Those (Careless) Dancing Days Are Gone.

So Michaelo came and changed my daily routines totally. As you might guess, my daily-life now consists even more dancing. I want to take Michaelo out dancing as much as I can and have daily dancing practices with him, but also keep up with West Coast, seeing my friends and skyping with my love. At the same time I have been trying to prep for my finals, and give as much time as possible to Michaelo. Phew, not much extra time to spare to write here! Anyway, what a true dancing partner Michaelo is, traveling all the way here for me. It has been so amazing to start every day with a morning Zouk practice and sometimes even ending the day with some more dancing in our living room. He has also made me realize how much I have been missing dancing Kizomba. How much I've missed him, our dance connection and our friendship.

The feedback from my Zouk dancing has been much needed, but tough: I have developed some horrible bad habits here. It has been time to come back to reality from my careless dancing days and work on my dance technique. I have quite many things I need to work on, and the worst thing about bad habits is that they are hard to get rid of. However, the most important thing is that now all those small details have caught my attention and it is just matter of time and practice to get them to my muscle memory.

When it comes to the dance technique, it is sometimes hard to make a distinction between times when to be strict and critical on yourself, compared to times when you just have to let everything go, forget about worrying the right technique and simply enjoy dancing. If you are never critical, you'll never get better. If you can never let go, you can never truly enjoy dancing. Now that all those small details are going wild in my head, I've found them reminding of themselves even when it is time for me to enjoy. I wish it would be easier to give up those thoughts. The technique I have at that very moment is something I shouldn't really work on in dance parties - that is what the practices are for. I don't want to lose the amazing and relaxed feeling I have found while social dancing in Australia. I dance the best when I'm not thinking, so please save your presence to the dance practices you critical thoughts of mine!

There has been couple of pretty cool dance things happened I want to share with you. Firstly, last Sunday at Casablanca's Salsa Seduction, I accidentally won a dance show-off! The thing was to dance one minute of each Salsa, Bachata and Zouk with someone, and since I'm always open for cool new things, I grabbed the nearest familiar leader and jumped in. The judges chose two couples to the finale on the criteria that who had the most fun in the dance floor, and the finals were judged by the audience. This was difinitely one of those times where I successfully 'forgot' my dance technique. Evidently, I had fun!

Secondly, and more importantly, I had my first dance teaching experience when Michaelo and I gave a Kizomba class at my friend's dance party this Saturday. It was something that I really loved, especially seeing how the atmosphere turned from somehow awkward and tense into this relaxed and intimate warm embrace. Seeing those genuine smiles on everyone's faces was simply heart-warming. It shows that everybody really enjoyed the class and that we were able to convince most of them how beautiful and sensual dance Kizomba can be. Since far in Brisbane Kizomba has just been series of steps and figures, but we successfully showed that Kizomba is something more - a strong connection between the two. We already planned for a next session which I'm looking forward to. Sharing that Kizomba love is wonderful.

Photos by Darren Reddacliff and Michael Don

You know the feeling when watching a good dance teacher couple and you go: oh wow, what a connection, I wish I was able to dance like that with someone! That Kizomba night I realized others watching me and Michaelo in that way. One might think it could have made me feel high and mighty, but no, it made me realize, once again, how lucky I am to have someone with who I have such a strong dance connection.