I've been a VERY good girl. I have been practicing very regularly for the past 2 weeks. In total, I have done 5 practices outside of troupe practice in 2 weeks. That's really good. All of those practices have been of 1h... or more... I finally broke the 1-hour barrier last night after taking in some advices from folks on tribe.
Lately, I had been torturing myself mentally as to what is my dance style, how can I find my voice, what constitutes me as a dancer, etc. My husband, who has always the best advice, told me to stop questioning myself and just dance and everything will fall into place. He reminded me that I had not been practicing for a long time so, of course, I was questioning myself!
So, I took his advice, forgot to question myself, did some drills, and whatdoyouknow! I am starting to find myself in there!
Stupidly, I tried to bucket myself into only a few categories... but, boy, that's impossible for me! I should have known, too. As I was telling some of my tribe sisters on Friday, here at work, they have this training called "Insight into personal effectiveness", which is really a way of putting you in a personality bucket. The goal is that, once in you're in that bucket, it's supposed to be easy for people to deal with you because, say you're an extrovert who is very social (i.e., a "yellow" person per that classification), well, I should know to chat with you and everything is going to be fine and groovy. But, in that training, they couldn't bucket me... so you can consider me either black (you know... all the colors combined = black) or rainbow... whichever you prefer. So, that training was supposed also to give you insights as to who you are but it was utterly useless for me. Figures!
So, idiotically, I tried to bucket myself when it came to belly dancing. I am goth and, therefore, somewhat of a goth belly dancer. Yet I first learned cabaret with a strong Turkish influence. I don't want to disavow that training, as I did it for so long and it is my strong technical base... but I'm just not the coy, cutsy, cabarety style... although I can be at times but with my own way of being a perky goth. And I know some tribal style, which I absolutely love. I am not really completely tribal (definitely NOT in the ATS style; in Black Rose Caravan, we describe ourselves as "eclectic tribal" because that's a better representation of our style).
So... I wanted to define myself properly. In only one category. Well, that's not doable per the style categories. The only category that fits me is the "Celeste" category... which means that I am me. As with every topic that interests me, I like almost everything... Then, why the hell don't I embrace it?
So I decided that I will embrace it. I will stop fighting it. Because that's me. And that's my style.
(Now, I just need to remember that. lol)
Comments I had received
From Haifa:
Your a bellydancer.... period. :D I have come to the realization that I'm not sure if I can stick myself in a catagory... or style of bellydancing. Why should we? Yeah, I know... its easier to explain to people via a style. I was there too... but things just get too complicated. Guess I'm just getting old and want a simple way of doing things. ;) Good for you practicing so much! Brava!
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