The Brain Forgets Much, but the Lower Back Remembers Everything.

A healthy and well-working body is essential tool for all of us dancers. Some dance styles are more demanding for the body than others and, let’s face it, Zouk belongs to one of the more demanding ones, especially what comes to followers. There are many unfortunate examples of different kind of injuries that have been caused by dancing Zouk, especially neck, knee and lower back injuries. I’m not here to scare you off, though, because all of these can be avoided with good and safe dance technique and body awareness. However, many dancers, especially beginners, are not aware that their specific posture or poor technique is slowly but surely doing them harm – it can start from a small and periodic pain that later develops into something more serious.

I was one of those dancers.

For a long time I have felt pressure in my lower back after dancing a lot of Zouk, for example after or during a Zouk festival. Sometimes that pressure has developed into more unpleasant feeling that might have continued many days after the dancing. Sometimes I’ve had to stop dancing and leave the party early because I was afraid my lower back couldn’t handle dancing any more. There have also been few occasions, unfortunately, when I have felt sharp pain during a certain dance move. Last time when the latter happened around a year ago my back was aching really badly for weeks afterwards – you can imagine how uncomfortable it was to intensively rehearse a choreo in this condition (let alone what rehearsing in that condition must have done to my back). Since then I have been a way more cautious if I have felt some pressure in my back as well as paid more attention to proper warming up before both dance practices and dance parties.

Nevertheless, I got a wake-up call the other day when I was receiving a massage to my lower back after the Amsterdam’s congress. It has been a long time since I danced Zouk so much during one weekend and thus my back got tired, as it is normal for muscles to react to such extra strain. However, there was one specific tiny spot found on my left side that caused unbelievable amount of pain when stimulated. It was definitely not a muscle but a nerve – a nerve that must have been compressed for a quite some time there. I think this is exactly the spot that has been causing pain earlier too; now I was just was to locate the source to the exact place. What scared me off, though, was the amount of pain stored in that tiny spot.

One thing I know for sure: pain is never good.

Now that this nerve was extremely sore after dancing and massaging I was able to feel any additional pressure any movement could cause to it, and therefore I noticed that some certain moves increased the compression. This is a good example of a slowly developing problem because if the nerve was not extraordinary sore, I could not feel this extra pressure I was causing by having a wrong posture in my lower back. You might think that it’s nothing, just one tiny spot, but the thing is that if I continue dancing as before the nerve will keep on getting more and more pressure – and maybe in the worst case scenario I won’t be able to dance in few years’ time! Life without dancing… what a nightmare.

I went to my Zouk teachers with my worries and it turned out they have also had similar problems with their back. We went through some moves where I felt increased pressure and they were able to advise me how to avoid having that pressure. It seems that I’m keeping my lower back a little bit too curved in many simple positions, like spins or a simple lounge/preparation. I guess I have been counting on too much to my (pretty strong) core muscles to hold everything in order but they won’t help if I constantly create pressure with a slightly wrong position. We’re not talking about a big malposition here but few centimeters can make a big difference. What I need to do now is to pay constant extra attention to my back’s position and learn away from my old bad habits. So if you see me curving my back at any point while dancing, I will really appreciate you pointing that out to me – I don’t want to do any more harm to my body.

Similarly, if you ever feel increased pressure or pain in your back, or any other part for that matter, please please please do something about it. Don’t wait until it gets worse. Don’t think that it is nothing. In most cases everything can be avoided with a small change of body positioning. Listen to your body: it’s the only one you’ll ever have.

Further, prepare your body before making any moves that can cause problems. I know it might feel awkward to stretch or warm up at a dance party but that short time can save your whole night. At least have a couple of warm up dances before putting in your 100 percent – and by warm up dance I mean (attention leaders!!) no cambres, head movements or other ‘unnatural’ positions or unnecessarily explosive movements for your body. One request for leaders: if a follower tells you she has not warmed up and wants you to take it easy, please respect her wish and be gentle (i.e. do not lead her into aforementioned positions). One request for followers: don’t throw yourself into a cambre or similar movement without you yourself holding your body because in the worst case your leader is not prepared and you will end up breaking his back when he is trying to save you from falling down. Let’s all take a good care of each other, shall we?

