On Saturday I took Kirstin Grbic's Modern class at Tapestry. She told us to dance more than just ourselves, saying that it is less interesting to watch someone constantly absorbed with their inward self. "Believe me, there's a lot more to it than that." The way she said it, it was a bit of life advice as well.
Cheryl Chaddick's class, which I took this morning, is a lot of sweeping and stretching through space, and that style is conducive to "dancing more than yourself." For me, the challenge is to avoid being distracted by her compliments. Cheryl gives wonderful encouragement, and her feedback is incredibly energizing. She says "Don't retreat!" and "More!" all the time and that's so useful. But then if she says "Antonia you have it!" I almost always think "Wow! She's complimenting me!" and then I get nervous and stumble the next step.
African dance is a whole different deal. I took West African class at Esquina Tango this afternoon, and I found that in order to dance at all I had to give up my sense of self to the music. The drums are so driving and so crucial to learning the steps that "dancing more than yourself" is necessary from the start. It was actually funny, the drums weren't very loud today because the neighbors had previously called the police... Esquina Tango is in a residential neighborhood. The five drummers were pretty bummed about not being able to beat their hearts out, and thus the class will probably move to another location soon.
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