Our spring Zouk classes came to an end last week. I haven't really had any regular practice partner to practice Zouk with, but still I feel like my technique has improved a lot during these months. This week I took a private from F&A as a kind of a close up for the spring course and got some good tips for working with one of my biggest weaknesses: balance. It was nice to hear from them that I have been going forward with my technique really well. This week I also had a practice with JV and, for the first time this year, I videotaped my dancing. It has been a long break and I was prepared for the worst ("omg, do I really look that horrible!?"), but in the end it didn't look too bad! Actually, JV posted the video on his Facebook account and we got a lot of good feedback from it. Some could say it was a brave thing to post a practice video publicly in that way, since those always inevitably contain mistakes and flaws that you might not want to reveal to everyone. However, I got some good energy from it and it was nice to receive encouraging comments from our friends and even teachers. You shouldn't be too afraid of mistakes anyway because a dance will never look perfect in a video. And its the mistakes you lean the best from.
Last month I have had two practice partners with who I have been practicing weekly. With AK we've been doing lots of things, my favorite being lifts, balances and acrobatic exercises. He has also been teaching me some LA style Salsa while I have been teaching some Zouk in return. With PL it has been Finish ballroom dances, mostly Tango, Slow Waltz and Cha-cha. I hope that I can continue practicing regularly with both of them during the summer because it is good to have some variety in dancing styles rather than sticking only with one. In addition I should find someone with who to have Zouk practices to keep up with my improved technique during the summer break from regular classes.
I have been having time off from work on May and since that freed me extra time I decided to go through quite a radical diet for a couple of weeks period: I cut basically all carbs and put my body into ketosis. I have never done a diet like this and to be honest I was quite skeptical about it in the beginning. I nevertheless wanted to give a different kind of challenge for my body and to also put my focus into something else than what was going around in my mind. Despite my skeptical attitude, the two weeks actually made me feel really good and kind of purified my body. The diet gave me good energy for my dance practices and it made me think of my nutrition more carefully. As a dancer I want to have a strong and healthy body to dance with and a diet makes quite a big part of that. There is a good possibility that I'll make another intensive diet period like this later on summer.
Besides giving more thoughts to my diet I have been trying to strengthen my muscles, especially the core. I admit I have been a bit too lazy with my once-a-week work outs and I should increase those at least to twice a week, but yoga is something that I have found to be really good for me, both to my body and mind. I just don't like doing work outs that I have to force myself into: I rather do something fun and challenging at the same time. Now that there are no dance classes during the summer, I should use the time to make my body stronger. Anyone willing to become my work out buddy and to give us both more motivation for a better body to dance with? I also lined up for this rowing event for July, Sulkavan Soutu, in which teams of twelve row about 60 km, so I think I should prepare somehow for that.
One thing that I realized just now when I was browsing through my older blog posts (something that I enjoy doing every now and then - one of the reasons to keep up writing my memories here) was that, like an year ago, I'm living with Michaelo at the moment: last year he visited me in Brisbane and now I'm living at his place. This time, though, we're not having our morning Zouk practices as we were in Brisbane. It is a shame actually because I really loved starting my mornings with dancing! Well anyway, I'll be living with him only for couple of months before I find my own home. Let's see if I'll find a nice place with enough space to have my yoga and dance practices in!
Tomorrow morning I'm starting at my new work. How exciting! The only thing I'm worried about is that I'll start working long days and not having enough time for dancing. If you catch me doing that too much, could you just kidnap me to a dance floor, please?
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