Success!

Sunday was the big showcase, and I DID WELL. Better than I had hoped. Stage fright was minimal. There were only a few shaky moments. I had memory problems with the opening of one routine--I wasn't expecting it and was shocked when they called my name.
I did the applejack without a speck of trouble. One judge said I smiled too much!
I was exhausted last night and feeling I didn't want to dance anymore. Probably it was a reaction to all the anticipation and energy I invested in getting ready for the showcase.
Today I'm feeling more optimistic. I talked to my teachers about getting coaching from another teacher - a big step for me. They agreed to my plan.
D., who did most of the choreography for "Someone to Watch over Me," said she'd never seen me dance it so well. (She'd been there for all the practices with G.) I thought the same thing.
I really pitched "Mr. Bojangles" to the audience.
I REALLY enjoyed the merengue, of all things.
I'm marching forward with my dancing. The stage fright CD I listened to nightly for two months apparently did the job. It is great to have tools to work with as I move ahead with my dancing.

Tomorrow's the Day!

I listened to my motivational tape for the last time and did my last practice. I packed my clothes for tomorrow. The little bag with my stockings and jewelry and other things I need for performing is waiting by the door.
I'm ready.
I hope.
Last night I wrote a letter to myself about all the things that are wonderful about my dancing. It was a good experience. I've put my heart and soul (and time and money) into learning ballroom dancing.
Tonight while I was practicing it hit me that I am a risk-taker. I'm doing a quickstep exhibition tomorrow. It opens with an applejack. I'm doing a Viennese waltz.
My Barbra Streisand routine is almost entirely a solo. Nobody can pull me out of it if I make a mistake or lose my place.
I'm dancing tomorrow because I'm passionate about doing this. No easy outs. This is a hugely important part of my life, and I'm completely committed to it.
And now I'll close with what all dancers say to one another before a performance: Merde! (No, we don't joke about breaking a leg!)

Getting Closer

My heart sank during today's practice for Sunday's show. Despite all the self-talk, imagery, and hours listening to a motivational CD, the stage fright was back. I felt that I had no tools to work with for getting ready for the show.
But maybe all is not lost. G. and I warmed up with a bolero. I was thinking that it was the best bolero I'd ever done and wondering if it really was as good as I thought. When we finished, G. congratulated me and D., who was coaching today, applauded and said it was the best bolero I'd ever done. So I feel I've made a major breakthrough. It was musical and expressive and different from how I've ever danced before.
I did the Bojangles routine with the best expression I've ever had.
And I found out we're starting out with the competition Sunday and ending with the show. And somehow that vastly comforted me. The show is like an afterthought. People's attention will be winding down. Somehow that's a huge comfort.
Meanwhile, I'm trying to etch the applejack into my brain. And I'm taking comfort in the thought that despite feeling the nerves today, I danced well. If the real thing goes as well as today's practice did, I'll have a lot to be proud of.
And D. pointed out that even if the applejack gets messed up, what people will notice is that my feet were moving. How do they know what it was supposed to look like?

Getting Ready to Perform

The show is Sunday. We had an uneven (that's the most neutral term I could come up with) practice a few hours ago.
I keep wondering whether I should just concede that I'm not a performer, never will be, and stop worrying about it and trying to make myself something I'm not.
I've been reading a book about making changes--it's called Switch--that has some interesting ideas. One is to build on the moments when whatever change you desire is already there in some form.
Well, it's true that sometimes I enjoy performing, and I'm even good at it.
The problems tonight were with focusing. My dancing is exceptionally good on a lot of levels.
Barbra Streisand has problems remembering lyrics. That doesn't diminish who and what she is by a single iota.
So let's think of some strategies:

• I'm going to keep practicing. My applejack surprised my teachers today.
• I'm going to work on my thinking patterns. Small problems don't have to be catastrophes.
• I'm going to keep doing visualizations.
• I'm going to talk to myself about the things I do well.

Oddly enough, NPR tonight pointed the way to a solution for me. Terry Gross was interviewing a ballet dancer who's the author of a new history of ballet (I think it's Apollo's Angels). The writer pointed out that dancing is moving in the direction of greater and greater virtuosity. What seems to be getting lost are emotion and artistry.

Well, I can do emotion and artistry. I've seen dancers with great souls (Pirkko is one) be incredibly moving without calling upon their virtuosity.

I can think about that.

I can stir people on Sunday. I can do that.

Balancing Trick

Actually my balance is quite good. For several years now I've been practicing spins on a rotational disk from Stott Pilates, and I'm quite good at them now. And I practice standing on one foot in various positions almost every day.
What I want to talk about is striking a balance between I'm-a-student-who-wants-to-get-better and I'm-a-performer-who's-pleased-with-my-dancing.
I practice at home and feel great--and then I take a lesson and realize how much I could do to improve even basic steps and patterns. It's discouraging.
After January 1 I might start doing an extra hour every week with M. I used to do that before my life got so complicated, and it really helped my dancing.
What I really need to do, though, is to feel confident that my dancing is worth doing, even if it's not world class.
I don't think I'm a perfectionist. Well, I am about writing. Does that insistence on getting it right carry over to other things I do?
My gut reaction is no. If I were a perfectionist about dancing, I wouldn't have stuck with it this long. It is HARD to become a good ballroom dancer.
And I don't enjoy watching some of the professionals I see on TV--their perfection is almost robotic.
So what do I need to do or think about to increase my confidence?
I don't have an answer yet.

Possible or Impossible?

In an email, I told one of my teachers that I'd like to talk about changing the beginning of my quickstep routine. The music is fast, and I'm supposed to do an applejack (cute swiveling footwork shifting from heels to toes) right after a turn.

