Last night marked a milestone in dancing for me. Seeking to continue dancing and keep our steps fresh and up to date, I decided to try a different teacher. For over eight years we have been taking ballroom lessons from Fred Astaire in Durham. I knew little about the dance classes at The Arts Center in Carrboro but felt it was time to discover what's what.
The Arts Center is one of the Triangle's oldest cultural centers, established before most local high schools had developed art curriculums. As a non-profit center they partner with many area schools and companies offering classes all year long.
The AC's Dance programs include tap, jazz, Latin, swing and a Lindy Hop class taught by Richard Badu. Knowing the end of the year is near and not knowing exactly what "Lindy Hop" would be, I chose to visit both the Tuesday night "Lindy" and Wednesday night's "Swing" classes. Was I surprised.
If you know East Coast swing is a six-beat rhythm and that Lindy is an eight-beat rhythm, you just figure that adding a rock-step will get you there. Not so fast. The posture, the technique and the footwork are much different. And while I know how to do many of the steps in EC swing that Badu demonstrated during the one-and-half hour class last evening - the timing is so unique that it's like starting from square one. The analogy Badu gave is that just because you know how to play the piano does not mean you can play the same song on a violin. It's a different game all together. I did observe and try a few steps by myself to see what I could, or could not, do. The good news is that I wasn't the oldest lady in the class and I wasn't the only single lady either and neither made much difference.
Tonight's Swing Class will be a different story. I hope. With a firm grounding in East Coast Swing I should be able to participate in the class. And with only two weeks of class left for December, the idea is to take January's Beginner class (Jan-Mar). Unfortunately EF cannot join me in the class as he has band practice late on Tuesdays.
The rest of this story is that I have lost one of my two pairs of Cuban-heeled practice shoes (and the flannel shoe-bag). Where did I last wear them? Who knows? I had one pair in the car and have been using them for both dancerCIZE and ballroom classes at FADS. I thought that in one of the 'swoop clean-ups' in the house, I may have put them some where and now they are hidden from view. But I have been through all the closets, checked the cars, looked in the garage. Never mind. My best solution for this state is to look for something else and I will find what I am not looking for at the moment. Only I hope this method works fast.
Second story today: Nutrition. Last month was a disaster, I gained two pounds. So nutritionist Bobbi recommended that I make one day a week "Whole Grain Day." The notion is derivative of the Duke Rice Diet but modified for a once-a-week intake of grains and fruit only. Meaning that whole grain rice, wheat berries, air-popped corn, oatmeal and fruits (preferably fresh), are the menu for the day. Since Monday is my "slow" day, that became the target day.
First week of this process I got a big surprise. I headed off to the gym to walk 30 minutes before yoga class and found my energy level SINKING fast. Barely made it home to nosh on an apple and take a nap, before zoning out for the day. Second week I was better prepared. Started off with a heaping bowl of oatmeal, wheat berries and a baked apple and then headed to yoga. OK, the energy level was low but not at ground zero and I made it through 15 minutes of walking, yoga class and a couple of errands before heading home to nap. Power napping is critical on "grain day."
The Surprise is not feeling low-and-slow on Monday. It is feeling GREAT on Tuesday! Because of the low-food intake, I slept a full NINE hours. Somehow all my energy rebounds the day after and I woke up before six o'clock, was ready and out the door before nine o'clock and at the dentist a half hour early. And this energy lasted all day, including the 6:00 p.m. Lindy class. Next week will be the Monday after Thanksgiving and I expect to detox with more fruit and keep the grains working overtime. Hope this works every week. As for my weight (?), the next weigh-in is not until November 28, so we will see what happens. Stay tuned, there's always more.
bb
Showing posts with label ballroom dance lesson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ballroom dance lesson. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Autumn Array
NORTH CAROLINA JAZZ REPERTORY ORCHESTRA
Last Friday night [10/12] the NCJRO performed an audio celebration and a visual feast, all in ONE.
NCJRO’s Rhythm is Our Business and Swing is the Thing, was a showing of celebrated dancers from the Triangle in a concert where tap, swing, and modern dance intersect with jazz that is hot, cool, and in between. See saxophonist Wally West in the photo. This was a performance that seemed to last about 25 minutes instead of the nearly two hours; the dance was way beyond good, even beyond fabulous. Featured artists were
1. North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble, 12 dancers incorporating choreography from the Broadway shows “STOMP” and “BRING IN ‘DA NOISE.”
2. 2 Near The Edge - two dancers interpreting movement for healing and social change.
3. Richard Badu and Dana Lapple of the Triangle Swing Dance Society - my favorite - doing Charleston, Jitterbug, Lindy Hop and a Blues interpretation.
