Hunting for the Perfect Dance Picture.

The few following days after a dance festival are quite exciting. Not only because you’re still living in the dance bubble you went into during the festival or that you are getting FB friend requests from the dancers you enjoyed dancing the most, but also because of the dance pictures that are slowly but surely appearing to social media. I love that many dance congress organizers nowadays bring photographers to their events to memorialize the amazing dancing moments the participants are having in the classes and parties; it is the best kind of a souvenir to bring home from a dance festival (in addition to your amazing memories of course).

When it comes to Zouk, however, a perfect shot is hard to get. There is always this fear that something really horrible will come up and hopes that this time the photographer did an amazing job with you. If you were lucky enough to get the photographer's attention from hundreds of dancers, oftentimes there is some kind of “flaw” in the otherwise perfect picture: awkward body posture, not so flattering angle, weird hand positioning, hair in the face, some strange facial expression, bad lighting or an extra person on the way. It is not only that the dancers have to dance so that it looks good but it is also a matter of split seconds for the photographer to get the right timing for the picture. Maybe this doesn’t apply to the guys as much but usually at least we girls would like to get that beautiful and sensual shot of ourselves burning the dance floor, preferably with an amazing leader who also looks great in the picture (though not stealing the whole attention from us). You know, the kind of a shot you will save as your phone’s background picture so you can stare at it before you go to sleep.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, may I present you (drum roll) my perfect dance picture taken by Robert Malecki from III Zouk Libre festival:

[Edit: Unfortunately Mr. Malecki, unlike other dance festival photographers, didn't want me to publish any of his pictures here in this blog, but you can view the picture I'm talking about through this link.]

Not only the picture itself look stunning but this is actually taken from a dance after which I knew, even if it was from the first party, that it was going to be the best dance of the whole festival. It was the kind of dance which admiring dancers would gather around to watch the magic happen and which would draw also the attention of the photographer, as luckily happened this time. It was the kind of dance after which I couldn’t stop smiling widely until my cheeks hurt. It was the kind of dance people would come to comment and compliment on later during the festival. But most importantly, it was the kind of dance that truly connected two dancers and inspiring music into a beautiful and enjoyable moment that, as luck would have it, was immortalized as the perfect picture I have been hunting for.

(And yes, I did save it as my phone background picture.)

Made to Dance Together.

I need to write about this dancer. You see, I think we were made to dance together.

When we dance, there are no limits. When we dance, there is magic around. When we dance, there is no time, no others, no have-to-be's. When we dance, we don't want to stop.

And when we finally do stop, we look into each other with amaze, not fully knowing what just happened. We just know that it was something exceptional.

I still remember the astonishment I felt after dancing with him for the first time around two and half years ago. We were both quite beginners at that time and we seriously had no idea how we were able to do all those things together. Every time I think back those dances we shared a waive of happiness runs through my body and I can't help to smile. I didn't mention him specifically when I wrote about the weekend we met but this feeling I described back then came undoubtedly from dancing with him:

"On Sunday's party I felt like I was invincible, like I could do anything, that my body didn't put any limitations to my dancing."

After our first encounter it took more than a year until we were reunited on the dance floor. First he didn't recognize me but I could see it from his face that it all came back to him as soon as we took the first dance steps together. To my surprise after all that time he still remembered exactly how I felt in his arms by wondering whether I had become taller; yes, I had started to wear heels. However, it was not until the last summer we really re-explored our magical connection – it was some late hours in Breda's congress when we couldn't stop for an hour or so. Needless to say those dances changed my evening upside down.

You can maybe imagine my heart skipping a beat last weekend when I noticed, to my very pleasant surprise, that he happened to be in the Zouk Libre festival with me. Our dance deepened little by little that weekend ending with a grande finale on Sunday night (or rather the early hours of the morning) – it was the kind of dancing I’ve never experienced before. We went into a journey of exploration, tested the limits of our bodies and our common dance style, laughed our heads off, had moments of great sensuality, reacted and counter-reacted to each other’s movements, did crazy lifts and tricks either of us had never even seen before… We continued for more than an hour until he realized his return flight was about to leave soon – I don’t know for how long we could have gone on if it wasn’t for that. The first thought we both had after that night was that we need to dance again; the exceptionality of our connection was too obvious for both of us. This time we won’t wait for another year: we will be dancing again soon, that is for sure.

Thus, if you see me smiling wider than usual during the weeks to come, I might just be thinking back that night and wondering if it really happened.

My New Year Detox.

Couple of months ago I started to read about detoxing and got excited: this is something I want to try! What would be better timing for this kind of challenge, I figured, than the beginning of the year, the promised time for healthy choices? I have never done a detox before and didn’t really want to do any juice fasting kind of diet, so I went to PUR well-being store and got myself a gentle 10 day detox package. The basic idea behind the gentle detox is that you eliminate certain food from you diet and add some ingredients that accelerate your digestion and help your internal organs to purify.

