Bellydancing is Like Baseball

I must give credit to the inspiration of this post, one of my fave bloggers in the sphere, IntrepidIdeas. He has been a very encouraging blogging friend through this journey. In my last post is the video of my most 'improvisational' attempt at dancing. As I was responding to his comment on my recent performance I realized that it was helping me do some observations. So, instead of commenting back, I've decdided to make this an individual post to assist me in my next practice, which I will be starting soon after this post. This was not the entire comment - I wrote the first few sentences and decided to continue on in a post.

I attempted to stop counting and remembering steps and just let myself feel and move to the music. It was a bit of a challenge, though. As I tried to be more relaxed, I forgot proper arm posture in the beginning. "Chicken wings" are not good, and that was what I was doing in the beginning. At that time I couldn't help but try to remember a travel step to go backwards (that I learned forward) so I could be in frame of the camera. You can see where I remember my arms as I rotated the elbows for a more elegant and professional look.

This challenge of dancing; this challenge of having to signal seprate parts of the body to move to move different ways at the same time reminds me of when I learned to play baseball. Since I never took a dance class in my life until now, this is the only thing I can compare it to.

Thankfully, my introduction to the game was in 1st grade; I was on a t-ball league, so the moving ball factor did not have to be addressed, as I had enough to learn and remember. I remember thinking there were a dozen or so things to remember even before you hit the ball, and quite a few things to do while you were doing it. It was the first time I had to move my body in different ways all at the same time, while focusing on one single thing - the ball - the hit - the connection. You can only do that when all of the previous steps are learned to where it becomes one fluid motion; one fluid intention.

You can only do something well when you can focus on it completely as a single thing. You can't separate your mind by thinking of separate things; therefore, you must practice until all of the many steps add into eachother to equal one.

With more practice - doing steps and arms at the same time, doing zills and steps at the same time, doing zills, arms and steps at the same time, and doing turns, zills, arms at the same time, I will be able to make all of these equations equal one.