Last but not least, make sure you take a good care of your body outside dancing. Sorry to break the news for you, but dancing alone is not enough of exercise for a dancer’s body. Training core muscles is especially important as those will help to protect the body in many movements. Stretching and mobility exercises are other musts that I have noticed to make extra good for my body; in addition (and more importantly) to increased flexibility those release muscular tension and make energy flow more freely in my body. Slowing down and having a soft and gentle movement also puts the attention to the body and in this way it is easier to notice if there are some unwanted pressures or energy blocks hiding somewhere there.

I don't know about you, but at least I want to have a strong and healthy body to dance with. I might have not done the best job with taking care of it before but all the more so I want to do that now. After all, I want to have many more years of dancing, and that is going to happen only with a co-operation of a healthy body. 

Amsterdam Zouk Congress 2014 and WCS Suburbia 2014.

When you are a true dance addict, it goes without saying that your holidays will include going to some sort of a dance festival. I didn’t have a long summer holiday this year (due to starting to work in a new workplace) but I definitely made sure that there were dance festivals available during that time. On July I went to a Zouk festival in Mararó, as I wrote in my previous post, and in the end of August I traveled to the Amsterdam Zouk Congress.

After just partying and relaxing on the beach in Mataró, I decided to make Amsterdam a real dance congress kind of a trip: to attend all the workshops, pre-parties, parties etc. as much as possible and to return home truly exhausted but extremely happy for having such a great time dancing. No other plans, no sight-seeing tours, simply a trip dedicated to dancing. And that is what I made of it. I booked the closest hotel (read: the only one in the venue’s area) to avoid wasting time for travelling around, arrived one day early to attend the pre-party and to do some required food shopping for the weekend, stayed one extra day in Amsterdam for a possible after-party and socializing with new dancer friends, and, importantly, took the next week off from work so I didn’t have to worry about recovering afterwards. Well planned is already half done, as goes the Finnish saying. So, it ended up being a true dance trip, just as I wanted it to be.


Dancing in Amsterdam Zouk Congress.

When I was in Mataró, I felt like being a poor social dancer: I got worried that I was not capable to adapt my dancing enough to dancers outside my own comfy dance circles. Luckily Amsterdam proved that perception wrong. I was shining in the dance floor. It was not that I would have felt better or superior to the others, to make that sure here, but I definitely felt damn good – and I can tell when also the other is enjoying dancing with me. This feeling of being a good dancer, I think, was something that made good for my dancer self. You see, when I feel good, I dance better, and when I dance better I feel yet again better; it is a constant positive circle. One of the best things to have in the dance floor is self-confidence (though not arrogance!) to the dancer self, because in this way the dancer will use the most out of the skills s/he has at that very moment. If I don’t feel confident it reflects straight to my dancing and into my dance mood. This boost of dance confidence was much needed after how I felt in Mataró. It also made me realize the progress I have been doing with my Zouk dancing during this year and it was great to notice that all that constant work is now showing. It is such a great feeling when my body is doing something with ease that I wasn’t able to do, say, six months ago!

Here are some highlights for me to remember from the congress:

• A great new dance connection with a certain Aussie dancer with who I unfortunately had a small misunderstanding in the last day of the congress (due to which we missed our last dances together, damn!),
• Another new strong dance connection and our extremely energetic dances,
• A dance invite for the last song of the festival from a renowned dance teacher that I however turned down (I still can’t believe it myself either),
• Seeing and dancing with my good dancer friend and having our very special and unique moments in the dance floor,
• Listening different dance teachers talking about different aspects of teaching which gave me a lot to think about,
• A leader asking me, for the first time ever, if I had warmed up before leading any demanding moves – I think this shows high respect for the follower’s body,
• Dancing with my teacher in the party and ‘passing’ his attempts to test some new moves on me,
• Seeing how much a beginner can progress with his dancing during one weekend,
• Meeting some of my old Aussie friends and making some new ones – great people!
• And maybe most importantly: being on fire on Saturday’s party – woooow what a feeling!

