Dancer N:o 267.

Ladies, warning: I danced with this guy last night. Recommended to avoid:

Nah, just kidding! I just happened to say to him that I rate every new dancer I dance with here in my blog, so I was able to make him to give some crazy dance poses for me. Best way of getting new followers! No really, it was nice dancing with you S.

Anyway, yesterday I did something exceptional: I skipped my Zouk class and went instead to a dance party organized by Helsingin lavatanssit. Its a group of people who started organizing free-of-charge Finnish style ballroom dance parties (lavatanssit) in Helsinki this summer. Lavatanssit has been a thing for old people for too long time already, so the parties are targeted for young people who like dancing and having fun. What's the best thing about these parties is that they are held in my neighborhood, like one kilometer from my apartment! Really, nothing ever happens there. I always have to travel one hour to get somewhere and now I was back home in 10 minutes, awesome! Actually it was me who suggested them to contact this place, Lava, where the party was held. How great it would be if they started having also dance classes there after the summer?

Before the party started we had 1,5 hour class of Argentine Tango which was my second time I tried the dance. I really liked the class and made me wonder if I would have time to take some basic classes of Argentine Tango in fall (surely I won't have time to learn all the dances I would like to but this is something I have been thinking already for a while). I was lucky to get one dance from the teacher during the class and got good feedback from my following. However, I think it would be quite impossible not to follow his incredibly clear leading.

The party itself made me really happy that I decided to skip my dance class. Everybody seemed to be in a great mood, the place was nice (though a bit small), I danced with couple of new good leaders and it was simply refreshing to dance ballroom for a change! I'm definitely coming back in August.

Hey, I haven't told about this Zouk flash mob we're doing! Its actually pretty cool because many countries around the world are participating at the same day! The date is set to 16th of September and our practices are primarily on Tuesdays at 8:30 pm at the Opera. Come and join! Here is the choreography for the dance (from the wonderful Alisson&Audrey!!) and a video from our first rehearsal couple of weeks ago. If you won't participate yourself, come at least see the flash mob. I'll let you know the exact place later on. This might actually end up to Guinnes World Records!

Summer of Dance.

I apologize for my low profile lately. I didn’t think that June would go so tremendously fast and I simply haven’t had time to sit down, go through my thoughts and write them down. If for some rare reason I happened to come home relatively early (that is, before 9-10 pm), I have been too tired to do anything but crash to bed. Actually writing this down makes it sound bad. Am I pushing it too much? Would it be better to stop and calm down?

No, I’d rather like to think that since far I have been enjoying my summer to the full, and isn’t that how summer should go? Enjoying every moment, every warm sunshine, every dance step I take. The summer has already made me feel so good that I feel like I just might come apart from pure happiness, and dancing has had a lot to do with that feeling. I have fallen in love with dancing all over again!

I haven’t been holding on to my decision to cut down on dancing during the summer, but I have been able to change my attitude into a summer mood. I don’t want to stress out if I’m not progressing with my technique or following but to rediscover that ultimate enjoyment dancing can give. I want to relax my mind and let my body follow the good feeling. I still do pay attention to the main things I should work on, like controlling my energy and finishing my moves beautifully, but I forgive myself when I don’t succeed or do the best I could. I fell in love with this aphorism I came across the other day: “When you stumble, make it part of the dance”. If I wouldn’t stumble and fall down, how could I learn to get up from the ground? This kind of a mindset have actually made me more confident dancer.

So, a lot of dancing has happened during the last month. What comes to my normal week days, I have been spending every Wednesday and Thursday evening in Zouk classes, and had one-to-one Zouk practice at least once a week. Sunday evening is the time to go dancing Salsa to the Opera, and there has been couple of nice dance parties (and after parties!) going on in Helsinki during the weekends. I’ve spent two weekends in dance festivals, first in Berlin and second in Tampere, and danced my feet sore in both of those. I had maybe the best birthday party ever when me and Michaelo rented Helsinki Salsa Academy’s studio and threw a dancing party there. The evening was simply perfect and it made me into an intense dance flow, the best I’ve had for a long long time. On top of that, our choreography was received with huge cheers and I danced my first own roda with an amazing feeling, not even mentioning the after party that lasted early to the next morning! On the Mid Summer I had a quick peek in Finnish lavatanssit, and last weekend I did my fist dance in the rain in Pihlajansaari 24 hour Salsa party. What an amazing feeling it is to dance in warm summer rain, wow. One other thing I started doing this summer, was going back to the gym club I used to go before I started dancing so much I didn’t have time to do anything else. Going back there has given me a great opportunity to challenge my body in a total different way to dancing. The only thing I haven’t been doing really, is sleeping enough. Mondays have gone half sleep at work, and for the first time in my life I have been drinking coffee. Despite that, all these active moments counterbalanced with chilling out, having long lunch breaks and sleep-overs with my friends, the summer has offered me many reasons to smile non-stop, and that’s what I have been doing. Even thinking about all the special moments I’ve had puts a big smile on my face right now.

Even though a lot has happened, the summer is far from being over yet. I’m planning on continuing to enjoy every moment it brings and every dance I dance. You might hear from me from time to time, but don’t except as frequent postings as before the summer. Don’t get me wrong, I love sharing my dance feelings but I just love more making those feelings and living them through. This summer is here only now, and it’s going to be over sooner than you notice.

Dancing in Lapland.

Last Tuesday me and Nic came to Lapland to spend the Easter holidays with my family. We are staying in a cozy cottage near Levi skiing center. Since I did not want to skip our Wednesday's dancing practice I decided to take Nic to Finnish "lavatanssit", a dance evening with Finnish music and lots of old people dancing dances like Humppa, Jenkka, Waltz, Finnish Tango, Foxtrot etc. There was quite famous dance music orchestra called Souvarit playing in Levi hotel yesterday evening so I figured that would be a perfect chance to teach Nic something about Finnish culture and maybe to learn some new dances myself.

I have been in a dance evening like that before couple of times but I never would have imagined that I could have had so much fun there as I did last night. We were definitely the youngest people there but the age doesn't really matter if everybody is having fun dancing together. Nic said he was quite surprised about everybody's dancing skills and the variety of styles you could see there. It seemed everybody were dancing in their own way and style so trying to catch the basic steps for the dances was more difficult that I would have thought. We were having big laughs trying to dance some Jenkka after observing how the steps would go. At least we were having fun!

I also learned the basic steps to Foxtrot: right, left, sidestep. I think after a while I was actually doing quite fine even though Nic never stays with the basic steps: once I get the hang of them theres more to come. I also dances the weirdest Rumba since far. It just felt wrong to dance Rumba to melancholic Finnish dance music! I did not get the rumba feeling at all. Quite a different experience I must say!

That night there was a womens and mens turm.

We also a short small dancing practice in the cottage earlier that day. I have a feeling that I am getting the idea of how to move my hands in Rumba. Nic said to me today that he was happy to see that I already adapted some of the new movement when we were dancing last night. And I did not even try to do that! I was so pleased to hear that because I have been so insecure especially about the hands when dancing Rumba. I also really like practicing the hand movements (especially if my legs are sore from dancing!).

My calves are so sore from snow boarding the whole day today but I am hoping we could have a dance practice tomorrow evening after some sunny slopes in Levi.