After a lot of practice, I'm finding it very difficult to make the transition from the turn to the fancy footwork. My body wants to keep moving, and I need to be steady and solid to do the applejack.

Maybe there's some technical trick that will work.

I have a hard time performing, and worrying about making a difficult move look smooth and easy is just going to complicate matters.

And I'm not sure that tricky moves are necessary. I've seen some thrilling dancing that had no tricks at all. Just great posture, musicality, and movement. That's what I'm aiming for.

At Monday's lesson we'll make a decision about the quickstep opening.

Performing

For over a month I've been getting ready for a December 19 showcase.
Stage fright is my Waterloo, and it's a big one.
To get ready, I've been practicing almost every day. I've also been listening to a 30-minute motivational CD about performance anxiety, and I even made a four-minute CD of my own.
Every night I listen to each song I'll be performing to. I visualize the studio, the audience, and myself in performance.
It's hard (more like impossible!) to know how to tackle this.
I also read a book about performance anxiety. I thought it would be terrific because it purports to use a Jungian approach, and I think I have a Jungian outlook.
BUT. The book took an archeological approach to performance anxiety, viewing it as rooted in past trauma.
I think my performance anxiety is related to...well, I don't know.
I think I have trouble believing for real that I'm a dancer. I'm one of those people who read and go to libraries. I'm not a dancer. Not me!
I think I have trouble with the whole idea of performance. Why am I up there? To show what I can do? Who cares?
I don't mean that cynically. I just mean that "look what I know how to do" has to have pretty limited interest for people.
So I'm up there to entertain the audience. But what's entertaining about watching me do a foxtrot?
Again, I don't mean that cynically. I love foxtrot, it's my best dance, and I do it very well. And it's getting even better. But why would you want to watch it?
I have to find an answer to that question, program the answer into my body and my brain, and bring it to life in front of the audience.
When I've figured out how to do that, I think performance anxiety will be much less of a problem.

Is it Good Exercise?

Yes and no.
One of the responses I often get when people learn that I'm a ballroom dancer is "It's such good exercise!"
And of course it is. There are benefits to cardiovascular fitness (Viennese waltz, anyone?), balance, and flexibility.
But if you want to go beyond the basic "slow-slow-quick-quick" level, everything changes. You don't dance to stay fit. Instead you stay fit in order to dance.
My daily routine includes at least one long walk and a strength/flexibility/balance routine at home. Several times a week I do a gym workout.
I take a weekly mat class and have a private Pilates session once a week with a certified trainer who's also a professional dancer.
And I take a modern dance class that always begins with a fitness warmup.
It's true that dancing belongs to the realms of imagination and spirit. It is a doorway to another world.
But it also requires extraordinary physical ability. You're not going to soar and float unless you have upper-body strength, strong calves, and flexible quads and hamstrings.
Even something as apparently simple as a triple-swing basic step requires exceptionally strong abdominal muscles. If you've moved beyond the novice level of dancing, you need to learn how to use your stomach to move your leg. Not easy.
That sounds crazy, and it took me a long time to learn how to do it. (Bolero requires the same kind of connection between abs and legs.)
Cha cha and tango (and many movements in other dances) require you to be able to stop yourself with your stomach muscles.
And then there's your back and your obliques.
A good dancer is a physical package. Everything has to work together. If you're weak anywhere, it's going to show up on the dance floor.
All of this probably sounds like a lot of work. I'm not sure it is. "Fascinating" might be a better word for it.
Pilates is sometimes described as "intelligent exercise." That intelligence factor is what makes dance fitness so interesting. You're not just grunting. You're studying how your body works and celebrating tiny victories as your body organizes itself.
A friend of mine who majored in dance in college was required to take a kinesiology (anatomy of the muscles) course right off the bat. She was furious. The teacher, an MD, wasn't even a dancer.
Later on, though, she said it was her favorite course--she learned things she applied every day.
This "get fit first" principle doesn't just apply to dancing. When I lived in New York City, the YWCA used to advertise ski fitness courses. The idea was that you could prepare for skiing season by working the muscles you'd be using on the slopes. You'd ski better and avoid those first-day-on-skis aches and pains after a whole summer away from the sport.
Back to ballroom dancing. Certainly part of its fascination is that it's not any one thing. It's not just a fitness tool, or an art form, or an avenue to self-expression.
Fascination, fascinating. Dance.

I'm a ballroom dancer

I've been a ballroom dancer for more than 20 years. Ballroom consumes a huge amount of my time and energy (not to mention my money).
My ballroom world is like an alternative universe. I drift in and out of it. I wake up in the middle of the night with songs (always in a good ballroom tempo, of course) in my head.
I cannot explain why it's so important to me. I wonder sometimes if ballroom simply fills up an empty space in my life, or it originates in my lifelong love of music, or if it's the extreme challenge, or...I don't know.
I used to think it was the fantasies associated with dancing with men, but then I got a woman teacher. And ANOTHER woman teacher. There goes that theory.
I ballroom danced in college, married a non-dancer (we're still happily married), and gave up dancing. Then in graduate school I went into a serious depression. I swore that if I survived, I would dance.
And so it happened.
Right now I'm getting ready for a showcase/competition in December. Stage fright (or its more elegant name "performance anxiety") is my big enemy.
I've been listening to a motivational CD every night, and it seems to be helping. The other thing I do every night is listen to each song and try to imagine myself performing.
When I went through this ritual last night, it suddenly hit me that this doesn't have to be a huge deal. Somehow that had never occurred to me before. Maybe it's the result of the CD I've been listening to.
I'm wondering if somehow I put my whole identity on the line with these performances instead of simply getting up, dancing (which is what I want to do anyway), taking a bow, and sitting down.
Hence this blog. I'd like to explore what ballroom dancing means to me, what performing means, and where my dancing is going.