Dance practice 2

December 27
A brief post before I drift off into sleep.

I practiced dance today for the second time. I was in the basement for an hour, but sadly little of that hour was spent actually dancing. Jumps are getting better, but I still lack "spring". I have good cardiovascular endurance right now, thanks to all the jogging I did in Morocco, but there is no power or spirit in my dancing. I'm struggling through the motions: striving to keep my shoulders back and body straight, arms in and abs tight. Nothing is easy right now, and that is my fault for not keeping my body in shape for the past three years.

I will probably never be able to get my body back to the condition it was in when I was seventeen years old. My joints don't want to do that anymore. My big toe on my right foot already started hurting during my practice--- and I wasn't even really dancing. My body will hold me back from whatever it is I want to accomplish in dancing. Oh well. Such is life and such is my body, but I will keep going.

I don't bring to dancing the boundless energy and unbeatable enthusiasm I had three or four years ago. But neither do I bring to my dance all of my harsh self-criticism and distaste. I bring to it three years of growing up and accepting myself for who I am... of philosophizing just about everything in my small existence, justifying some things and dismissing others... the slow and painful process of chipping and carving away at "self" and watching the creation of something new. Watching it from the outside, but at the same time painfully aware that I am the subject at hand. Both creator and created. No easy place to be, but where I am all the same.

So, to end on the less philosophical note of dancing...
My toe hurts, so I will be sure to warm up my feet and stretch out my toes before dancing every time I practice.

My hip flexors are very week--- after only a few leaps and very little light jig steps, my legs were very tired for leg lifts, both standing and on the ground. I need to train my hip flexors. quads, and hamstrings.

I will move to more difficult maneuvers only when my body is ready. I will train the necessary muscles before forcing leaps and jumps and clicks. The parts have to be there before the locomotion will occur.

I will stretch, I will monitor, I will train... I will do the best I can to be both teacher and student, critic and motivator.

A difficult road I have before me, if this is what I want to do. But then, I think I'm ready for it. I've waited and a half years to enter into this again. I pray I will keep it up.