Practice Record

When I was in school I did Band Class. Yes, I was a bona fide Band Geek. Note the capital letters. You get those after your 5th year, kind of like a letterman's jacket for football players.

Now, when I was in middle school band we had these things called Practice Records. We were supposed to practice something like an hour each week, which added up to about 10 minutes every day. We had to take these little slips of paper home and write down how much we practiced each day and then have our parents sign it.

Now we need to get something straight.

I. Never. Practiced.

I loved being in band, and I was actually first chair of the clarinet section, but I could never seem to practice. I'd forget to bring my instrument home, or I'd bring it home and then have too much homework, or a multitude of other reasons. By the end of the year, I would bring home a stack of practice records which my mom would sign, and then I'd just fill in enough to get credit.

I lied, you see. I always thought it was silly, because who needs to practice when you're already the best in your school at something? And to a certain extent, that's true. If all you want is to be THE best, sometimes you can get away with that sort of thing. But if you want to be YOUR best, which is all anyone can ever really hope for, then practice is mandatory.

In bellydancing, as in band class, I do not have a great practice record. This was okay at first, when we were just learning. I practiced enough to learn the choreography and get through our routines (mostly at class on Sundays and one other day a week) but that doesn't mean I did it well. Actually let me rephrase that. It means I didn't do it as well as I could have.

Now that we're getting more serious, really delving into what kind of troupe we want to be and what type of dancing we want to eventually do, I'm beginning to realize that this is going to take a lot more commitment on my part. Not to mention a lot more sweat.

Right now I'm working on learning what we've been calling the "stepping shimmy." For lack of a better way to explain it, it goes like this:

You stepp forward and back with one foot, the other one stepping in place. As you step, you shimmy your hips. In my head it goes - RIGHT left RIGHT, LEFT right LEFT, RIGHT left RIGHT, with the capitals standing for the bigger accent.

It is, needless to say, not easy. I can do it now, albeit slowly, but in order for it to look good you have to...well, you have to rock it. You really have to be like 'THIS is my ass, look at me shimmy and walk at the same time! Ba-BOOM!"

And no, you don't have to say it out loud as you go.

Aside from that I've been doing pilates. We have a certain routine we do before class, and I do that but with more repetitions.

- Monday I did pilates and worked on the steppy thing, practicing for about an hour.

- Yesterday I just did pilates. I know from prior experience that if I try to commit to doing an hour of practice every day I will burn out quickly. So I'm thinking an hour at least twice a week (probably Tuesdays and Thursdays) and maybe just pilates the other days. I'm not likely to practice Friday or Saturday, just because I'm usually not home, and sometimes on Monday I'm too sore from class to do much of anything. But even if I was to practice Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday it would be huge.

So...here goes nothing.