Why Teaching Is Awesome (cont'd.)

It's such a crazy feeling to dance with one of your students one day and think to yourself, "Whaaat, since when can you dance like this??" -- only to realize that the answer is "since they've been taking your classes".

And if that's not awesome enough: being told that they've been working on implementing the little tips you gave them a week or two ago, and really feeling the difference it has made in their dance... how great is that? :]

I'm so proud of some of my students. :3

Towards learning to dance

The dance analog of this post on learning how to play guitar just struck me. Creation and versatility, not emulation.

I suppose this is why I'm fairly comfortable thinking of myself as a dancer, whereas I'm not at all comfortable with thinking of myself as (or other people calling me) a musician. I'm not even close to able to express my own feelings or ideas (musical or otherwise) through music. As far as guitar goes, I am the equivalent of someone who has watched a bunch of instructional YouTube dance videos and has learned from them how to execute a handful of patterns. I don't think of myself as being able to "play guitar"; I can just play some songs on a guitar. And I really enjoy playing them, no doubt -- but I wish I wasn't so limited to such a select few songs, in the specific keys and arrangements in which I learned them.

But with dance, I *like* learning the equivalent of scales, chords and miscellaneous theory; it's intrinsically enjoyable to me, to discuss and play around with the nuts and bolts of dance. I love exploring lead/follow connection and working on body control and movement, with no particular end result in mind other than getting better at moving myself and hearing/moving my partner. And it seems that this, as in guitar, is how you gain the freedom to express yourself. Knowing your way around your instrument.

Adventures in Leading (Part III)

Boston Fusion Exchange. This event sold out of follow passes at least 6 months ahead of time, so I, curious about "fusion" and really wanting to go, registered as a lead. I figured I'd do the workshops as a lead, and at least get to dance in the evenings as a follow. Looking at the DJ schedules and seeing that at pretty much all times there'd be blues playing in one of the rooms, I also figured I'd just follow the blues around, since that's what I dance (as opposed to tango, west coast, lindy, etc.). But I discovered that leading can be really freaking fun, and fusion is super cool; there's something insanely awesome about just dancing with your partner to the music that's playing, in a way that suits (your interpretation of) whatever music that happens to be, and regardless of what kind of dances your partner knows how to dance.

So despite my intentions beforehand, I ended up spending most of the social dancing over the weekend dancing as a lead, to fusion*. One of the best parts about it was that, being an exchange, the attendees consisted mainly of a) local dancers from the host city's scene, and (moreso) b) the most hardcore dancers from other scenes across North America, who travel for dance.

I've been to several exchanges before (and taken numerous workshops as a lead), but it was way more fun to social dance with such a wide variety of dancers as a lead than as a follow. Maybe the novelty factored in, but man, there were so many amazing follows there -- blues and tango follows especially -- who really knew how to handle their own movement, balance and momentum, how to wait for a lead before moving themselves (!!), and how to stay connected *throughout* a movement rather than just doing it themselves once they feel the initiation of the lead. So awesome. Dancing with such follows is like magic. *_*

But the REALLY cool part was dancing with other kinds of follows. Beginner follows, heavy follows, follows who don't listen, follows who rely on their lead for balance, follows who clamp down on their lead's right arm (ow.. ;_; ), drunk follows... It convinced me that a really good lead will be able to dance with anyone, regardless of dance background (not just in terms of level, but style of dance), and will figure out how to dance with any follow in a way that they can both enjoy. That it takes listening to how your follow moves, and learning how to lead her to do what you want her to do by working *with* her instead of using brute force. (... and if something's not physically possible to lead her through without brute force, just don't do it: it won't feel nice for her. :P)

I am very much looking forward to working more on my leading. :]

[* "What is fusion music?", you ask. There's no one good answer to this (that I can give yet, anyway), but this fellow, after attending the second Fusion Exchange, composed some music specifically for fusion dancers. He DJed at BFX as well, playing more original compositions. Other DJs in the "fusion" rooms played things along the same lines, plus other stuff ranging from pop to r&b to rumba. But fusion, as far as dancing goes, isn't about the style of music so much as the approach: moving to the music that's playing, and moving with your partner. So you can easily dance what appears to be blues or tango or lindy in a fusion way, if there happens to be blues or tango or swing music playing. But it doesn't come from picking a dance style and simply doing that dance, with a partner who also knows that dance. More on fusion in a later post.]

Why teaching is awesome

There are few things as wonderful as an epiphany: suddenly *getting* something in a way you really didn't before. I recently took a workshop that made my brain explode with new understanding on multiple occasions within the space of an hour. So wicked.

But man, being on the other side of that? Turning on lightbulbs in someone *else's* head? I think that just might be even better. :]

Fortunately for me, the only way to keep exploding other people's brains indefinitely is to continually pursue additional Brain Explosions of Learning of my own. The best of both worlds.

Adventures in Leading (Part II)

... And not too long later, I'm really excited about this leading thing. I'm super lucky that a few really great follows actually want to help me learn and can give me really helpful feedback while I repeatedly epic fail at trying to lead them through things (thanks for being such awesome sports, guys! :]). So I'm slowly making progress -- there are at least a couple of things that I can lead pretty smoothly now. (Shock!) It's so satisfying to be able to successfully execute a move. :D

A couple random thoughts from my Adventures in Leading thus far:

In blues, since there's no basic step, there isn't really any sort of framework or structure to rely on to know where your follow should be, or which foot her weight is on. But trying to start a move irrespective of where your follow's weight is is a sure recipe for someone tripping over themselves (or their partner). So a good lead has to kind of follow the follow after initiating a move, keeping track of where her feet are, and going with her so *he* can match up with *her* before trying to initiate anything else. Trying to do a simple inside turn, I at first had to watch the girl's feet in order to time when to pull her back into closed position, but I figured that one should be able to just feel where her weight is without looking and be able to get the timing just by the feel... and sure enough, after trying it a few times without looking, I actually got the timing down, and it feels surprisingly smooth now! Or maybe I shouldn't be surprised. It's always easiest for me to follow with my eyes closed, presumably since there's much less sensory input to distract me from the most important thing in partner dancing: connection.