After recovering from the Zouk festival I had kind of a cool-down dancing time in a WCS event in Tampere the following weekend before returning to work after my holiday. Actually I was invited there to give a taster Zouk class with JV and since I was there I thought I might as well join some of the workshops and, of course, social dancing. It was our first time teaching together with him, but I think we did pretty well; at least we got lots of good feedback. If nothing else, we got some Zouk knowledge spread to new dancers and possibly couple of new attendees for the soon coming Helsinki Zouk Festival. I have wanted to give Zouk classes in WCS events already before but then the timing didn’t seem right (I got even “it will never happen” comments to my plans). However this time many seemed to be interested and we got quite a nice amount of dancers to the class. My dream come true would be having Zouk+WCS combination parties or events in the near future. Let’s hope it happens – when there is hope there is a chance. Anyway, here is our demo after the taster class; I think we did pretty well considering that we haven't been dancing together lately that much at all.

 

 

Of course I had to take part to the Jack&Jill competition on Saturday night’s WCS party. I got into the novice finals but, as I was expecting after having at least 6 months break from the dance, didn’t make it to the top three. It was interesting to notice, however, how super nervous most of the dancers were in the competition. Seriously, I could feel their heart beating wildly just by holding their hand! Maybe it is that for me it really makes no difference whether I win or come last because WCS is not my primary dance, so there is no pressure and thus I don’t get nervous at all. It was nice to get into the finals though; it gave me hope there is still a chance that there is some WSC left in my attempts to dance that dance style. After all, the first comment I got in the first workshop was to keep my dancing to at least somehow resemble WCS. Whoops!

J&J finals.

There is one last thing I have to mention concerning the Amsterdam’s congress. It got me, once again, addicted to dance festivals. Therefore yesterday I booked another flights to Amsterdam for going to the Dutch International Zouk Congress in October just a week before Helsinki’s festival! So here I go again, back being a dance congress addict… Anyway, who else is coming?!?

My 30-day Yoga Challenge.

It all started around a year ago when I attended to one free yoga class in a park in Helsinki. After that yoga has slowly taken bigger and bigger role in my everyday life to the point that yoga is now something my body - and mind - need regularly. The next natural thing to do was to try out the 30-day yoga challenge by Yogobe: to practice yoga every day for 30 days. This post is to share how it went.

See more about the challenge from: http://more.yogobe.com/kesan-30-paivan-joogahaaste/

As a typical Finnish person, who usually keeps her life quite busy, the first thing to come in mind was whether I would have time to practice yoga every day. I didn't want to make the challenge as something I would have to stress about because yoga is everything else but a source of stress to me - actually it is a way of removing the stress gathered in my body. However, practicing yoga doesn't mean that you have to do 90 minutes session every time and sometimes just 10 minutes can be enough to relax your mind and to draw your attention to how your body is feeling at the present moment. So saying that there is no time is nonsense, really. There is always time; the thing is what I decide to do with it.

I moved to my new studio apartment conveniently just when the challenge started and the first thing I did there was a yoga practice. It is not a big home, actually quite tiny, but nevertheless there was one specific item I wanted to leave enough space to: my yoga mat. So I decided to bring as few furniture as possible to leave free space in the main room, and I have came to realize that comfy sofa, small dinner table and beautiful wooden chest is actually everything I need there. My yoga mat is always there in it's own space on the floor, ready and waiting for my next practice. There is no easier way of doing yoga than being able to jump on the mat whenever I'm home. It is like a constant reminder that this is something that is good for me, that I should be doing it more for myself in my everyday life. And it works!


Morning yoga with Yogobe @home.

I'm definitely a morning person: I never snooze my alarm, I'm the most efficient during the morning and early daytime, my thoughts flow better in the morning than evening, and I prefer waking up to going to sleep. However, I have hardly been using this time of the day for doing any sort of workout, stretching, dancing etc. Now that it has been pretty quiet at work because of the summer and I can start working a bit later, I decided to try starting most of my work days with a yoga practice during the challenge. And I can tell you: it is without a question the best way of starting a day. Even if I had a shorter sleep during the night and felt really sleepy when alarm rang, yoga woke up my body nicely and softly, opening up the sleepy muscles and especially my back that always seems to stiffen during the night. Morning is also a perfect timing to let positive thoughts conquer my mind so that they'll follow me the whole day. Always start your day with a smile is a good advice for anyone, don't you agree? Morning yoga quickly became a nice routine to kick off my days and now that I have been skipping it some mornings I already regret it at the time I reach my workplace.

