Inspiration
...similar to love, I guess, turns up when you're not actively looking.
I've been feeling super frustrated with my dancing lately - I am so ridiculously OUT OF SHAPE, my stamina is non-existant, my balance is shite and I've just generally been feeling... blerg. I've been BORED with all my music, so much so that I've been unable to even really care about the fact that I haven't been practising and the longer I fail to practise the longer it's been since I've danced last and THE SUCKIER I SUCK, etc etc.
Today, Himself has invited his boss (Regional Manager of his department for the whole of the South Island, ooh ahh) to our house to dinner. He respects her a great deal and likes her, so I'm looking forward to meeting her. I've spent most of the day tootling around the house tidying it up (we... are not the world's most tidy people, it must be said), and making food (potato salad - featuring chives and mint from the garden! Taboulli NOT featuring parsley from my own garden, because my poor parsley plant is still recovering from being rather over-harvested. Kofte with sticky honey mint glaze. Nom nom nom!).
I've been listening to music with the iPod in the other room - I have a Playlist of 65 of my favourite songs that I usually just stick on, but this time I selected by genre and left it to play while I pottered in the kitchen. Thus, forcing myself to listen to music that I don't usually listen to and haven't heard in a while. And all of a sudden, DING! Lightbulb over the head! What was is doing there? DING! DOUBLE LIGHTBULB! SO INTENSE!
I've decided to choreograph a saiidi stick piece to add to my teaching repertoire. You know, the one for when I have classes again? Even though I don't currently have classes, or a place to teach, and am in a town with no dance scene? Yeah, those classes. It's a 3:17 (PERFECT length for class work and for subsequent possibly hafla performances? Getting a head of myself, I know) mizmar-heavy piece that people are BOUND to hate at first (MIZMAR! HIDE YOUR CATS!), but that I absolutely love and had forgotten about.
I moved from saiidi to beledi and was suddenly struck by how long it's been since I danced beledi. AGES. Ages and ages and ages. In fact, I think the last time I danced beledi was in Fife, about three to three and a half YEARS ago. In my shiny Eman galabeya, and I looked like a sausage because I was beginning to put the weight back on again. Three years is TOO LONG to have not danced beledi. I started noodling around a little, and felt nothing but joy. Previously I'd tried running through some of the magency-type pieces, I'd tried running through some of the combos on Combination Nation 1, and just succeeded in PISSING MYSELF OFF with how crap my technique has become, throwig a strop, and swearing it was all OVERRRRRRR and I would never dance again.
But returning to the music that's the lifeblood and soul of the dance rather than the orchestrated "for performance" style? Bliss.
Why the damn hell didn't I think of that sooner?!