The other thing is that, after getting a lot of feedback over many attempts at executing various moves, it seems that, at least in terms of the physical aspects, there does seem to be a fair amount of symmetry in the way I and my follow experience a move. That is, it seems like if it feels to me like it went smoothly, my follow generally agrees that it felt smooth; and if I think something didn't feel quite right, my follow also generally agrees. This is really, really good to know -- knowing I can trust my own perception of things will help me a lot when dancing with follows who don't give me much feedback.

I have to wonder about leads who don't also know what it's like to follow though... After dancing with a rough lead, I can't help but wonder if it actually feels smooth and enjoyable to him, or if he thinks I must enjoy being jarred and tossed around. During one recent dance, I couldn't stop myself from visibly wincing (and uttering some kind of corresponding sound) when a guy did something that felt much more like a martial arts move than a dance move (my wrist was very unhappy as a result :|).

On a related note, I'm finally starting to be able to relate to a lot of things I get from beginner leads, like how challenging it is at first to string together various moves naturally, even once you've learned to do them well individually. One point of interest for me though, is about hand-squeezing. As I expressed here not too long ago, the poor-leading habit that I hate the most is squeezing a follow's hands. I totally got caught doing that exact thing the other day. (Well, I'm not sure if I was squeezing -- I don't *think* I was -- but my thumbs were down! Bad!!) But unlike the other beginner-lead challenges I've encountered firsthand so far, this one makes me have even less sympathy for leads who do this. I must tell all my follows to yell at me every time I do it. :|!

And speaking of dance injuries, I seem to have incurred my first one. I don't mean the flesh-wound kind, where someone elbows you in the face, or stomps on your foot in heels -- those don't bother me any longer than the immediate pain distracts me from dancing (i.e., not very long at all). But last weekend, through a combination of mild foolishness on my part and what happened to be awful timing, I almost broke my arm off at the elbow. It was too fast for me to really remember what happened, but I definitely felt something like the beginnings of a snap, and it hurt like hell well after that dance. It felt more or less fine by later that night (except when I fully extended my arm), but I figured I should get it checked out just in case... I didn't end up doing so during the week, but it wasn't really bothering me until this weekend... when I stupidly tried to lead something that involved rotating quickly and building up lots of momentum, then releasing the girl from closed position (so she kind of flies away from the pivot point) and stopping her with my (apparently not-so-intact) right arm. Bad, bad idea. >_< Add to that the aforementioned kung-fu lead I danced with later that night, and it looks like I have thoroughly messed up my elbow. Not sure what to do, given that not dancing isn't an option. :\

Adventures in Leading (Part I)

So about a week ago, I started actually trying to learn how to lead in blues. I ended up (unexpectedly) diving in face first, since the day after my first real attempt, I had to lead in a so-not-beginner progressive lesson, and the stuff we were doing throughout the class involved a crapload of elements which I had no idea how to lead (being that I couldn't really lead anything at all :P). I don't remember what it was like the first few months I started dancing, but since I can remember, dancing as a follow has involved basically no conscious thought on my part. So I never really pay much attention in lessons, since it's never particularly useful to do so. I just follow, and when something isn't working, I ask questions specific to the problems my partner and I are having. So in this class, in addition to not knowing how to lead anything that all the other leads already knew, I had to actually pay attention and take information into my brain for conscious retrieval. Epic. Fail. Being so unaccustomed to paying attention in dance class, I couldn't help but zone out every two seconds, which made remembering what the instructor was demonstrating impossible. Not that retaining it would've helped me much, since I didn't know how to lead any of the components anyway. Gah. But I tried (and tried, and tried), and it was impossibly hard, and by the end of the hour and a half my brain felt like it had short circuited and melted and was leaking out of my ears, and I wanted to collapse into a crumpled pile on the floor. Like, actually.

I think that's actually the most awful dance has ever made me feel (brain pain FTL!). In any case, I was really frustrated because the kind words of reassurance people were giving me (while I appreciated the sentiment) weren't helping anything. People seem to think that when I say I can't lead or am bad at leading, I mean I can't-and-won't-ever-be-able-to lead or lead well, in a boo-hoo, woe-is-me sort of way. That's not how I feel at all -- I just know that I currently don't know how to do anything, and I want to learn how to do stuff (properly), which requires a) being shown how to do stuff, and b) recognizing when I'm not doing it properly, so I can figure out how to fix it. This is why comments like "No, you're a good lead!" and "You'll be fine!" just frustrate and dishearten me more -- they're not constructive, don't actually help me get anywhere, and make me feel like I won't be able to get the kind of feedback I actually need in order to improve (i.e., hopeless :P).

But moving on... One observation I've made so far has to do with connection and counterbalance. As a salsa dancer, one of the biggest challenges for me as a follow in blues is connecting with my back to my lead's hand/arm. I've been told my closed position following is good (maybe from having done some tango back when I started dancing?), but that relies on connection through the front of the torso and through the legs. Once there's some space between me and my lead, we rely hugely on connection between his arm and my back, and that's something that's totally foreign to salsa -- being in almost constant opposition to one another, and trusting your partner to counterbalance you. (There's exactly one common move I can think of in salsa, called a Coca-Cola around here, that uses this same kind of connection. But even that doesn't require deliberate connection on the part of either lead or follow, since there's centripetal force there creating that connection whether you want it or not.)

This is the same thing that I'm having the most trouble with now that I'm trying to lead: I'm used to handling my own weight and keeping my own balance, and suddenly I have to handle not only my own weight, but also the weight of my follow -- and I have to do it almost all the time, because of the nature of the connection. I practiced leading a bunch in one night, and the next morning I woke up with my entire back and whole right side incredibly sore. (This despite forgetting to counterbalance my follow almost all the time, and almost toppling both of us over repeatedly as a result. :|) I made various semi-joking comments about having to work out if I want to be able to lead, but the fact that other blues leads I know who come from salsa had the same problem when they started in blues tells me that it isn't just that I'm a lame weakling -- the kind of connection in blues is indeed very different from salsa.

