.more.cake.please.

I have inadvertently turned December into Take Care of my Self month. It's awesome, and it makes me question a little why I don't do this more often, because my stress levels have dropped significantly, despite hating the weather (18˚ when I left for work this morning) and being on overtime at a job I severely dislike.

Last night I attended my first Irish Ceili class, and it was Amazing!
Ceili is a group folk dance, so there's lots of invasion of space, lots of spacial set ups, lots of things to remember; but so far, it's mostly footwork, which I desperately need to work on anyway. I have exercises and stretches to do at home until next week - lovely lovely homework!
Another thing that was really nice about the class was the lack of Fashion Show.

It's something that I've noticed in bellydance classes - both regular weekly classes and workshops - the need to dress up, look the part - be the fanciest most in-style dancer in class, as if that will make your dancing better. I'm guilty of it myself. It was part of my dance education when I started teaching - look the part, sell the image and the dream. But the thing is - looking like a professional bellydancer doesn't make you a professional bellydancer. It doesn't make your dancing better, or your timing, or your musicality, or your expression. It's just icing. And what you need is cake. It's actually the same problem I've had with a lot of performances over the years - I see a dancer or a troupe enter a performance space, and they look fantastic, and I get really excited about seeing a stellar performance, but then it quickly becomes obvious that all that time they spent on their costumes would have been better spent practicing.
Because no amount of icing is going to make your cake taste better. In point of fact, more icing is probably going to make your lack of cake more obvious, more obnoxious, more unpalatable.
And like most audience members, I'd must rather see a stellar performance is a mediocre costume, than a stellar costume covering for a mediocre performance.

But I am way off track.
I took a Ceili class and it was awesome. And I wore junk for comfort, and that was awesome too.
Thursday night I'm taking a yoga class, and Sunday afternoon is a Persian Dance class.
And this is my cake - cake for my body and my brain.

More cake please.