Today I am grateful for things we largely take for granted, like running water, electricity, food and warm shelter. It is ridiculously easy to forget what a large population of our world does not enjoy these luxuries, and I am grateful to live as I do with my most basic needs met.

Today I am thankful for the smell of incense and candles in my house. I feel restful when those sights and smells intermingle. Even better when I come home from teaching, and Chris has pre-lit both in the living room to welcome me home, and cracked the front door a little so I can smell it when I come up the walk.

Today I am thankful for my physical therapists, who care about me, encourage me, and leave me sore in all the right places on my road to improving my body's health and awareness.

Okay, late on the stick by 10 days, but a Facebook meme is going around that I really like, and would like to do here on my blog. Would you like to join me? Then blog, Tweet, Facebook, LiveJournal, or however!

"Every day this month until Thanksgiving, think of one thing that you are thankful for and post it as your status. "Today I am thankful for..." The longer you do it, the harder it gets! Now if you think you can do it then repost this message as your status to invite others to take the challenge, then post what YOU are thankful for today.

Kicking it off:
Today I am grateful for my husband. I love our relationship of communication, trust, and laughter. I have never felt so safe, and so positively motivated to be a better person in my life. He's worthy.

I was perusing some very old tribe topics of discussion (and enjoying it immensely I might add--tribe is like an archive of the evolution of tribal bellydance in so many ways), and came across a thread about chorus. Specifically about students who don't "get" the idea of chorus, and feel "left out" if they are "stuck" in chorus a lot and aren't in the "spotlight".

Molly had this astute observation to share:

I think it's pretty hard for a lot of dancers to let go of the idea that if you aren't the soloist or feature, you aren't important. Our culture really seems to value the individual genius over the group a lot of the time, but the truth is that chorus members can make or break any performance - just look at opera. If the chorus isn't on and supporting the lead vocalists, the whole thing falls flat. Same with ATS. When the chorus is energetic and their movements and attitudes support the featured dancers without distracting from them, it's so much fun for the audience to watch. And it's great when you are in a duet/trio/solo to see the smiling faces of your fellow dancers every time you go into a turning move. It keeps up the energy of the group as a whole when everyone is tuned in and supporting one another in turn. Even with the most unresponsive audiences, you know you have someone behind you who's into your dancing and appreciates it. Encourage them to look at the chorus as a unique time to appreciate what their fellow dancers are presenting - I mean, in how many other styles do you get to stay involved onstage and watch what's going on? It's a nice little mental and physical break to re-center without breaking your connection to the group. At least that's how I see it.

And I really love the following perspective from Amy:

As a perspecive (sic) on the chorus vs. featured dancer thing, the way I figure it is, everyone will put in at least 80% of their performance time in the chorus...that's part of what being a tribal dancer is about. So it's better to be supportive and really work to feature the dancers in the spotlight- because that will be you in a song or two, and if you've been great support as a chorus member, you fellow dancers will be psyched about making you look good when you're out there doing your thing. It's more of a give-and-take situation than a superior/inferior situation. If there are dancers who feel dancing is only worth their time when they are in the spotlight, they might eventually migrate to a solo-oriented style of dance, which is fine...to me, tribal is about being comfortable supporting other people when they're rocking it, and letting them support you in turn, doing your best to rock it for them when you're up there. That's why super diva attitude doesn't really work! I love it when I see my fellow dancers kickin ass as I'm following the chorus leader, getting ready for my turn to carry the torch- that's why I'm all about ATS.