Bringing the attitude

Or at least trying to.

It’s a new adjustment to one of my exercises for styling in latin (and by extension, smooth).  As I mentioned, I sent some videos of my open smooth from the last competition to the coach who designed the routines and one of the feedback she had was that she loved the drama and acting I was able to do in my routine, but that I needed to work on my arms so they are less ‘floppy’.  Basically, I have two types of styling right now, intentional and accidental.  When I intentionally commit to something, it really shows as it comes out with confidence and moves through my entire body.  Then I have stuff that I do that I just do–often without conscious thought–and that tends to look that way.

So the goal now is to work on making everything more intentional.  A big part of that is adding some attitude to my styling through expression and glance.  So that is the change to my exercise.  I am doing my regular arm exercise, but I am moving them with intention and flair and adding a very strong glance in the direction I am moving my arms.

Seems easy enough, doesn’t it?

Not quite. It feels quite awkward and unnatural.  Because it’s an exercise, I am doing it much more than I normally would in any routine so that also adds to the awkwardness.  Oddly enough, my right arm seems to want to move great, but when I move my left it almost moves backward to what I intend to do.  And now because I am actually glancing I am also looking in the mirror and it is hard not to giggle about how silly it looks sometimes.  It’s going to be a challenge to get into the zone for that, but if it’s not challenging, why bother doing it?

The rest of my exercises seem to be going ok (in fact according to Boss, better than he expected), and I hope that as I do my residency for my masters over the next two weeks I will be able to still get in fairly regular practice time between class time and group work time.  The residency is two weeks and right now just seems like a giant ‘hump’ I need to get over.  I have slowly been preparing though and today I completely cleaned my apartment, did the grocery shopping, laundry and prepared all my meals for the next week. Pretty much what is left is to pack my book bag.

Lots of changes going on in my life right now, but hopefully I can continue to attack them all with the right attitude.