See more at http://www.ncjro.org/events.html where you will find Upcoming: Friday, December 7, 2007 - “Swingin’ Yuletide Celebration: featuring Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite and Seasonal Favorites” Get a jump on the season with a concert guaranteed to bring a smile to each and everyone in the house. With music from Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Glenn Miller, and the talented arrangers from the NCJRO, the annual holiday jazz concert is a mighty blast of seasonal spirit and cheer!
Monday night was the monthly meeting and annual business meeting of the Durham-Orange Quilters’ Guild [DOQ], electing the slate of officers for next year. My good friend Katherine Nelson is ending a two-term reign as President, succeeded by President-Elect Joy Murphy. As official “Photographer” for the Guild I snapped a lot of pictures for the archives but the main topic of discussion was the monthly print newsletter, DOQ’s Dispatch.
Yes, we still copy on paper and MAIL newsletters out each month. But not for much longer as the budget can no longer accommodate the rising cost of paper, print, postage and the volunteer labor also seems to be diminishing. In short, we need a better, faster, cheaper, efficient method of delivery of news, announcement and events pertaining to the world of quilting. Especially in light of the 2008 Quilt Show: Quilting, A Thread Runs Through It, coming next October. More info at DOQ’s website. Any suggestions about news-dissemination for non-profits would be most appreciated.
I responded Wednesday with an e-message about ConstantContact, a resource for creating newsletter and announcement delivery to e-lists of considerable size. The cost is reasonable and the pre-planned template is do-able. Blogger.com of course is an option for a free web-broadcasts that could include links, highlight a calendar and offers to track the count of hits coming to your site. Other suggestions have included doing a hard-copy news every other month, cutting the costs and labor in half; offering a post card mailing in the alternate months.
My investigations now include www.siemens-hearing.com seeking information about the Centura hearing aid for my mother. Sister, Jan, is in Missouri at this time visiting mother and relatives but has discovered that Mother’s hearing loss, chronic, has worsened. Were it not for the fact that my husband also suffers hearing loss, more recent, his ENT recommended this product which we have found to be most amazing.
The frustration comes when I find data on the web, can download at home, or send to Jan’s computer. But in Missouri Mother has no computer, has no printer, has no web connection and therefore getting last minute updates to Jan is near impossible. I rely mostly on niece Meghan, an Elementary Principal, who will also be home this weekend and hopefully with her lap-top to at least access the information I’ve found. This only doubles the frustration of communicating with Mother whose hearing loss makes telephone conversations difficult and now I can not send copy either. The future has to promise better alternatives for the hearing impaired.
Two art-topics will consume my interest in the coming weeks. One, artist Elliott Daingerfield home in the Blue Ridge mountains will be visited soon. Secondly, the NCMA’s fall exhibition opens next Sunday. Continuing the lessons learned from last year's exhibition on Monet - this exhibition includes both European and American impressionists. See http://ncartmuseum.org/landscapes/about.html
Landscapes from the Age of ImpressionismOctober 21, 2007–January 13, 2008.
Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism, an exhibition of 40 paintings, includes many of the finest examples of mid- and late- 19th-century French and American landscapes in the Brooklyn Museum's collection. Ranging in date from the 1850s to the early 20th century, the works presented offer a broad survey of landscape painting as practiced by such leading French artists as Gustave Courbet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet and their most significant American counterparts, including Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. This exhibition has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
Humber Lecture: “Looking at the Age of Impressionism”
Teresa Carbone, Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum Sunday, November 4, 2 p.m.Museum Auditorium, $3 (Free for Members)
Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the Brooklyn Museum began to acquire new works of American and French Impressionism, demonstrating an openness to "new" art that most other major institutions in this country were slow to cultivate.
I will be ending OLLI’s Philosophy of Aesthetics class with Dr. Vance sometime in mid-November and hope to take advantage of ‘member Mondays,’ both to visit and to take friends to the exhibition after that.
My calendar will open up after November 16, at the end of the dancerCIZE and OLLI Ballroom classes at Fred Astaire. Good news is that our teacher MISSY will give us a ballroom lesson this weekend while she is back from the Dominican Republic for the weekend. And we’ll have lunch! And I did not mention Tuesday's jury duty which is a whole other story.
WHAT a WEEK! bb
Last Friday night [10/12] the NCJRO performed an audio celebration and a visual feast, all in ONE.
NCJRO’s Rhythm is Our Business and Swing is the Thing, was a showing of celebrated dancers from the Triangle in a concert where tap, swing, and modern dance intersect with jazz that is hot, cool, and in between. See saxophonist Wally West in the photo. This was a performance that seemed to last about 25 minutes instead of the nearly two hours; the dance was way beyond good, even beyond fabulous. Featured artists were
1. North Carolina Youth Tap Ensemble, 12 dancers incorporating choreography from the Broadway shows “STOMP” and “BRING IN ‘DA NOISE.”