When just starting to learn how, trying to lead in a dance you already dance as a follow is like trying to write poetry in a language you've only just begun to learn.

Release me from your Kung-Fu Grip™.

There are already plenty of dance-floor etiquette guides and Top 10 "Do"s and "Don't"s lists out there, but having just been asked to contribute to another one has put me in a bit of a ranting mode, and I feel like posting this here.

I generally don't turn down dances unless I'm about to literally collapse from exhaustion, but there are a few things that make me not want to dance with a guy (even if it doesn't mean I'll refuse him as a result). Things like rhythm problems and a lot of leading-related issues can get frustrating sometimes, sure, but at the same time, the only way to improve on those things is to practice, which means dancing with as many people as you can. And I've certainly had plenty of fun dancing with complete beginners, so it's really not experience-related things that bother me.

The first two things are unpleasant, but not total deal-breakers. (And since my experience comes from dancing with guys, these are about guys, but they could just as easily apply to girls.)

Smelliness is something I really don't encounter very often, but when I do, I admit I try to avoid dancing with the person. I always feel guilty about it though, especially when I'd otherwise enjoy dances with said person. At the same time, I'm also one of those people who's really sensitive to perfume-y stuff (my biggest fear at a concert is ending up next to someone wearing perfume; I can barely breath, and it really does ruin the entire thing for me x_x), so dousing oneself in cologne is also not the answer. Either way, if I find myself trying to hold my breath (or awkwardly turn my head away) half the time we're dancing, I probably won't want to dance with the guy again any time soon.

We all get sweaty while dancing (if you're not sweaty, you're not dancing hard enough!), but guys who *always* end up with their shirts literally soaking wet should consider bringing as many changes of shirt as they need to make it through the night. I know guys who go through at least three in a night -- and the girls appreciate it! If that's not feasible for whatever reason, or if you simply don't want to, fine, but then don't draw the girl into tight closed position; I sweat enough myself, and don't need my clothes getting completely soaked in one dance, just from being held up against a guy's dripping-wet shirt. That said, even that is (more or less) forgivable... but the thing that really makes me not want to dance with a guy is being dripped on while dancing. Yes, dripped *on*. As in, "Hey, is there a leak in the ceiling?" If, by the end of a dance, shaking your head "no" would shower bystanders in your sweat, you need to invest in a towel and *use it* after each dance.

Now, both of these things have nothing to do with actual dancing, and I've danced with people who I would really like dancing with if not for those issues. So even if they'd make me not want to dance with a guy as much, I don't hold it against him and, in fact, may wish he would address the issue so I could dance with him more. This, however, does not apply my last point:

For me, the biggest no-no by far is hand-squeezing. Step on my feet, crash me into people, elbow me in the face -- whatever; I may not like it, and sure it may mean you need to work on control/attention or something (I know I sure do), but at least it's just an accident. As someone who plays guitar and therefore values her fingers, if a guy won't stop squeezing my hands (or at least make an obvious, significant effort) after I ask him to, I will not dance with him again, nor will I feel guilty about it. There's never any reason to close the thumbs down on a girl's fingers (especially when turning her!), let alone keep a death-grip on her hands the whole time. One could call this an experience-related issue, but unlike those other ways in which a guy can injure a girl, this one is completely within his control, regardless of what the girl or anyone else on the floor is doing. And unlike other aspects of rough leading, this one requires no feedback from your partner in order to fix it, so there's no excuse for doing it consistently. Honestly, if all you can do while concentrating on not crushing a girl's hands is the basic step and a right-hand turn, that's all you *should* be doing until you don't need to think about it anymore. I'll take a simple dance over injured fingers any day.

Unrequited dance (cont'd.)

So I pondered some time ago about the symmetry of partner dances and whether there can be a great disparity between how each partner perceives a dance in terms of enjoyment and (of more interest to me) connection/chemistry.

It seems that quite significant a disparity is possible. I find this unfortunate.

In the case where partner A experiences something in the dance that partner B doesn't, I have to wonder whether it could indeed be connection/chemistry at all that A feels, as opposed to enjoyment of another sort.

Not to suggest that I haven't been partner A (I certainly have, many times, at least with respect to general enjoyment), but there's something that bothers me about the idea of deriving enjoyment from a dance in the absence of chemistry with one's partner, especially if it's significantly asymmetrical. A very specific analogy comes to mind, but maybe I'll leave that for another time... In the meantime, I have more to ponder...

miscellaneous thoughts in no particular order

I've been having nightmares lately. The kind where you wake up, and this awful feeling of residual fear or dread or anxiety stays with you well after you've gotten out of bed and begun to go about your day. I haven't had nightmares in many months — at least — and I don't remember ever having ones like this, that affect me long after I wake up. Part of me wonders why I've been having them all of a sudden, and part of me doesn't want to think about it.


Drag blues feels amazing. It reminds me of ballroom, and I miss ballroom. Specifically it reminds me of tango, and I think it's because of the nature of the connection. A lot of the lead/follow seems to rely not on the arms at all, but rather on connection through the legs and torso. I really like it... perhaps not surprisingly, considering that my arms are pretty much the bane of my dancing existence. (Sigh.) In any case, I'm dying to learn more blues. I think it's already changing my dancing in general. I've hardly been out dancing salsa lately, but recently I danced a really great bachata (with a ballroom instructor, incidentally), and it felt different from the last time I danced with him — certain things felt easier and more natural to follow, more effortless... and from the feel of those things, it was definitely a direct result of the drag blues workshops I did not long ago (taught by some amazing instructors from Denver).


I need to develop more discipline (i.e., an amount greater than zero). I know I have enough time to do a good number of the things I want to be doing these days without continually getting myself sick (I've long since lost count of the number of times I've been sick since last summer... it is definitely greater than eight), but I've barely been accomplishing anything, and it's really starting to bother me. I'm barely treading water, let alone getting anywhere. I seem to have completely lost the ability to be productive on a regular day. This is not sustainable. I fear the only solution is sheer will power.