The whole point with detox is to detoxify your body from different kind of toxins that are absorbed and stored in to the body from food, cosmetics, air pollution, antibiotics etc. The body does this cleaning process naturally and thus there has been a lot of writing about detox being a big scam. Neither I believe that real and natural body cleansing comes in a pill or with a miracle diet, but I wanted to try out whether the natural process can be supported and speeded up. The point with my detox was not to lose weight or starve myself but to provide my body with nutritious and healthy food while the natural detoxifying process does the work (hopefully) more efficiently. If you’re interested on reading more about this kind of detox, one good article series about it can be found from here.

Getting ready: my New Years eve's shoppings looked a bit different this year!

During my detox I eliminated sugar, gluten, meat, dairy products, coffee, alcohol and starch-full ingredients such as potato from my diet. I also aimed to prepare my food on my own from fresh ingredients to avoid preservatives and additives (I usually eat my lunch out and thus I never know what possible things I put into my body on weekly basis). The most common question I got was that what do I eat then. Actually, I ate a lot: vegetables (a lot of those!), berries, fruit, beans, lentils, seeds, nuts, almond and oat milk, green and herbal tea, soy yogurt, fish, eggs… What I really loved about this was that I went back to my kitchen (where I haven’t spent that much time lately), filled up my fridge with green stuff and tried out new things. I also gave more thought on making my snacks healthier and brought nuts and fruit to my workplace.

My every morning started with a glass of water with juice of ½ lemon and tsp of green mix from the PUR package, followed by walk in the fresh winter weather, morning yoga or light workout in the gym. After waking up the body and the digestive system, it was time for breakfast: either raw porridge from PUR morning mix, almond/oat milk, berries, hemp protein and psyllium (super yummy!) or eggs with veggies or with banana, cardamom and cinnamon (=the best pancakes ever!). Instead of the regular morning coffee I had green tea with tsp of cold pressed coconut oil. Before lunch I had handful of nuts or a fruit. I drank lots of water or water with PUR green mix.

For lunch I had different kinds of self-made salads or soups, but I also ate out couple of times since I didn’t want to restrict my social life too much. In these cases an easy option was to go for salad bar where I could choose the appropriate ingredients. I was also happily surprised to find lunch restaurants that serve “detox-friendly” food; even though I can’t be sure what exactly was on my plate I can consider going more for those options from now on.

Cold smoked salmon with lentils, pine nuts, spinach and rocket.

Sushi lunch!

Pea, celery, avocado and almond soup - might not sound good but was excellent (and fast to prepare)!

In the afternoons I usually prepared some kind of green smoothie or, if I was on the run, had fruits, nuts or self-made protein-seed bar before dinner. I also drank herbal tea and more water. Timing of my dinner was somehow problematic thing for me since I was supposed to stop eating at 8pm while many times I came home after that, thus the idea of a 12-hour mini fast during the night wasn’t materialized as well as it could have. Dinners were quite similar to my lunches but bigger in size and I tried to put in more protein and less cabs. Before dinner I went dancing, did a light workout in gym and went to sauna, had slow yin yoga practice at home or just relaxed. I timed my detox so that I wouldn’t be too busy with too many activities and the beginning of the year was perfect since my dance classes were on a break.


Green smoothie @ work.

Wok from tofu, kale, capsicum and sugar peas.

Tomato avocado omelet.

Zucchini "pasta" with coriander pesto, kale and spinach.

Beetroot, carrot and ginger soup.

The best protein-seed-fruit bars in the world!

So after detoxing for 10 days, do I think that the whole thing is just a scam?

Well, if I listen to my body’s reactions, she is telling quite the opposite: I feel so good! I had couple of days when I felt tired or had slight headache but other than that I think I haven’t been feeling this good in my body for a long time. My quality of sleep has increased, my digestion is working better, my skin looks better… Even though my goal wasn’t to lose weight (thus I didn’t restrict my calories at all), I got rid of the looseness I got from all that Christmas feasting. However, maybe the most surprising thing was that detoxing affected my mood so positively; I have been so extremely happy the past week I can’t believe it!

Was it hard to keep up the detox diet? Not really, because I didn’t need to be hungry and got to eat lots of delicious food. Of course there were some difficulties such as abstaining from morning coffee, finding a suitable restaurant to have dinner with friends or not to have any water or other drinks with my meals (liquids dilute the digestive acids and reduce salivation), but nothing more serious than that. It was pretty easy to live my normal life while detoxing.

I’m definitely going to include some elements from my 10 day challenge to my everyday life, like starting my mornings with lemon water and some light exercise before having my breakfast. I’ll probably will cook and bake more from now on and maybe try dropping out at least sugar but also milk products and gluten from my everyday food. I won’t give away my morning coffees but in the afternoons it’s going to be green tea instead of more coffee. Most importantly: I want to listen and respect my body as much as I did during these 10 days.

All in all, I can highly recommend doing this kind of “gentle” detox and I will most probably start doing it every 6 months – at least in the beginning of every year!