New Year’s Promises.

I guess it belongs to every blogger’s responsibilities to write some kind of wrapping of the year post. However, I regard it more as a responsibility for myself to go back to what has been going on in my life during the past year. New Year is not only time for dreaming for the year to come but also time for reflecting myself: where did I start from, what kind of journey did I make and where I am now.

It feels like the year has passed by really quickly (I wonder if the time is just accelerating its speed each year you grow older…?), but my journey during it has clearly left its marks on me. I feel stronger, more self-aware and awake. I have learned to view things in more positive way and to wander the beauty and wonders of my surroundings. I have learned to love, respect and listen to myself more. I have learned to give everything of me and to let go. I have learned to see my self-centralism and my self-serving needs. I graduated from law school and started my professional career. I went through two difficult endings. I got myself a place to call home. In the end of all of this, I’m proud to say that I have grown into a better version of myself.

Still, after this tough but amazing journey I feel somehow lost. Now it is time to find my path for my next adventure.

Dance-wise my year has taught me a lot. I decided to concentrate on my primary dance style and that decision has borne its fruit. I have been obediently attending to my Zouk classes three nights per week, paying closely attention to the slightest details and minor variations. In consequence I have taken a big step forward and been given some unforgettable opportunities to show what I’ve got. Yet, there is lots of potential in me to go further and I’m eagerly looking forward next year’s challenges to come.

One year ago I wrote that I want to learn to “think more positively of everything”. In relation to dancing I especially didn’t “want to find myself in the situation where I would put myself down because I don't improve, because I'm not as good as I wanted to be or because sometimes my body just doesn't behave the way I wanted to”. I’m now happy to realize that even though I have been concentrating to improve my dance technique, I haven’t gone into this negative mind-setting where I have been many times before. Even though my dancing has been focused on learning more than having fun in dance parties, I have been able to keep the joy of dancing present in my practices. This is something I definitely want to take with me from this year.

What am I looking from the new year then? Firstly, I’m hoping to find a dance partner since this year was the first without one. I have been doing well on my own but I feel like something is missing. A dance partner is someone with who I can share my passion with, dream together, have common goals and improve with. Partner dancing is something to do with someone, with a partner, so that is something what I wish for. Secondly, I’m going to work with my balance and body control. One way of doing this is starting some sort of partner acrobatics with a dancer friend of mine. I’m also going to continue my yoga journey towards more stability demanding asanas and hand balances.

Thirdly, I’m going to concentrate more of my energy to love. Yes, you read that right, love. I want to learn to love more – of everything. I’m not talking (only) about romantic kind of love here. I want to love myself more. I want to love my friends more. I want to love my family more. I want to love more of the things I do. I want to love life more. I want to think of dancing more like spreading around universal love: partner dancing can be like giving love to your partner; taking care of him (or her), giving all of your concentration to him, enjoying the dance to the fullest with him, channeling your positive energies to him and making him feel good about your connection. Yes, I want to love more the dancers I dance with.

I want to fall in love with every single dance I dance through the year to come.

One thing is for sure: I will start my year 2015 with a proper cleaning of myself – physically and mentally – for getting the best possible kick off for my new journey. I wish you all happy New Year and new exciting adventures to come!

End of the Year Swinging.

West Coast Swing is a dance I definitely want to learn dance well at some point in my life. That point has not been this year, though, because the times I have been dancing WCS during the year can be counted with one hand fingers. However, I wanted to go back to this dance before the year was over and so I headed for two WCS events: WCS boat cruise on 29-30th November and Swinging Xmas Party Weekend on 12-14th December.

I went to a similar boat cruise one year ago and I remember having a good time there, though that time I was there with my best friend, who fortunately also dances WCS, and she might have had something to do with my good memories. This time I was brave enough to go “alone”, without even knowing who will be my cabin roommate. Luckily I was partnered up with an awesome roommate with who I quickly made friends with. Getting to know to her was actually one of my highlights of the whole cruise – it is not always easy to get to know to someone (especially a follower) more deeply during a busy dance event.