Eu não vivo onde moro; eu não moro onde vivo. I feel like my life is in one place, and my home and school are in another. I don't think it's going to change any time soon. Part of me is scared by that thought; part of me wants to be fine with it. Fortunately(?), if I keep myself busy enough, I manage not to think about this or its implications and just enjoy what I have at the moment.

This Is Your Brain on Music (Part I)

This is a book I bought years ago because of my interest in cognition, my love of music, and the fact that my curiosity about how we experience music and why was driving me crazy. For some reason (probably because I'd bought another half-dozen books at the same time), I started reading it then, but didn't get that far before I got distracted by shiny things and forgot about it.

Recently, in my theory development class, we've been talking about design and perception, and music (the way we perceive it, and our preferences relating to it) came up; it reminded me of this book. My music- and dance-related experiences over the last couple of years have made my fascination with this subject much greater than it was even when I bought the book, so I was eager to pick it up again and start reading it from the beginning. Here are a couple of passages from the introduction that resonated with me in a way they couldn't possibly have when I first read them years ago:

What artists and scientists have in common is the ability to live in an open-ended state of interpretation and reinterpretation of the products of our work. The work of artists and scientists is ultimately the pursuit of truth, but members of both camps understand that truth in its very nature is contextual and changeable, dependent on point of view, and that today's truths become tomorrow's disproven hypotheses or forgotten objets d'art.

After I finished undergrad, during my final years of which I focused on molecular genetics and spent most of my non-classtime waking hours working on my school's team for the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition, I -- by no means deliberately -- gradually stepped back from the nitty gritty technical side of synthetic biology, and found myself spending more of my time focused on running and developing my team. Having receded from the land of the hardcore technical side of science, I came to realize that I am (would it be ironic to say "at heart"?) a scientist, in terms of the way I see and think about the world, the questions I'm given to asking, and the way I evaluate information on a day-to-day basis. Meanwhile, I'd become much more immersed in a world of art. Of music, and of dance, and of expression of whatever is alive inside us, trying to get out. And, feeling almost like two completely different people in each of them, I've all the while had a hard time reconciling these two worlds of Science and Art. I'm still not sure how I can do so in a practical sense (or whether I can), but reading that passage was strangely comforting; it made me feel more like a single person.

... I was going to include another excerpt here (actually, the one that I wanted to comment on in the first place), but I'll leave that for tomorrow.

More on blues dancing... and (learning) dance of various sorts

I am currently super-hyped about the chance to blues dance again in the (very) near future, particularly after watching a bunch of great videos of blues dancing the other day.

This is the first example of blues dancing I ever saw, and I fell in love with it immediately.

The rest are videos I came across recently. The next couple videos are from the San Diego Fusion Exchange, so maybe they're not strictly blues (?)... but what I love about blues is that it totally doesn't matter. :]

Man, I love how this woman moves (same woman from the two videos above)...

Gah, 1:16 kills me! So awesome...

Love this one. This woman dances likes her limbs are weightless... beautiful. And the song... mm mm mm...

God, I love her lines at 1:28, and what they do afterwards at 1:34-ish. *_* Gorgeous dancing...

I really like these guys too; their style really appeals to me (and their choice of songs doesn't hurt :]):

Their style is pretty simple on the whole, but the overall feel is cool, and I love the little things they do with their feet (what the dude does at 1:25 *kills* me -- so awesome).

But now here's the interesting thing... Blues, this super free-form style, is making me want to learn technique like I've never wanted to before -- even moreso than when I was doing ballroom. In ballroom, it seems, technique is everything, and you really don't get the feel of the dance unless you're doing it properly. [I say this based solely on the eight-or-so months of ballroom I did, which was the first dancing I'd ever done, so I had nothing at all to compare to at that point. Maybe my impression would be different now... Not that I'm not still a Very Inexperienced Dancer, after only about 1.5 years total. Hehe.. So yeah: tablespoon of salt is warranted here, for sure. That is, don't be fooled into thinking that I know (or think I know) what I'm talking about at all. :P All of my dance-related ramblings are just my personal impressions/thoughts based on my own relatively meagre experience.]

So I was really into working on technique at that time. Once I stopped taking ballroom and was pretty much only dancing salsa socially, at first I really wanted to take salsa lessons to improve, but eventually (probably as my following improved over time, and I could at least squeak by dancing passably with most leads) that desire faded and I just wanted to have fun. Although... I suppose that was part of it, and the other part was that, when I hear salsa music, the way my body feels like moving is often at odds with how salsa styling seems to be commonly taught. (Or I just suck too much at consciously controlling my movements to find out, haha.) In any case, I didn't really feel like taking salsa lessons anymore (which was just as well, since I never did get around to taking any :|!), and since then I've been kind of just messing around on the dance floor, doing whatever the music is making me do (which can feel great, but, as I've written before, has actually become problematic).

But back to blues! So I learn about this whole "blues dancing" thing and fall in love with it instantly, since it's all about dancing the music and moving how you feel. Awesome! But seeing more examples of blues dancing, I see how much more can be expressed through it, and (unlike with salsa) I don't have anywhere close to the vocabulary of movement required to express the things I'm made to feel by the music I'd want to dance blues to. It's like being at a loss for words... like wanting to convey an idea to someone but not knowing how to put it, and watching these awesome videos is like reading something someone else has written that says exactly what you wanted to say, way better than you ever could have put it yourself. It makes me really want to improve my vocabulary and precision of movement, so I can say many more varied and nuanced things through dance.

... Too bad the reasons I never got around to taking salsa lessons when I wanted to still apply (and then some). :| Maybe in the spring I'll be able to squeeze in a lesson or workshop here and there...

Bottled feelings

I feel like I understand art a little better today. I've rambled on before about how the things (energies? passions?) that are alive inside a person can force themselves out in the form of art... music, movement... or other activities, like working hard for some kind of cause. In a couple of ways I get this a little more now than I did before...