Even though I love doing yoga at home and online yoga is definitely a great tool for that (atm most of my home practices are done with an online instructor), I also love sharing my yoga practices with other yogis. When doing yoga together there is so much more energy to share and that energy definitely makes the practice feel different. There are three yoga studios nearby my home and I checked out two of them during the challenge: both are definitely places that I’m going to visit also later on. Summer is also a great time to find several free outdoor yoga classes around Helsinki and I didn’t let this opportunity to run out of my hands. My favorite yoga practice during the whole challenge was a record-breaking big outdoor yoga event in Sinebrychoff Park where more than 300 yogis shared their practice and energy. That huge amount of energy really made magic happen in my body and soul, wow.

Sharing the energy @Yoga Goes Koffari.

Outdoor yoga @Töölönlahti.

So how did the challenge go? Did I manage to do yoga every day for 30 days? To be honest, no, not every single day, not because I wouldn’t have found time for it but because those days I decided to listen to my body that couldn’t take in a physical practice at that moment. However, that is not the main point. The main point is that I did challenge myself and while doing that found new ways of practicing yoga and created new healthy everyday routines into my life. I fell in love with yoga more deeply. I was able to, through yoga, open op my heart to other things happening in my life. I felt happier, more alive, healthier, more present and aware of myself.

 

  

Thank you Yogobe and Yoga365 for motivating me to challenge myself and, most importantly, making me feel better thoroughly. Keep on spreading the yoga love!

Zouk Devils&Friends Summer Weekend.

Ready to go!

When I sat down to the airplane going to Barcelona on Friday, I realized that I was traveling to my first dance festival/congress abroad since 1,5 years. I have been to dance events in the country where I have been living at that time, but it really surprised me it has been that long I had a proper dance festival trip. When I started dancing Zouk I traveled to a dance festival or congress every two months during my first year, and it is not unusual to travel for dancing that frequently, at least if I look at my dance friends. So there I was, traveling to Mataro for the 2nd Zouk Devils&Friends Summer Festival. I was accompanied with two pretty dance ladies from Helsinki who I must thank for organizing most of the practicalities - and infecting me with their enthusiasm of the trip! They were also excellent company for the trip from the beginning to the end, thanks girls!

Mataro's festival is quite unique dance festival because the organizers' idea is not to bring in big names for countless of workshops, but to create an environment where dancers can get to know each other both on and outside of the dance floor. The daytime is left mostly free for relaxing, sightseeing and hanging out in the beach, and therefore most of the zoukers headed to Tsunami Beach with their bikinis, sunscreen and, of course, Zouk music (read: beach dancing!). I must say that this made the whole trip feel like a nice holiday compared to tight scheduled workshops+parties combination. Good conversations, relaxed atmosphere, great music, nice dances, awesome weather... bliss! Also Friday night was spent in Mataro's cheerful town festival instead of dancing. Nice idea, though I, being a true dance addict, would have preferred to have a dance party.

 

 

Going to dance abroad after such a long break cruelly revealed that I have been dancing in my comfort zone for too long time. When you only dance inside your own dance scene, you easily get used to the common style dancers have inside the scene. This is exactly what happened to me. In Helsinki most of the Zouk dancers have similar style to dance and that was the case in Brisbane too. Surely these two places have slightly different styles, but both styles are strongly based on the 'pure' Rio style of Zouk. When I went to Brisbane it took a while to adapt to the locals' way of dancing and I needed to go through the same small adaptation phase when I got back home. However, Mataro's festival included multiple styles of Zouk and there were surprisingly few Rio zoukers, which made me struggle a lot more that I expected.

I haven't had a feeling for a long time that I'm a bad dancer. I usually feel really confident when dancing and I also know that I'm far away of being a bad dancer. Still, in Saturday's party I found myself blaming me for being a bad dancer, horrible follower and crappy partner to dance with. I felt like I was in hurry all the time: I didn't have time to finish my moves, do my styling nor even to step. I didn't have time to breath and I couldn't relax at all. No one asked me to dance. Why, I was thinking, why I was feeling like this? Why was I feeling like a bad dancer?

