Cryin...

Another workshop, and again I'm sort of speechless. This week we got a little more intense. By the end of the day, there really wasn't a dry eye in the room. Jim Bonni's motto is love your feelings... dont jugdge your feelings... basically allow your self to feel your feelings. The idea of loving all you feelings, bad and good, is new for me. The thing is, all your life, you're taught not to allow yourself to feel bad or unpleasant feelings, and why would you want to? They're unpleasant. So I'm really trying to get myself into this new mindset, and little by little, I'm getting there. 

Dirty Dancin...

Today, we skipped the technique and went straight to the fun stuff; hip hop! I've taken a hip hop class once or twice, but I've never really studied it (although I've always wanted to). What I've learned from my past experiences, is I'm not exactly a natural (to put it gently). The thing with hip hop is that it's the polar opposite of what I've been studying my whole life. You have to completely throw all of your ballet technique out the window (which is so refreshing, but yet so hard). So I went into the workshop hoping for the best, but expecting the worst. I am glad to say, I was pleasantly surprised. When I looked in the mirror, I didn't look like a spastic chicken at all; I was sort of getting the hang of it... and most importantly, I was having fun. 

Jim Bonni?...

I really don't know what to say. I'm completely at a lose for words (so this will be a relatively short blog post)It was an experience like no other, I can definitely say that. I'm not really sure what happened in that dance studio, but something quit amazing happened, something that I don't think any of us could explain. We did these exercises at the beginning of class, which really can't be talked about, but then we did improv. Me and Megan were partners and we went first. We stood up in front of everybody and Jim Bonni asked them, what they thought the "relationship" was. They thought the two of us looked most like sisters, so that's what the improv was based on. Our motivation was that I was the "perfect" , "over-achiever" sister, and megan was the sister who felt like she was living under "my" shadow. I have to admit, improv always scared me a little, don't get me wrong, I liked it, but I would always get a little nervous and unsure. Now I don't know what happened, but during this improv I was completley comfortable, not one bit nervous. It was amazing. And what was even more amazing was how real it felt. It didn't feel like an improv at all. For a few minutes I actually believed that Megan was my sister. All I could say was "wow!"

Dancin'...

On Monday we had our first dance workshop with Matt. I loved it. We started with a mini pirouette lesson. He was really breaking everything down to the absolute basics. It was really nice to go over it step by step because in dance class, you never really have that opportunity. Sometimes, the very basic simple things, are more difficult than the complex things, if that makes any sense at all. So, basically I feel like I'm getting a lot out of this workshop. Then of course we learned a short combination. It's a classic ,high energy fun broadway combo, so obviously, I love it.