Window on the World

I'm on study leave this week, and one of the amazing things about ministry is taking study leave to learn a wide variety of things you can apply to work.  I've always dreamed of learning dance, and have choreographed a few liturgical dances for my youth at church, but they've been VERY simplistic since I don't know what I'm doing.  At all.  I mean, I can figure out the arm stuff ... it's basically expression ... acting ... large, flowing American Sign Language ... it's the feet I don't know what to do with.  So I'm home this week (because I'm out of professional expense money) learning dance in my living room by video (Worship Feast puts out a good instructional DVD with choreography and instruction on dance techniques, but it goes QUICKLY) and by Internet articles and You Tube videos.

Yesterday, I learned the important stretches, the first five positions, the Bourree, the Chasse, the Chaines turns, the Pique turns, and the Plie.  (and I learned how to pronounce them as well!)  ;o)

I've also wanted to learn ballroom dance for a long time.  Red is a stand-in-one-place dancer, but he is an avid fan of Dancing with the Stars.  I'm hoping I can talk him into ballroom dance lessons before All Star and Brooke get married, so we can dance at the wedding.  :o)

So out of curiosity ... how many of you have studied dance?  What kind of dance?  What was the purpose or reason behind pursuing it?  And if you haven't studied dance, is it something that interests you at all? 

I danced ballet and ballroom as a child and young teen and loved it.

I took ballet from around age 9 to 15 or so I think, I started because the only driving mum amongst my friends volunteered (bless her heart!) to drive 4 or 5 of us over to a ballet class that started up in a small town in the next valley (I AM a Welsh Valleys girl remember!)we all loved it and much to the relief of Aunty M - our driver; the teacher, a lovely elegant woman by the name of Miss Lemon, had so many pupils from our town that she opened up a new class there and we all moved over.

It was fun and I loved it, the shows we put on at the end of the year were great. The dance studio that Rhi goes too offers an adult ballet class and I have thought about taking it up again, but I just don't think I can move that way anymore!!

Same for ballroom, we all went because it was run in our church hall, that was fun too, although I suspect less so for my BFF, Helen who was tall and always danced as the "boy" !

DH and I took ballroom dance classes shortly after we came to Canada and I found I couldn't remember a single thing from my long ago dance classes!. I also found that DH has 2 left feet and one of them was usually mine LOL!

Before we'd been too many weeks in the class I tripped on a kerbstone and broke my ankle so DH ended up dancing the rest of the course with the poor female instructor and boy did she suffer in her flimsy dance sandals when he stepped on her feet!

We also took Scottish dancing lessons for a while and that was a hoot.

I do definitely encourage Rhi to dance, luckily she loves it! this year she's taking ballet again and musical theatre which includes elements of Jazz dance. In the past she's done Jazz and Tap, tap was NOT a favourite, she siad it made her legs ache too much!

So, yes I have danced and love it - although I would be no help at all in the choreography department!!

I was thinking that your young people might enjoy Contemporary dance, it's a popular style with many of the dancers on So You Think You Can Dance which is our fave dance show on TV ;)

A lot of the basic moves are the same as ballet and others have a different twist.
I found this video on You Tube that looked interesting: http://www.monkeysee.com/play/9839-contemporary-dancing-for-beginners

The only dance I've studied is other people dancing. lol.

I'm not a dancer, I've never been a dancer and I don't intend to become a dancer. lol.  I just don't have the coordination or confidence (or interest) to pursue it.

I enjoy watching *other* people dance and if the mood strikes me (aka "I had too much to drink") you might catch me dancing too...but usually it takes some prodding by friends and/or family to get me out there.

I'll stick with "dancing" around a massage table. ;)

Sarah

I took 5 years of classical Ballet and Modern Interpretive dance in my early 20s.  I'm also a charter member of the Community Dance Theater of Alamogordo, NM, a semi-professional dance company a group of us formed.  I always wanted to take dance, but it was not something boys did.  When I was taking an anthropology class, we each had to give presentations on various things and one lady brought in her dance class.  I sought her out and started taking lessons and loved it.  I usually starred in the Modern Interp pieces and my first wife and I would work out the choreography to minimize our height difference - she was 5' and I'm 6'2".