I was dancing out of my comfort zone, that is why. The leaders had a different way of leading that what I had get used to. Different, not wrong. However, I tried to dance the way I had used to, tried to stretch my movements when there was no time to do that, tried to be a light follow when the leader wanted to create counterweight. I simply struggled to adapt. I ended up craving for more embraces, more body movements, lighter leads, slower phase, less crazy head movements and all the other things I usually get. With that attitude it was no wonder I didn't get into any kind of a dance flow. There were few dances when I felt like I was actually dancing, not surviving, but those were not enough to lift me up to a higher dance level. I was not feeling down, mostly because of my dancing conference, but I couldn't say that it was a great dance party for me either.

The next day I was talking with my Finnish friend about my experience and she shared the similar feelings about the party. I then realized that this was actually a great opportunity to learn something new while simply social dancing. I had forgotten that social dancing in the dance parties used to be the time when I learned the most when I was a beginner - now social dancing has turned to be a time to enjoy and do what I already know. So I headed to Sunday's party with a different mind setting: if I feel like struggling, I'll take it as something new to be learned!

 

Many say that it is the last dance party of a dance festival that is the best. Dancers have gone in some kind of festival mood, they are too tired to show off any more, there is more space on the dance floor and you already know with who you liked dancing with in the previous parties. Sunday's party wasn't an exception to this general rule. It had a great start with 30-something minutes flow, I had some awesome time somewhere in the middle, and a beautiful ending. Though I can't report that I had some really exceptional dances, I sure had a great time. Yet another prove that you can yourself decide whether you're going to have a fun night or not!

After the festival we headed to Barcelona for few days to go around the city and also to visit Spiral Dance dance studio and join the festival's after party. A perfect ending for my little dance holiday! The two other dance addicts continued to Berlin's Zouk congress while I was feeling exhausted enough from the six day trip. Don't tell me I'm getting old...!

 

How to Teach the Basics Efficiently - and to Get New Dancers to Your Dance Scene.

Getting new beginners to a dance scene is a crucial thing. The hard thing with that is that new beginners, who hardly now anything about the dance style they are considering to try out, are not eager to commit to a dance course that lasts for months and takes quite a lot of their time and money. However, offering them just some drop-in classes that they can attend whenever and as many times as they wish, has some major weaknesses.

Longer term course that proceed progressively is more likely a better way to learn the essential basics and to adjust the classes to better suit the students. Progressive course is also good for avoiding beginners to implement commonly made mistakes to their basic dancing - and it is a way more difficult to learn away from the once learned bad habits than to put some extra effort to avoid those in the first place. So for a beginner it would be the ultimate best to offer an opportunity to learn slowly but consistently the most important building blocks of any dance, the basics, but at the same time it is understandable why it can be hard to commit to a dance course of a dance style one can't yet know whether s/he likes it or not.

A solution? An intensive beginners course, of course!

That is what we are having in Helsinki's Zouk scene this week and regardless that it is the busiest holiday season going on, the course has really a great amount of participants, most of who has no prior experience of Zouk. I was also happy to notice some familiar faces from our beginner spring course attending the intensive course, because rarely the beginners are willing to take yet another set of beginners classes of similar content. High fives to you! I got especially happy of those dancers with who I might have played a role of getting them to attend (I have to separately mention this beautiful lady who got inspired after reading this blog!). The big amount of participants shows that there definitely is a demand for this kind of courses where the beginners can learn the basics properly but where they don't need to invest a big amount of time and money to. It is kind of a trial period to the new dance style: an easy way to find out whether the dance is for you or not (and whether or not you like the teaching style of the teachers).

I and some other more advanced students of F&A were in the course as assistants: giving some personal feedback and advice to the new students and helping dancers who had missed some classes to catch up with the others. I think having some advanced students in beginner classes is really useful for everyone, both for the beginners and the advanced students as well as for the teachers.

What comes to the beginners, some of the new students in the course already told me that it is really great to have us there, because then they could better understand how the dance should feel like. A beginner still needs to concentrate a lot on the basic steps, the music, following and leading etc. and when you put him/her with another alike, the whole thing gets even harder for both. "It is so different to dance with you than the others!" was a common comment I had. The advanced students can also easily point out the possible mistakes the beginner is doing and therefore help him/her to avoid forming bad habits. It is those small yet so important details that can be easily corrected in this way but that are hard to be noticed by the beginner. In addition, a barrier of asking for advice from another student can be lower than asking the same thing from a teacher.