The Swinging Xmas Party Weekend was an event I wasn’t supposed to go in the beginning since my plan was to spend the weekend in peace at home relaxing and doing Christmas things. However, I got a message on the last minute from a dance friend and, to be honest, it wasn’t that hard to convince me to join the event after all. I’m pretty pleased that I went because not only did I find the workshops useful I also got to hang out with my best friend and the new friend I made in the boat cruise. As a cherry on the top I won the novice JnJ competition on Saturday and now have the next WCS event booked: Neverland Swing 2015 in the end of February. Woohoo!

Novice JnJ winners.

These two events brought me back some feelings I haven’t had for a while. Not long time ago did I write about scary advanced dancer phenomenon and all of the sudden I went from that into being a worried beginner dancer. Not long ago did I declare that advanced dancers like to dance also with beginners and soon after I am the one who needs to be convinced about that. In the parties I felt like I wouldn’t be fun to dance with and got shy at asking others to dance with me. Result: not much dancing done. Stressing out that others wouldn’t have fun led into that I didn’t have much fun. Not cool.

At the moment I’m generally quite frustrated about my WCS dancing: I still haven’t got a proper understanding of the basic technique, especially dance posture and stepping, and I know my dancing doesn’t have that WCS touch in it at all. It is a dance style that doesn’t feel natural to me and even though I have really been trying to observe and understand, I still haven’t “got” the right kind of movement to my body. To compare this to Argentinean Tango, for example, it has been pretty easy for me to get the right kind of feeling in it even though I have been practicing it less than WCS, and thus I feel like Argentinean Tango is just more natural way of moving to me. This is exactly what happened with me and Zouk: I instantly felt that the movements in Zouk were almost like made for my body. However, this is not the case with WCS: why I fell for the dance style was because I saw how much fun everyone were having in the dance floor and I wanted to learn to do the same.

I can hear you saying that I just need more practice. Yes I do, but I know just a little practice won’t do it. I can promise to give it a try, really give it a try, but I’m afraid this super fun dance style will never feel natural way of moving for me. Some might say that I’m just being too critical on myself – I won the novice JnJ competition and all last weekend so I shouldn’t be so bad – but I have seen myself dancing and it just doesn’t look as it should. I could settle for being a low intermediate WCS dancer but with my ambition I know that is not going to satisfy me. Even though I would try to say to myself that WCS is just a dance to have fun and not really to polish, in the end I know I would want to go forward and make it look and feel good. Not perfect, but at least to the level that I wouldn’t feel awkward dancing it.

Well, enough with this opening up! I’ll have to wait and see where this dance style takes me – or if it takes anywhere at all.

Greetings from Tango Class.

This fall my Monday evenings have been spent in Argentinean Tango classes. Yesterday was the last class of the season and we had a special Christmas version of the normal classes. The classroom was decorated with candles and Christmas lights, dancers had been dressed nicely and there were sweets, like gingerbreads and fruit cake, as well as glögi served. Unlike the usual classes, you could pop into any/all of the three classes for the price of one. What a nice way to end the season!

I have found Argentinean Tango to be very useful dance style to practice even though I haven’t really been dancing it outside the classes. It is a social dance and the emphasis in the classes has strongly been on leading and following, so the classes has given me a great opportunity to improve my following skills – something that is valuable in regards to any partner dancing style. Misplacing a step with only few centimeters can change the whole dance figure or make the couple lose their balance. I really love this delicate touch that Argentinean Tango has. It has also directed much of my concentration into my frame and rotation of the upper body that, yet again, are crucial things in many dance styles. Also my posture and footwork are something that I feel I have been improving with; I got good feedback especially from my “clean footwork” from our teacher.

If you want to give Argentinean Tango a try, I can highly recommend Tangokoulu’s classes. You will be needing your own partner to the class though since there is no rotation of partners but I have found this pretty good way of practicing the small nuances of the tango technique. I’m not quite sure what my dance spring is going to look like but these classes are very likely to be included. Maybe I will even find the courage of going to a milonga.

DIZC & HZF 2014.

