Back to Dance

Monday night was my first night going back to dance since Wednesday, October 4. The week after that I was too tired both Mon and Wed to go (Monday night I feel asleep at 8pm!!) and that Thursday was the fun funness of surgery so last week I was still focusing on trying to stand without the room spinning, so dancing was out of the question. We did some warm up drills that I had only done a few times; just when you're getting used to the drills they switch to something else so that your body doesn't get locked into one thing. So that was nice and complicated. We were working on arabesques (standing on one leg with the other extended straight behind a few inches off the floor, with the hips both still even and facing forward), which is something so easy in concept, but I am particularly bad at them because my big glutes are still pretty weak. I was also slow to get into first position and poiting my toes was hardly happening. I haven't felt this uncoordinated in dance since I first started. I felt all floppy and lacking grace. We also did dragging turns where the left leg is slightly bent and the right is dragging on the floor to the side while you turn. We were *supposed* to use our arms for momentum to get around, but for me, again with the no grace night I couldn't get around myself. It was aggravating, but oh well. It's what happens when you don't dance for alomst a month. The one thing that did go right, and quite to my surprise, was that I can almost do complete splits. During every class, we have a mmoment or two to work on splits, and I try (although I have to support myself on my hands) and on Monday, I was so close to being all the way down. I am going to be super excited when I don't have to use my hands and will be able to stretch on top of my split. Now if only my straddle split was going as well ;)
I am going to try to go through one more 10 week rotation of dance movements and then start going to the Fusion course where I have a fusion of middle eastern dance, western styles and finger cymbols! During the week of the workshop, I stayed one night to watch one of my new friends take the class, and it looked really cool. Only 3 people were taking the class, which is good adn bad I guess, but the things they were doing looked awesome and fun.