance.

Weekend Recap

Just to keep this from being an all dance all the time blog, here's a quick run down of my weekend.

I was feeling itchy and claustrophobic in my apartment on Friday so at the advice of the Scotsman I headed over to his place, making a pit stop at Trader Joe's and the liquor store along the way. Since I got to his house kind of late, we spent Friday night noshing on chips and queso and watching cheesy action flicks.

Saturday we spent the day checking out various tattoo places in The Scotsman's area. The Scotsman has a hankering for two new tattoos (he currently has one of a dragon on his left calf); one of the Celtic Tree of Life [similar to this image, only without the outside border], the other of another dragon, with more detail. The Celtic Tree of Life he'd like to get on his right shoulder and the dragon on his inner left forearm. So we went to about three different places, checking out the portfolios of different artists and getting price quotes. In the end, he decided to go back to the place he got his first tattoo, and so today at 4:00, he's getting the Tree of Life done on his shoulder. I am bummed that I can't be with him, but he's wanted this Celtic Tree of Life tattoo for close to 15 years, so he's antsy for it.

After our tattoo excursions, we headed to Temple of Gaia (the Scotsman's coven) for a full moon ritual. The ritual was supposed to be closed and I was content to just stay at the Scotsman's house and wait for him to come back, but I think he felt bad about leaving me for 4+ hours. So he asked his High Priestess if she minded me coming, and since they were only doing the ritual and no lessons and only expecting one other coven member to attend, she said it was fine.

Sunday we headed to New Hope and spent the entire glorious day in the sunshine shopping. Remarkably, I had never been to New Hope before. We had a great time, and I spent my money a little too easily, but managed to buy things I really needed. I finally found a chalice for my altar and got a second emergency back-up chalice (for travel mostly, since my main chalice is ceramic and easily breakable). The chalice was the main thing I've been missing and despite all my searching had been unable to find one that "felt" right to me.

After coming back from New Hope, we spent Sunday evening in the Scotsman's back yard, just hanging out and talking. He lit a fire in his fire pit, lit all his tiki torches and we sat in the garden with drinks and a few clove cigarettes. It was a lovely night, not too hot, with lots of stars in the sky.

Monday morning The Scotsman's Tae Kwon Do club was marching in a local parade, so I went along and walked the parade with them, handing out fliers. It was hot out there, and every time the parade stopped, the students would do their forms and demonstrate self-defense moves. The Scotsman was leading them (he is quite handsome doing Tae Kwon Do, I must say) and sweat was just pouring off of them all. The parade went for over 2 hours and we were beat by the time it was done. We spent afternoon in the air conditioning, napping on the couch and watching episodes of True Blood. We had a cook out that evening with yummy summer foods.

Hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day!

Changing Teams

On Friday I discovered that Rosemarie Timoney does not have a TCRG. Well, I say "discovered" but it was more of a realization. It's not like Rosemarie is hiding the fact that she doesn't have one, nor does she pretend to have one. It's something I may have already known about, actually, and either forgotten or blocked it out. A TCRG, by the way, is an Irish dancing teaching certification. Now, Rosemarie has been dancing since the age of 4, won the South Derry Championship at 17, and started teaching in 1966. Clearly the woman knows her stuff and has no need of a piece of paper telling her she's qualified to teach.

But. Without an instructor with a TCRG, I can't compete. So on Friday I had a long, long think. Do I need to compete? Or can I just be happy learning to dance again? Ultimately I sided with competition. This has very little to do with a love of competition. I mean, I hate to lose more than I like to win, and I will admit to having a competitive streak. And certainly there's a level of thrill in competition. But it has more to do with goals. There are certain steps and techniques you learn when you reach different levels of dancing and ultimately I want to have goal posts for marking those levels. And the best way to do that is by competing. For example, until I place first in a competition at a beginner level, I will only learn and work on beginner steps. It forces me to prefect them and work hard. And when I place first in all my dances in beginner, I move up to novice and learn novice steps. It puts all the weight of advancement on me. When I was with Coyle, I never blamed Colleen for not moving me up to prizewinner, nor could I had I wanted to. I never took first place in my slip jig, only second place. And even though I won first place in all my other dances (and even though the same girl kept beating me in the slip jig again and again), Colleen wouldn't teach me any new steps until I had perfected them all. So I just worked at it over and over and over. Competitions are a benchmark of your skill, not just an excuse for trophies and accolades.

Whereas if I was with Rosemarie, not having that benchmark or standard to guide me, I would be constantly itching to move onto the next big thing and wondering why she wasn't moving me forward, teaching me new steps yet or whatever. I'd be getting frustrated and impatient. I want to learn toe stands. Teach me how to do those big front clicks and little turn outs. Show me how to do a switch leap. Me me me me, show me, now now now now.

Ultimately, if I'm going to spend all this money for lessons and work at making dance part of my life again, I'm doing it properly. I want to master it. I want to be good at this, not just fanny around and arse about learning cool dance tricks.

And so, I will not be going with Timoney Irish Dancers.

Now what?

Well, I've been backed into a corner and now I have no other choice. I'll be dancing with Crossroads Irish Dancers. I've "avoided" Crossroads for one reason and one reason only: the distance. It will take me an hour to get to class. But, hell. Give me an A for effort, because I've researched all other dance school options and this is the closest one, TCRG certified, that is teaching adults year-round. And you know what's sort of comforting? They teach ONLY adults. I won't be shoved aside for younger students or forced to do endless ceilis because teachers don't know what to do with us. Crossroad dancers compete; they've placed regionally and nationally for figure dancing (figure dancing is similar to ceili dancing, but much more precise and feels more like a team sport). They're serious about dancing. Also classes are significantly cheaper with Crossroads, so much so that for the same monthly price with Timoney or what I'm currently paying with McDade, I can take two classes back-to-back (so driving an hour won't feel pointless). And now that I have a new car and have no qualms or worries about driving long distances at night, there's no excuse.

I've already contacted the instructor. I start June 9.