Expression through dance is something I can relate to since I feel it all the time: when I hear the right music (which could even just be music in my head :P), there's this need to let this thing out of me, which can only be released through movement.

The visual art thing, on the other hand, I didn't really get. As intrinsically enjoyable as the act of drawing is for me, I'm rarely compelled to do it in the first place. But for perhaps the first time ever, I recently had a taste of that compulsion: I went out to a lake one evening with a bunch of friends. The moon was a huge, orange crescent hanging low in the black sky. As we stood around by the lake, looking at the stars, we realized the moon was getting lower on the horizon. Soon enough it had reached the lake itself, and I stood there, captivated, unable to look away as this orange crescent moon sank into the water like a ship on fire. Something about this nearly moved me to tears, and it felt like the ship was drawing the breath out of me and taking it with it as it sank. I couldn't bring myself to move until long after the last point of light had vanished on the horizon, and I desperately wished that I could capture what I'd just experienced... preserve it somehow, in the form of a painting.

Of course, I am in no way a painter, and it would be terrible to destroy that experience as it exists in my memory by seeing whatever awful rendering I might produce on paper, so I wouldn't even attempt it. Even my written description just now, which I tried to gloss over as much as possible (while still getting the gist of it across) in order to avoid this very thing, has kind of sullied my memory of the event. :| In any case, even if my inability to express myself through these means stops me from actually doing it, I've now at least had a glimpse of what it's like to want to express myself through visual art.

In this case, the desire to capture a moment made me want to create art: to take my experience of that event and turn it into a physical object so I could have it later, maybe share it with others. In the past, I've been driven by various emotions to write things -- sometimes poetry, sometimes other things -- and it has mostly been because of a need to take whatever I was feeling at the time and get it out of me. To reach in and grab hold of it and pull it out and get rid of it, so I could stop experiencing whatever feeling of unrest was roiling inside me. And aside from looking at what I've just pulled out only long enough to see that it is indeed the thing, in its entirety, that I wanted to get rid of, that's generally the end of it, and I don't deal with the thing any further.

But today, for some reason, I read some things I'd written a while back, during a time when I felt quite different than I do these days. Even though I remember a lot of things from that time, even some events in plenty of detail, I generally can't recall the specific feelings I had. Perhaps it's akin to the way you might remember the face of someone you once knew long ago; you might have a rough picture, but it's hazy and doesn't capture the details -- the features that make that person distinct from others with the same sort of look. Yet if you actually see the person, they're immediately recognizable, even alongside other, similar-looking people. In the same way, though I could no longer remember my feelings from these past times, as I read these things that I'd once written, everything I'd been experiencing at the time came crashing over me again. Nuances of emotion that I still wouldn't know how to begin describing in plain words. Somehow I didn't expect that reading these things could put those feelings back into me, even in spite of how irrelevant they are to the present. That is, given how things are now, it doesn't even make sense that I should be able to feel these things from these other times.

It's as if, in writing each of those things, I distilled that immediate experience out of me and bottled it like a drug... and all it takes to once again experience everything I'd managed to draw out of myself back then is to sip from that little bottle.

I suppose, then, that if another person has had experiences similar enough to that from which a given drug was distilled, they too can be affected by it; this is perhaps what makes art resonate with certain people but not others. This would certainly explain why until a few years ago I had very little appreciation for the arts: I hadn't even begun to live yet.

Unrequited dance

I often wonder about the symmetry of partner dance experiences. Like, to what extent can there be unrecognized disparity between how each person perceives a given dance? For instance, if a very skilled lead dances with a girl who's just beginning to learn, the girl might have a really fun dance while the guy might be pretty bored or even frustrated (and vice versa, in the case of an experienced girl and inexperienced guy). Or aside from differences in skill level... Say if two people have two pretty different styles... maybe person A might like person B's style and enjoy the dance a lot, while B might find A's style difficult to dance with. In this kind of scenario, I wonder whether A would necessarily feel from B their lack of enjoyment, and/or whether this would affect A's experience/enjoyment of the dance.

But beyond simply enjoyment (or lack thereof), what I'm really curious about is connection. Not physical lead/follow connection... maybe "chemistry" is a better word for what I'm thinking of? I'm not entirely sure of what people generally mean when they talk about chemistry between partners, but I think the thing I have in mind (which I've tried before to explain) is something more specific, if not altogether different. It's something like being completely in tune with the other person, really *feeling* them in a way that's not even physical... Not just feeling their movement, but feeling how they're feeling the music -- even feeling how they want to express the way they're feeling the music. For me, occasionally this happens with salsa, but I've never felt such an intense connection with my partner as I have while dancing blues. It's unbelievable, and I really don't know how to describe it other than... intense.

Whenever I'm trying to think of how to describe it, the following always comes to mind: in Dynasty Warriors, two players can perform a special attack together if they each have full special-attack meters and they're standing close enough to one another; under those conditions, you see this crackling electricity-type thing between them, indicating that you can perform the dual attack:

Despite my tendency to see many aspects of life in terms of video games, I find it more than a little weird likening blues dancing to Dynasty Warriors... but it's such an apt depiction of how the connection I'm talking about feels! When it's strong, it is like this electricity... this direct link between each person's experience of the music. (I guess in this sense the analogy can be extended, since I can't imagine that this kind of connection could occur unless both people's individual music-experience-intensity meters are at least close to maxed. :P)

Anyway... Revelations of my gamer-nerdiness aside, I'm so curious as to whether one person can feel as if they have this kind of intense connection with their partner, while at the same time the other person is just dancing normally, without feeling anything out of the ordinary. Or can it indeed only happen when two people are each feeling the way the other is experiencing the music... when this magical kind of synchrony happens... when they're not just dancing concurrently -- or even "with" each other -- but dancing together through the music?

Sorry if I spray you.

I am faced with a bit of a meta-problem. I said before that I want to fix my broken following... or my conscious self does, anyway. My dancing self, I have since discovered... maybe not so much.