2. 2 Near The Edge - two dancers interpreting movement for healing and social change.
3. Richard Badu and Dana Lapple of the Triangle Swing Dance Society - my favorite - doing Charleston, Jitterbug, Lindy Hop and a Blues interpretation.
See more at http://www.ncjro.org/events.html where you will find Upcoming: Friday, December 7, 2007 - “Swingin’ Yuletide Celebration: featuring Duke Ellington’s The Nutcracker Suite and Seasonal Favorites” Get a jump on the season with a concert guaranteed to bring a smile to each and everyone in the house. With music from Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Glenn Miller, and the talented arrangers from the NCJRO, the annual holiday jazz concert is a mighty blast of seasonal spirit and cheer!
Monday night was the monthly meeting and annual business meeting of the Durham-Orange Quilters’ Guild [DOQ], electing the slate of officers for next year. My good friend Katherine Nelson is ending a two-term reign as President, succeeded by President-Elect Joy Murphy. As official “Photographer” for the Guild I snapped a lot of pictures for the archives but the main topic of discussion was the monthly print newsletter, DOQ’s Dispatch.
Yes, we still copy on paper and MAIL newsletters out each month. But not for much longer as the budget can no longer accommodate the rising cost of paper, print, postage and the volunteer labor also seems to be diminishing. In short, we need a better, faster, cheaper, efficient method of delivery of news, announcement and events pertaining to the world of quilting. Especially in light of the 2008 Quilt Show: Quilting, A Thread Runs Through It, coming next October. More info at DOQ’s website. Any suggestions about news-dissemination for non-profits would be most appreciated.
I responded Wednesday with an e-message about ConstantContact, a resource for creating newsletter and announcement delivery to e-lists of considerable size. The cost is reasonable and the pre-planned template is do-able. Blogger.com of course is an option for a free web-broadcasts that could include links, highlight a calendar and offers to track the count of hits coming to your site. Other suggestions have included doing a hard-copy news every other month, cutting the costs and labor in half; offering a post card mailing in the alternate months.
My investigations now include www.siemens-hearing.com seeking information about the Centura hearing aid for my mother. Sister, Jan, is in Missouri at this time visiting mother and relatives but has discovered that Mother’s hearing loss, chronic, has worsened. Were it not for the fact that my husband also suffers hearing loss, more recent, his ENT recommended this product which we have found to be most amazing.
The frustration comes when I find data on the web, can download at home, or send to Jan’s computer. But in Missouri Mother has no computer, has no printer, has no web connection and therefore getting last minute updates to Jan is near impossible. I rely mostly on niece Meghan, an Elementary Principal, who will also be home this weekend and hopefully with her lap-top to at least access the information I’ve found. This only doubles the frustration of communicating with Mother whose hearing loss makes telephone conversations difficult and now I can not send copy either. The future has to promise better alternatives for the hearing impaired.
Two art-topics will consume my interest in the coming weeks. One, artist Elliott Daingerfield home in the Blue Ridge mountains will be visited soon. Secondly, the NCMA’s fall exhibition opens next Sunday. Continuing the lessons learned from last year's exhibition on Monet - this exhibition includes both European and American impressionists. See http://ncartmuseum.org/landscapes/about.html
Landscapes from the Age of ImpressionismOctober 21, 2007–January 13, 2008.
Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism, an exhibition of 40 paintings, includes many of the finest examples of mid- and late- 19th-century French and American landscapes in the Brooklyn Museum's collection. Ranging in date from the 1850s to the early 20th century, the works presented offer a broad survey of landscape painting as practiced by such leading French artists as Gustave Courbet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Claude Monet and their most significant American counterparts, including Childe Hassam and John Singer Sargent. This exhibition has been organized by the Brooklyn Museum.
Humber Lecture: “Looking at the Age of Impressionism”
Teresa Carbone, Curator of American Art at the Brooklyn Museum Sunday, November 4, 2 p.m.Museum Auditorium, $3 (Free for Members)
Shortly after the turn of the 20th century, the Brooklyn Museum began to acquire new works of American and French Impressionism, demonstrating an openness to "new" art that most other major institutions in this country were slow to cultivate.
I will be ending OLLI’s Philosophy of Aesthetics class with Dr. Vance sometime in mid-November and hope to take advantage of ‘member Mondays,’ both to visit and to take friends to the exhibition after that.
My calendar will open up after November 16, at the end of the dancerCIZE and OLLI Ballroom classes at Fred Astaire. Good news is that our teacher MISSY will give us a ballroom lesson this weekend while she is back from the Dominican Republic for the weekend. And we’ll have lunch! And I did not mention Tuesday's jury duty which is a whole other story.
WHAT a WEEK! bb
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