It’s been getting easier to dance

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Due to my lifestyle, I aim to dance every second week. And I have been aiming to do this for about six months. I dance for ten minutes in one week and I get inspired and excited and day dream about dancing and then a month or two later I dance for another ten minutes. My routine was really out of whack and obviously I wasn’t getting any better without practicing ever. 

However, this week has been a noticeable difference. I am just dancing roughly ten minutes a day, three times this week. First of all, what changed? 

I reminded myself, I love to dance. In addition, at the beginning of the week, I went for a walk and listened to music and then choreographed dance moves in my mind to the varied music genres. I feel this is what just helped inspire myself for the next day to just dance. 

I also created my own ballet barre using an outdoor chair and placed it indoors. I remind myself to gently place my hands on the chair and do all different barre ballet exercises, I used to do as a child in ballet class. 

I figure if I can improve my strength in my legs and core and focus on this once every second week, I will be getting stronger by the end of the year. When I was around 12 years old, my ballet teacher said to me, practice doing lifts (ie. standing flat on the ground, using my feet and legs to rise) as often as possible and I did. 

So I am doing that again. If I can build ballet strength with the correct technique in positions, any type of genre dance I do will benefit. Contemporary dancing especially. 

Now when I’m walking, I also aim to pull in my core when I can. The more I pull in my core the stronger my entire body will be. Plus using my core holds my body in the right position. 

I’m just finding ways outside of a routine to just dance and rebuild. 

Setting the foundations to dance is very important. By practicing the ability to lift and hold, means when I spin on my toes and lift my leg to attitude, I can hold myself up the entire time on my toes. Whereas, if I don’t practice this very simple movement then I would probably have my feet fall mid-spin, making it appear that my dance ability and technique was low. 

And that’s half the battle, if your technique is amazing, then your audience is going to get a better performance but they also are awed by your dancing because it’s flawless. 

Something I didn’t really get into as a student of ballet and dance were my facials. My dance school didn’t really seem to work on this for performances. And I’m not blaming them. There are just some dancers who really perform not just the movement but with their facials as well. It makes a performance go from great to stunning. So I do, I practice my facials and I just go all out. Because the more I normalise it to myself when dancing to nobody else, the easier it will be and more natural looking when I take it to the big world audience.

It’s interesting already, where I am only dancing for a short period and training for short periods but I know exactly where I want to begin and work on. And this is because I danced for years in my younger life. It never really goes away, I just have to rebuild and train. 

Of course I want to do more than 10 minutes at a time. However, at the moment my stamina is not letting me past that threshold. And this is why, if you want, you can go to a class because you will be pushed further. But I’m happy at this stage to dance ten minutes a couple of times a week. I just want to dance. I want to do it my way.