A couple weeks after I wrote about this growing following problem of mine, I got to hear (by proxy) what the director of one of the salsa dance companies around here thinks of my dancing, which pretty much exactly confirmed my suspicions (which in turn made me really happy, to know that my perception of things is fairly reflective of what at least one super-experienced lead feels from his end). Specifically, he said that I need to learn to channel my energy and that sometimes my following is disconnected, but, because I have good reflexes, I get away with it (all three of these things are exactly things that I'd been thinking myself). So this was further motivation to work on my following. But I think this is going to be a lot harder than I'd expected, and not for the reasons I'd have thought.

Tonight I had probably the most fun dancing that I've *ever* had in one night (that I can recall, anyway). Toward the beginning of the night, I was dancing with a friend of mine when he noticed my broken-ass following and tried to help me fix it. As soon as he held his hands up, palms-out and fingers splayed, and told me to place my fingertips on his, I was like "Yes! This is going to be such awesome following practice!" And it was -- he not only gave me some general feedback about specifically how my dancing insanity makes it hard for a guy to lead, but helped me practice following more responsively -- more connectedly. It was really great, and I definitely want to do more practice following like that, until it's basically second nature. But I realized, a handful of dances after I danced with him, that I'd completely forgotten about what we'd been working on and was dancing like I normally do (maybe a bit more exuberantly than usual, since I was insanely excited to be dancing after what seemed like forever since the last time...), and I was having a ridiculously fun time. And, later in the night, he asked me if I'd changed my style -- said that at some point he saw me dancing with this other dude, and it looked completely different -- really smooth, or something (as opposed to impossible-to-control-wild-creature-like). But I hadn't been doing anything other than what I normally do, and I told him something to the effect that it depends on the dude. I realized, though, specifically what it is.

I don't remember what it was like when I started, but these days I dance because I can't help it. Like, literally because I cannot contain myself. It's like... It's like I'm like a faucet, and when the music starts playing, the water starts running through the pipes. If I'm not dancing, the pressure builds up and I want to explode. If I'm dancing with someone, the way they dance and lead me sets how open the tap is. If I'm feeling particularly exuberant (or even just if the song is really good), that water is running like mad, and it has to go somewhere; if what they're doing with me allows me to express what has built up inside me, that tap is wide open and the water can flow freely, in a predictable way (i.e., straight out the tap). Sometimes how someone will lead me is very different from what my natural inclination would be in terms of moving with the music, but that movement ends up still being hugely effective means of expression for me -- still provides that same release (or sometimes even more), even though they've turned on a different tap altogether and channeled the water out a different way. On the other hand, if what they're doing with me doesn't open the tap enough, that pressure is still there, and the water starts bursting the pipes and spraying all over the place. *I* feel better, but water ends up going way more places than they expected when they opened the tap; sometimes it ends up in harmless places (if my insanity happens to not interfere or conflict with what they're trying to do as a lead), but other times it sprays all over them, and it's probably not much fun to dance all wet. :|

Here I need to clarify that it isn't in any way a matter of good versus bad leading/dancing, or anything like that -- it just comes down to compatibility in the ways we're each experiencing the music, which of course differs hugely from person to person.

But now I'm not sure what to do. Part of me (the thinking part) wants to improve as a follow, but part of me (the dancing part) just wants to enjoy dancing. There are enough leads who seem to be okay with my tendencies (and who work those taps in just the right way for me) that I can have Most Awesome Salsa Nights like the one I just had, despite my broken following. But at the same time, there are probably plenty of other leads out there who I'd have an amazing time dancing with as well, but whom I'm disinclined to ask in the first place because I don't want to spray water all over them... So I'm definitely limiting myself if I don't fix my following (or at least get over the guilty feeling, hehe).

I guess the best thing to do is just dance how I feel with people I can do that with freely (without spraying), and with others, take the opportunity to channel that extra pressure into concentrating on practicing my following.

August 16, 2009

The things that live inside us

I was cleaning off an old hard drive from a desktop I used years ago, and I came across a whole bunch of files I thought I'd lost. Among these were some various art-ish things, which, according to the file info, are from about ten years ago (it still blows my mind when I recall something that falls into my "years ago" mental category, and it turns out that it was a *decade* ago o_o!). Nostalgia impels me to share some of them here. (Bem, na verdade, eu omito os desenhos pro quais eu estou a mais nostálgica, rsrs... mas em todo caso...)

These ones are scans of some things I did in my grade 9 art class:

I think we had to paint these using fake flowers as a reference, hehe.

I think this was based on a photo from National Geographic.

I don't remember working on this one at all, but I must have used a photo for reference here as well.

This one my brother drew (bonus points if you recognize the character!), and I scanned his drawing for my first-ever attempt at colouring something on the computer... using a mouse. :| I'm pretty sure it took me forever, and I think in the end the only part I was happy with was the right shoulder. Haha..

Some random little images:

The bottom ones were probably playing around with my tablet, once I got one.

This may be the only piece of fan art I ever produced. It was for a webcomic that I'm sure has long since ceased to exist.

After some point, I think I just sketched random crap now and then:

I think I pretty much didn't draw at all after around this time. It's kind of strange, because I definitely enjoyed doing it. But... it's weird: thinking back, even though I recall liking doing stuff like this, I can't imagine the feeling of actually *wanting* to do it. You know, the sort of state you're in when you're thinking something like "Ooh, I know! I'm going to do X!", just before you actually go and do it. Being compelled to do something. It's something I used to struggle with, actually -- rarely (if ever) having that feeling of wanting to do specific things, in an immediate sense (as opposed to hypothetically). That's not to say that there weren't lots of things I enjoyed once I was doing them... but I think my tendency was to sort of idly drift into doing things, rather than actively seeking out the activity. Or some external stimulus would make me suddenly want to do something, instead of the inclination spontaneously coming from me.