I have been trying to start writing this post for countless of times now. I feel like I have so much in my heart to share but somehow I can't put it to words in the way that I'd like to. I would like to write my feelings down as beautiful as they are inside of me and yet I feel that goal is impossible to achieve. After lingering with this post for more than a month, I decided that something is better than nothing, so here we go.

In the end of October I was fortunate to receive a huge amount of wonderful dancing memories in two really different dance festivals: Dutch International Zouk Congress and Helsinki Zouk Festival. During this intensive dancing period I noticed, even more, that the most beautiful ingredient of partner dancing is exactly those memories that are created together with my dance partners, my fellow dancers and my dance community. Having two intensive dance weekends in a row is definitely an exhausting experience especially if you want to do it the hard-core way - take every possible workshop, dance through the parties from the very beginning until the last song and in between socialize with your dancer friends - but it gives so much in return that somehow you just forget your tiredness, sore feet, the forthcoming work week and keep on dancing. Result: happiness that makes you, well, so speechless that it is hard to write anything down.

Having those two such a different festivals so close to each other gave a nice contrast to both of them. The Dutch congress was a huge event with up to thousand attendees, dozens of artists, packed dance floors (in two floors), live performances, variety of shows and too many great workshops to choose from. There were so many dancers you could loose your friends to the dance floor - no kidding! It was the place to be if you wanted to spend the weekend just dancing and exploring new dance connections. The party was like going to a big candy store; you didn't know which one to pick!

 

The Helsinki festival was pretty tiny against it, but the utmost warm atmosphere was breathtaking, the quality of performances was superb and the parties were one of the best I've ever attended. Maybe it was the quality over quantity that made it shine out so bright from one of the biggest European Zouk events. Really, by far my favorite dance event I have ever been to and I'm not the only one: see, for example, my fellow Zouk dancer's blog post about HZF.

In Helsinki festival I was also given some nice opportunities to experience another side of dance classes: being a dance teacher. Our Rio Zouk Style team gave beginners' classes on Friday to the festival attendees and we all were really happy with the experience. I had the privilege to teach with my own teacher, which of course made things easier for me since he knew exactly what to do in case I got lost. Everything went extremely well and I really liked teaching with him. I must admit, though, that I was pretty nervous; not really that much about the class itself but the dance demo in the end of it. Two days before I was actually crying in a tram and almost cancelling the whole demo because I felt I would just screw it up badly - we've just had a group practice and I happened to dance exceptionally bad that day. Luckily I didn't and neither did I fall down or screw up; I was actually very pleased with it. Yet another nice dance memory caught in tape.

In addition to the beginner classes, me and Ngirl instructed partner stretching & relaxation classes in the end of both workshop days. We took some elements from partner yoga classes we have been going together and set our goal as to calm down the participants after their hectic days. In the beginning it seemed a hard task but in the end both classes were extremely successful and many came to tell us how much they loved it. It felt so amazing to see everyone living in the moment, concentrating on their partner and dropping down everything. It was simply beautiful.

How do you like my Halloween party costume on Friday night's party?

It always hits me. I know what an amazing feeling dancing can give me. I know how deeply I can loose myself into a dance. I know all this, but when I feel it, the intensity of the feelings can really blow my mind away. I still remember, after more than 5 weeks, how amazed I was after dancing in HZF parties. There were so many good dances I couldn't choose "the dance" of the night. So many great dancers that time was lost too fast to dance enough with all of them. Not a single moment I would have felt uncomfortable, lost or disappointed on the dance floor. The atmosphere was so captivating, music so inspiring and dancers so connective that the dance flow hit me from the first dance on and before I noticed it was already time to go home. Purely ecstatic from the beginning to the end!

Well, as I was afraid, the above didn't pass on the beautiful feelings as I would have wanted. You see, this one weekend spent in HZF in the middle of dark autumn (combined with the great "warm up" weekend in Holland) was most probably the highlight of my dance year 2014. Not only because it was my home festival or because I was not only a participant there but most importantly because of the mind blowing dance parties. It is hard to explain exactly what made the parties so amazing (and I'm not talking only for my behalf here!) but if you were there, you know precisely what I mean. We all will be anxiously waiting for the next year's festival.