Dance Directions.

Lately most of the dance bloggers have been posting their weekly autumn training schedules into their blogs. As I wrote earlier, I feel uneasy about having such fixed schedules, but I guess as a dance blogger this is one of the compulsory posts to make.

So, the last days I've been trying to figure out what is going to happen in my dance life this fall. Most of it has been reasoning that whether I should continue with Zouk or take another direction. On the other hand I would love to improve my Zouk even more and take a step towards to an advanced level, but on the other hand it might be good to give it a rest and try something else. There is of course the financial side of everything and also this influenced to my final decision. So here we go: its time put the dance style I've been dancing so much almost the last two years to a rest and direct my dance passion some other dance styles. Phew.

Now, I know some of you my beloved readers will object, but this doesn't mean that I would give up Zouk totally. I'm already looking forward that the autumn practicas will start rolling and there is no doubt I'd like to go dancing in Zouk parties. I'm also taking Andressa's ladies styling course and going to the Helsinki Zouk festival in November. What this means is that I won't put my objectives into improving constantly or think that I would have to get any better. I'll go forward if it comes naturally and if I don't then I won't stress about it.

So, what next then? Well, I have now signed in for a 12 week Voguing course and 10 week West Coast Swing course (even though I wouldn't like to fix my weeks, but this was almost the only possible and most affordable choice to make). Moreover, I was planning on going to Argentinean Tango every now and then. However, where I would want to put my biggest efforts into would be West Coast. I would like to find a good practice partner to get my technique sorted out and to be able to attend some bigger events with high-level teachers. Let's see how things work out.

I have also been wanting to start doing something for ages now. Something that contributes to dancing as improved strength, balance and flexibility, all of which I really need and want to improve. So now I've finally making it happen. I'm talking about yoga. Last month I had an excellent chance to do yoga outdoors when some of Helsinki's yoga instructors organized free yoga sessions in some of the many parks around the city. This week they opened a pop-up yoga studio called Pranama in the center of Helsinki and I just love the idea behind the studio: they want to make good quality yoga available to everyone by giving people an option to pay as much as they want from the classes. All the profit they make goes straight to the instructors and to their training. This is a place I'm definitely going to go weekly. Yoga has already made me feel a lot better in my body and that is something really important to a dancer: a healthy, strong and flexible body to dance with.

Yoga in the park together with almost 200 people. Photos by Sinebrychoff Park Rangers.

One of the things I want to include into my normal week, however, is enough emptiness. By emptiness I mean unplanning, flexibility, time for anything, spontaneousness, free evenings, random dancing, whatever comes to my mind at that moment. It might sound like I have already booked all of my days with the dance courses, but actually the timing of the classes enable me to have quite a lot of nothing for every day. If someone suddenly asks me to, say, have a dance practice or just to catch up maybe, I want to be able to make it happen if not the same day then the next. Being too busy is not good for me.