For the advanced student, on the other hand, being an assistant is a great experience to improve one's teaching skills and abilities to give constructive and helpful feedback. To help others to learn something makes also the advanced student to learn - teaching others has been said to be one of the best ways of learning! Furthermore, going back to the basics again and again does nothing but good to any dancer regardless of their level. The more advanced a dancer the more s/he realizes the importance of improving the basics.

Finally, for the teachers it is useful to have experienced students who you can count on around if, for example, there is couple of new students who are really struggling and therefore need some extra guidance. In situations like this, the teacher can go on with the rest of the group and put the experienced student to repeat the previous step/movement with those who need it (this is what I was doing during the second class). If it is a big group, it is impossible for the teacher to notice everything and to give personal attention to everyone, so the advanced students are also a great help to divide that job.

All in all, I think this kind of format for beginners course is quite workable method. I will be in the course assisting still today, but tomorrow and Friday I will be off - there is a Zouk festival waiting for me in Spain! It has been a good start and there are many really potential Zouk dancers on board, so I hope that many of the new students will get the Zouk spark from the course and join our Zouk family! If you have some feedback you'd like to give from the course, or you'd like to share your ideas of learning the basics more efficiently, feel free to contact me.

See you on the dance floor!

Dating a Dancer.

To date or not to date a dancer: that is the question. I touched upon this topic already ages ago in my previous post, but the question seems to be something that I realize coming back every now and then. I was single when I started partner dancing and back then I used to have the opinion that dancers are definitely in my 'no-list'. Well, I nevertheless ended up dating a dancer for quite a long time and therefore I can now say from the experience that the dating a dancer itself - and breaking up with a dancer - sure has it's good and bad sides.

When I was getting into my dating a dancer relationship, there were many hesitations going through my mind. Would it be worth to endanger the awesome feeling I was having with him in the dance floor? Would it be worth of possibly putting some of my dance friendships in danger to go further with this guy? Do I want to put myself under the dance community's observing eye and be exposed to some inevitable gossip? And what if we break up - will it be possible to successfully go on in the dancing scene with a good attitude towards him? So even considering to date a dancer has an extra layer of caution. Even doing a simple thing as going on a casual date with a dancer isn't that simple thing for me: I think not only twice but at least trice before I would say yes to a date invitation. It might happen that I connect with the other amazingly well in the dance floor but after a boring date the excitement in the dance floor is gone. Or what if the date goes well and the other starts to expect more from me that I'm willing to give? On the other side are the possible gossips inside the dance scene that dating around might cause. I love social dancing so much that I don't want to create any disturbances or extra drama to my dancing environment, so I'd rather go with a better-to-be-safe-than-sorry attitude. Surely, there are dancers who see dancing as an easy way of finding that special person, but for me that is not the case. I just want to dance.

So if even going on a date with a dancer was tricky, having a relationship with one can be far away from easy. It has been already quite a while ago that I read an interesting article from one dance instructor who thought that "the one" simply cannot be found from dance scene. According to her, the dancer men will be meeting "new, younger, faster, better models every week and end up ignoring you, breaking up with you, or worse, physically abusing you in the end." I can't say that I agree with everything she says, but I must say that seeing your man having an extreme sensual dance with another girl right next to you requires quite a stable and healthy relationship. I too had my moments of jealousness and I can't say that we wouldn't have had some I-saw-how-you-danced-with-that-girl/guy typed arguments. However, we both knew that what happens in the dance floor can be left to the dance floor (of course taken that what happened in the dance floor was inside the limits of dancing). If the relationship doesn't have a strong base or if both don't think of dancing the same way, it is easy to find trouble. I know I sometimes like dancing physically quite close, and I wouldn't like to change that just because I dated another dancer.

