Week 1: Humble Beginnings

Here we go. Week 1. If this blog goes according to plan, then it will be a resource for us... a way to look back, remember our growing pains and be proud of how far we've come. We aim to honor the process and support one another as we work to reach our goals. This is only the beginning...

First up: Partner Burns. Here we have Abby & Jess, Kiyla & Shellie. The principle here is 'Interaction'...

I think that we sometimes forget to be cognizant of our fellow performance artists. We can also get lost in flow and lose sight of our audience. So, we've recognized the need to be more aware - by dancing around each other, mirroring tricks and developing interesting formations and level changes.

Belly dancers use sounds and subtle movements to communicate with one another during performances. For example, a 'yip' could mean that a change is about to take place so watch me to see what's coming next. This enables the performers to stay in sync. It's worked well in the belly dance community for a long time... so, we're going to test this method in Week 2 and beyond to see if we can adopt a similar system.

Next, we have Shellie with Poi. This is her first burn with her new fire poi and I think she did a fabulous job. She's been playing with her practice poi and has lit up before, but this was the first time she burned her new moonblaze poi. I know that she aims to work on new tricks and more transitions as time goes on, but I think she's off to a great start:

Now for contact staff footage, with very little 'contact.' This is only the second time I've lit my new contact staff, and I have to admit that I'm a little embarassed about posting this raw footage. Quite frankly, I just want to be a badass, and 'badassery' is a long way away at this point.

Branching into staff is a humbling experience. I'm feeling all of the same emotions I felt when I first started hooping... excitement, frustration, elevation (when a new move is accomplished), inspiration (by watching videos of others who are masters at this skil toy), and sometimes pain (the staff hurts a lot more than the hoop when you hit yourself). My goal for this week was to simply light the darn thing and begin to develop a relationship with it... by learning about the burn time, and getting comfortable moving with my new dance partner:

I should also mention that being a beginner at staff is helping me to connect better with my hoop dance students. It's important to step outside of our comfort zones and push ourselves in new and exciting ways. Growing pains are beneficial because it makes the reward that much sweeter when it comes.

Next, we have Jess. She's working to become more experimental with her fire hooping. In this video, I noticed some moves that I haven't seen her do before with a fire hoop, such as the off-body breaks. The warrior moves and jump throughs look really smooth, too. Jess is working on a flaming pizza toss next... she almost did it in this video but hesitated at the end. I have no doubt that she'll nail it in Week 2.

Last but not least, this is my third attempt at twin fire hooping. The first time I did it, I had a decent burn. The second time, the hoops got locked together and I had a helluva time seperating them. I'm starting to feel a little more comfortable with twin fire hoops, but I'm noticing such a big difference between my regular twins practice and fire twins. I'm anxiously awaiting the new Ninja Fire Hoop by Cosmic Fire. I'm saving up for twins, and I feel as though this will enable me to have major breakthroughs with my practice.

I'm trying to be patient with myself and not judge. It's progress, and we can only get better from here... I want to look back on these blogs in 6 weeks, 12 weeks, a year and think, "Wow! Look at how far we've come."