Kyria's journal

Some of the participants were hungry for drum solo day, since we didn't do that much dancing on Saturday they'd love to get some vigourous combinations done. The good news is that it was all about the drum solo. The bad news was that it wasn't a choreography (which is fine by me: brilliant as ava's choreographies are, they never stuck with me in the past and I don't believe a choreography would stick in my pregnancy brain either.

The day started by a ballet class by Helen, a nice looking lady of about 45-50 who gave us a taste of ballet. We started out on the floor doing some starting fluid stretches, then moved on to some basic barre work and ended with an upbeat jumpy cobination. It was fun to have a ballet class from someone other than Susan, my regular ballet eacher.

Ava started out by giving us information about the structure of drum solo's In the olden days, the Riq was the leading instrument but this has changed in recent years to the tabla being dominant. I'd like to get some golden age music out and listen to it from that point of view. The main reason for the change is that Rix is harder (platying drum + the cymbals on the edge at the same time) and that knowledge is largely unavailable nowadays.

The dancer has a coiche to dance to the base rhythm or to the acents. Depending on the situation, she can choose one out of two or choose both.

We did some exercises with dacing to a drum solo with smooth moves only, or with one bodypart only. Ava then gave us five combinations that we could use as we pleased. very useful, I think I'll use these combinations more often during my imrpovisations. We then split up in different groups and danced a drum solo for eachother. I liked the result and I'm playing aorund by videotaping myself this week doing this exercise, to get an idea of what the end result looks like on me and to get some nice footage of what I look like now that I'm six months pregnant and still dancing. there's a nice playground type field close by that I could use, with green bushes in the background. It's far enough from houses and yards to get some privacy, yet close enough to home to drag the camera and tripod with me.

I decided to leave around 4.45, because I had a lengthy train trip ahead of me and I wanted to be home around 22.30. I said my goodbey's to everyone and profusely thanked Artemisia and Ava. Artemisia offered to add me to the 'bellydancing mommies' facebook group so I could have a lifeline when I needed it. I walked back to the station one last time and had a rather uneventful trip back to Utrecht (it was on the long side and it did wear me out).

When I got home, E. and a friend who came over for dinner were sitting in the backyard. I had a late dinner of wild boar stew and veggies and chatted with Ankie, who owns an art gallery and is looking for a different job as the gallery isn't making much now. She's living with her parents above the gallery and there's some tension there too: living together with your parents when you're over thirty is sort of bound to create some kind of tension, as you're all adults with habits and preferences and you can't do everything the way you want, like you'd do in your own place. She left around eleven so I got some quality time with E, we talked, cuddled and went to bed. The dog was extatic that I was back home (for about 5-6 minutes, that's what dogs are like. After that, there's always a more interesting sound or smell that needs to be investigated).

The next week, I slept for most days in order to regain some energy. It was exhausting but so worth it, even when I forgot I had a dance training on Wednesday night because I was so tired.