I guess this is the reason why, for a long time, the only things I really did for fun either were passive (e.g., reading, watching anime/tv/movies, listening to music) or inherently prompted further continuous action (e.g., video games). Perhaps one exception to this was designing and making graphics/layouts for sites. Inexplicably, I used to really like making layouts. (Sadly, I couldn't find any of them on that old hard drive... I guess they're gone forever. :( ) Maybe it had something to do with the combination of aesthetics and functionality -- that the thought of using them afterwards (and actually getting to *see*, on a regular basis, the nice-looking thing I made, unlike with most art I might have produced) made me want to do it. But yeah, it really used to bother me, this general lack of internal desire or motivation to do things I enjoyed.

I think that, by and large, I'm only really compelled do things that make me feel something. Looking at and using layouts I'd made kind-of-sort-of-almost falls into that category (probably due to the aesthetic aspects), but loosely. Better, more recent examples would be playing guitar (and singing), or horseback riding (a hugely physical kind of "feeling" here -- I guess you could call it exhilaration), or dancing. Both playing music and dancing are able to stir up all kinds of things in me, and those things can vary greatly depending on the type of music or dancing. (I won't even begin to try to describe the incredible array of things dance is capable of evoking in me... it adds a whole other dimension to the already vast spectrum of what music alone can do.) So on the one hand, they can elicit strong feelings from me. But on the other hand, if I'm already feeling something, they also provide a means of getting it out of me.

Hm, then I guess writing belongs on my list as well. I thought of it in the context of expression of emotion, but in truth I suppose the writing example means that the whole making/letting-me-feel-stuff thing goes beyond emotions. For instance, if I have some kind of complex idea(s) that I want to communicate (or even just sort out for myself), not only is writing immensely helpful in shaping it into something coherent that effectively conveys the idea, but it's also incredibly satisfying to reach the point in composing a piece of writing where everything fits. The various ideas are all there, expressed clearly and concisely with natural progression and flow, and everything is tied together nicely into something that says just what you want it to say. It's this wonderful sort of mental release, to finally be able to take this mysterious, complex thing that was alive in your head, and to put it out there into the world in a faithful representation of what it was inside of you. [In a way, the process of constructing that understandable representation is satisfying in the same way formulating proofs is (or was), at least for me; the solution, or some part of it, just comes to you in a flash, and at first you don't yet know what it is -- it's there in your head, and you can see it, and you know (or think) that it's the thing you were looking for, but it takes some time to examine it, to tease it apart until you recognize in its amorphous form familiar subcomponents, and finally how they all fit together. And there's this huge satisfaction that comes from taking those subcomponents, putting them together, on paper, in the way you observed them to relate in your mind, and seeing that, yes!, everything fits, and you've got exactly the thing that initially came to you in that flash.]

I suppose, in general then, it's all about achieving that release that comes from effective expression: from getting whatever is alive inside of you out into the world. Whether it's heartbreak coming out as song, ideas as an essay, pent-up energy as a sprint down the hall, or anger as a throat-rending scream, we each pick the most effective means we have for getting things out of us. In one of my classes a few weeks ago, the prof raised the question of "what is passion?", and I think that it may be these live things inside us, trying to burst their way out.

On the other side of the coin, I guess this is really what allows us to connect with other people as well. To see, there in front of you, produced by another person, a manifestation of the very thing that's alive within you -- to read it in their words, to feel it in the movement of their body; how can you not feel closer to a person, knowing the same thing lives inside you both? It's amazing how the way a person expresses themselves can excite things in you, even if neither of you knew it was there, and even to the point where what was once sleeping within you finally resounds so strongly that you're moved to give voice to it as well. And the positive feedback that can happen: given how satisfying it is to express these live things, it's no wonder we like to surround ourselves with people who share the same passions. They keep them alive in us and make them stronger.

As I said, I used to feel empty in this sense... like I didn't have any of these live things of my own, moving me to do things. Even though other people could transiently excite certain things in me (and a myriad of things at that, with how diverse my interests are), it would never last long beyond the direct influences of those other people, and, left to my own devices, I'd invariably go back to not feeling like doing anything. I'm really glad that in the last few years various people helped to awaken different things in me, and that these things grew strong enough that they've stayed alive in me even without these people around anymore.

So, as far as art goes... I think if I were to be an artist, I'd be an artist of emotion. Even though I enjoy drawing once I'm doing it, I'm not compelled to do it under everyday circumstances. I guess the act itself, though enjoyable, isn't enough so that it alone would move me to do it, and I don't get all that much out of looking at the final product myself (maybe I'd want to do it for a gift or something...). And since my skill isn't great enough to faithfully produce the things that come to mind when I'm compelled to give voice to my emotions, these days I instead turn to the languages in which I have somewhat more fluency, like writing, music and dance.

A glassless window

I have found the solution to my problem: blues dancing.

Oh man. I tried it for the first time ever, and... wow. Just wow. Maybe there's more structure to it than I realize, but it feels like pure musicality. It's like you can do whatever you want. Well, the guy can do whatever he wants, and the girl can do... whatever the guy wants. :P

Like I said, me being a complete n00b, maybe there's more to it than I realize, but it seemed like (for the girl) it's pure following... Like, you *can't* dance it at all if you're not following properly -- if you're not really *listening* to your lead. Feeling his every movement.

As a more experienced follow pointed out to me near the beginning of the night, this does mean that it can be absolutely horrible if the guy either doesn't know how to lead well or feels the music in some strange way that you can't pick up on. But with a good lead...

Wow.

It can feel incredibly organic... even raw, depending on the music. But beyond that... there's something so intimate about a dance that relies entirely on amazing connection between lead and follow. For me, feeling someone's movement -- really feeling it -- has a stronger effect on me than even hearing them play music, or reading something they've written, or seeing something they've drawn. All of these things are like a window into a part of a person that otherwise remains invisible. A part that reflects the essence of them as a person. It always affects me, to be able to peer into such a window and to see what's there inside of them, pushing its way to the surface through a pen, or through an instrument... through movement.