One of my friends, who dates a non-dancer guy, said that it is so much better to date a non-dancer because then the dance parties she goes are her own time and when she is there she doesn't need to worry about what he would think of her dancing with other guys. Out of sight, out of mind. Some others have said that it is great to have a dancer boy/girlfriend because you can do both the dance party and spending time with him/her at the same time. This goes well if you both are as into dancing as the other is; in my case I might have been a bit more dance enthusiastic wanting to arrive the party earlier and also to leave it later - yet another juicy source for unnecessary argument there. But if both of you are equally big dance addicts, dancing is a great connecting factor (imagine, for example, all those wonderful possibilities to go to dance festivals or other dance trips together!). I have both good and bad experiences of having a boyfriend in dance parties. Sometimes it was just so perfect having him there, spending time together doing something both loved to do and to dance the last ah-so-romantic song with my very own dancer. Sometimes having him there was just a disturbance for me, the dances we had were simply horrible and in the end there was a tough decision to be made between whether to stay out dancing or to leave earlier to fall asleep in his arms.

Maybe the biggest advantage in dating a dancer, though, is that a dancer is able to understand the dancer side of you: what dancing is, what it means, what are the limits, why you want to spend so much time doing it, why you need to get your dance fix, how you live your life through dancing etc. I once shortly dated a non-dancer and it was quite impossible to explain him why dancing was so important for me and why I was, according to him, "always" dancing. Also the physical closeness of dancing was something strange, incomprehensible and unnecessary source of jealousness for him. In the end it came down to choosing him or dancing and, well, that's how it ended up short. So, a dancer can better understand what dancing is - and what it is not. Also, viewing dancing from a dancer's perspective allows both to have a deeper understanding on the other's dancing self. After all, dancing is such a big part of me that I would like to my partner to know also that side! Not understanding the dancer me would be like not knowing a big part of me; there is a danger that he would never be able to understand who I really am. This is one reason why many of my dancer friends say they would rather date a dancer than a non-dancer: to be able to connect in a dance-level. And isn't it every dancer girl's dream come true to be one of those amazing, cute and hot dance couples that you just cannot stop staring because of their intense dance connection full of love and desire...

Then what if everything doesn't go as smooth as planned, that is, if a dancer had dated and broken up with another dancer, it is possible to successfully go on in the dancing scene with a good attitude towards the dated dancer? Because let's be honest: if you break up, you are inevitably forced to face each other in the same parties and circles again and again. There is no way of avoiding the other unless one changes the circles, that is, stops dancing your common dance style. If that is not going to happen (as it most probably is the case), is it possible to go back as if nothing had happened? What a horrible thought it is of being in a dance party full of your ex-boyfriends with who you can't get along after some fiery break-ups! There goes the comfortable dancing environment I was talking about. And what about the amazing dance connection between you two that possibly was the initial trigger to your relationship: will you ever get that back?

 

Of course it depends on the dancers whether or not they can get along. I've seen this causing a lot of drama and trouble but I've also witnessed some good after-dating friendships being established. Being forced to see each other can even have a positive effect both to your own recovery and to your new mutual relationship. It might not be the easiest thing to do, especially if the break-up itself was already tough enough, but in the long run the forced encounters will do you good, especially if your intention is to build some sort of friendship between you two. Don't expect this to happen overnight, though, because it will take time. When I had just broken up, I always needed to know in advance whether he would be in the party I was going so I could be ready to confront him. But even though I was mentally prepared to meet him, my heart would remind me of itself the moment I would see him. Dancing with him felt either heartbreaking or made me feel really annoyed. I was simply feeling better and had better dances when he was not around. Now I'm already used seeing him around and we've had some great dances together reminding me in a good way what a great leader I used to date and what a great leader I'm going to have as a friend (though I must admit that seeing him openly hitting on the next dancer girl in a dance party not too long after the break-up did make my blood boil for a while!). Actually, now the first genuine feeling I get when I notice him in a dance party is that I'm happy to see him as I'm happy to see any of my other closer dance friends. I can't say that seeing my other exes unexpectedly would feel as natural and comfortable as seeing him.

So yes, it is possible to have a comfortable dance environment regardless of your ex being there and even to have back that good dance connection you used to share. If you meet someone with who you really connect in a romantic level, I think it would be just silly to let something like "what if we break up and I have to see my ex all the time" being a big obstacle. That said, being comfortable with having your ex in your dance scene does take quite a bit time and effort to achieve (and in some cases it might even be impossible), so I would still be pretty cautious of dating inside my dance scene. As I said: I just want to dance.

 

Majaalahti Zouk Weekend.

They say that one picture tells more than thousand words. Well here are some hundreds of thousands from last weekend's awesomeness.