Even to watch a person's movement can be incredibly powerful, but to feel it and move with it is something else entirely. Can two people be connected more closely -- more directly -- than through movement of their bodies? Structured dances with specific patterns can be amazingly fun, and you can certainly express yourself through them (though often by playing around with the patterns...). But performing specific, learned motions in prescribed patterns is like singing a song that someone else has written: maybe it perfectly conveys what you want to express (and to the extent that it does, it can be a wonderful window... but who can tell if it does?), but it isn't the same as writing your own song. Moving however you feel like moving is like making your own music; partner dancing in an unstructured style is like jamming. Only strip away the instruments, strip away the distance, make the music not the connection itself but the matrix through which two people can move together as one... More than any other dance I've tried, blues is like this. And it's incredible.

Music through movement

I have no self control. It's getting to be a real problem in my dancing, I think, but I'm too afraid to ask any leads about it for fear that they'll confirm my suspicions. Instead, I am going to try to work on it under the assumption that it is indeed a problem.

In general, but especially when I haven't been dancing for a while, I can't control myself. Or, perhaps more accurately, I can't contain myself. If the music is really good, it seizes me by the feet (even if I'm almost collapsing with exhaustion), and I can't stop it. It just takes me on this ride, and I am at the mercy of the music. I haven't seen myself dance in a long time, but I am vaguely aware that my salsa continues to resemble salsa less and less the more I dance, and it's because of this. My friend told me the other day, "It looks like Danielle dancing", whatever that means. :|!

In any case, I'm not so much concerned about whether or not I look ridiculous, because it's absurdly fun (and, really, who wants to sacrifice fun for looking "good"? :P), but it's hurting my following. For the most part, I think (or hope) I follow alright despite whatever insanity the music and my feet are plotting together, but sometimes my weight happens to be momentarily on the foot opposite to the one it should be on for what the guy's trying to lead, at the exact moment that it *really* needs to be on the foot he expects (otherwise I just autocorrect as I go into the move). This is pretty rare, but happened a couple of times this weekend and kind of took me by surprise. I'm not sure how I can avoid this, short of not dancing to the rhythm I'm hearing and instead always sticking to the 1,2,3,5,6,7 (or 2,3,4,6,7,8, as the case may be), and... well, I'm not going to do that.

More common a scenario is that my body (not just my feet) is doing something with the music that's... let's say "suboptimal"... for what the guy is trying to lead. He can still lead it, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it must feel something like dancing with a wild creature that needs to be constantly reined in.

Worse is when the music makes me play with timing, but the dude either doesn't, or does something different/incompatible (timing-wise). Timing incompatibility deals Instant Death to following. :(

Beyond all this, I've become aware that, even when a dance isn't riddled with the above occurrences, I tend to dance with the music. Not my partner. Sure, my dance with the music is subject to constraints (i.e., the patterns the guy is leading), but in general the music forces itself to the forefront of my attention, and it's the main thing I'm aware of. It's incredibly difficult for me to disengage from the music -- to mentally block it out and stop listening altogether. When I do, however, I think my following improves dramatically; I can actually listen to my lead instead of him having to battle the music for control of me. It's such a different experience, listening to the guy instead of the music. I feel his movements and play off them, and it's so smooth... it's really nice. But without the music, it's like dancing in black and white instead of technicolour.

Now and then I have a dance in which I have no trouble dancing *with* my partner while still hearing the music... and it's really, really fun, having that kind of connection. Sometimes these are the rare instances of the guy feeling the music the same way I do, but I think it's more often that the guy just *exudes* the way he feels the music, so I can feel it through him and hear in the music what he's hearing. If that's the case, maybe I can remedy all of these issues not by consciously trying to contain myself (futility!), but by making a point of trying to hear the music through my partner instead of the speakers.

Blues dancing! (and TWO sets of free dance workshops this weekend!)

The other day I heard about something called "blues dancing" for the first time. No idea what it was. So I checked it out on YouTube, and man! I am now desperate to try this myself. Man oh man! I'm sure there must be some kind of structure to it, like with any partner dance (all those that I know of, anyway :|), but it *looks* so natural. Like pure musicality. It must feel so amazing to dance. *_*!

Watching that clip makes me think of something my brother wrote about what his favourite music is: "Whatever music makes me feel like I've just been punched in the soul. IN THE SOUL." Haha... Okay, maybe that quote isn't *entirely* applicable, but I like it. :P Seriously though, when I listen to a really good song, some parts just kill me -- like the climax of an amazing guitar solo... or a trombone just slinking its way in at the perfect moment... or a single, repeated note of a piano breaking a near-silence after a slow dénouement... I only wish I could properly describe the feeling I get. It's a physical reaction: it just grabs hold of me by the heart, and I have to fight the urge to writhe with the amazingness of the music. It's almost like cringing, only really, really good...

Okay, epic fail at describing it, but oh well. In any case, actually *dancing* to those awesome parts of music is even better. Orders of magnitude better. I mean dancing *to* them. Like a build-up comes, and then *pah!* -- you hit the accent, hard, right when the drums do. Soooooo good... Man, now I want to dance -- I was thinking of salsa here (to add the the three different genres of the songs I was thinking of above). Hehe. Anyway, blues dancing looks like it's full of that kind of thing. Actually dancing the music. Estou morrendo de vontade de tentar!

I'd looked around online, right after I heard of it, for blues dancing in Toronto, and didn't come up with much. But (coincidentally?) yesterday I started seeing something about a blues group on Facebook, wanting to promote blues dancing in Toronto! And today they announced that they're organizing a social in January!! :D!! WINNNN! So ridiculously excited for it. :D

Something else I'm excited for is this Sunday: City Dance Corps recently moved to a new location, and they're having an open house with free classes from noon to 5 pm! They're offering a whole bunch of styles, including house (!), which looks insanely hard but also ridiculously fun, and I've been wanting to try it for a while now. If that wasn't enough, I came across another all-afternoon free-lesson event, also this Sunday: the Tré Armstrong Give-Back Free Dance Workshop, which will not only include house (!), but also pop 'n' lock (!!) and capoeira (!!!!). I would wish these events were on different days so I could go to both, but this Sunday would be my only chance anyway: I'm already missing all the Christmas and Boxing Day salsa parties because I leave for Brasil next Monday. :]