We had too much cream. A leftover half-log of Laura Chenel goat cheese. A whole container of baby spinach I knew I couldn't use before it went bad. So it was time to come up with a recipe to use them! Chris kept saying "DAMN Shay." So I guess this improvised recipe was a win, and here it is:

1 lb boneless skinless chicken breast
2-3 oz goat cheese
1 cup packed spinach, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp flour
1 medium shallot, chopped
1/4 cup heavy cream
1 Tbsp fresh lemon juice
Olive oil
Salt to taste

Heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Throw garlic and spinach in and heat until spinach wilts a bit. Remove to a bowl, add goat cheese and mix together.

Slice a 2" opening horizontally through thickest part of chicken breast; work paring knife in to open up a cavity. You can use your fingers to help open up the breast gently without breaking through other side. Stuff cavity with cheese mixture and massage through to fill it evenly.

Put flour and a dash of salt in shallow dish. Toss chicken breast in flour and salt until coated.
Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees while you...

Put 2 tablespoons of olive oil in original pan, add shallots and cook 2-3 minutes. Remove to a small dish and reserve for later, keeping any shallot-infused oil you can in the pan.

Add chicken to shallot-infused oil and brown both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Meanwhile...

Line baking pan with foil. When chicken is browned, place in pan and put in oven. Cook 20 minutes or so until cooked through (cooking thermometer is helpful, as different chicken breast thicknesses will take different times).

About 10 minutes before chicken is done, add reserved shallots back into original pan along with cream, lemon juice, and a dash of salt. Reduce by half over medium-low heat. Keep warm until chicken is cooked through.

Slice chicken into medallions, arrange on plate, drizzle cream sauce over the top. Serve with favorite veg (we just crisp, sweet snap peas!)

Sorry things have been so slow around here lately. I am sure you all have been experiencing the same thing--that holiday hectic...ness? -icity? Whatever, it's just been really busy. So I haven't had a lot of time to share my thoughts here.

The biggest change has been that shortly before Thanksgiving, I took a contract job with The Purple Store.  What is it, you ask? Why, a store that sells purple things of course.  Yep, that is the business model.  If you or someone you know loves purple, they need to check out this shop. The site isn't fancy, but it's chock full of purpley goodness.

As you might imagine, being any kind of retailer around the holidays meant that my training was trial-by-fire, as we leapt from a manageable chunk or orders each day to OMGWTFXMAS in just over a week after I started. Luckily, the people I work with are smart, funny, motivated people, and we worked hard as a team to kick out the orders, answer customer service queries, and even put up a small retail space for last minute Christmas shoppers to get their gift on. To say it was a crazy busy time would be an understatement, but it was a joy to get to flex some different mental and physical muscles.

Classes have been small since I returned from hiatus, but it is made up of a dedicated bunch of women.
It's been an interesting contrast to more recent years where, while I have always endeavored  to give each student the attention they deserved, I wasn't always able to key in to some of the details I can when groups are smaller.  It has given me a lot to think about as a teacher, and kind of re-prioritize what my eye should train on when in larger groups.  Good for larger classes and workshops both.

On the web design front things have been picking up at the end of the year/start of the new year.  It's been really fun digging into some of the new CS3 capabilities, allowing me to make tweaks here and there that are both cosmetically pleasing AND performance boosting. Who knew the two could go hand-in-hand? My latest project that is live is http://www.buddhakittyglass.com which is the business of our good friend Steena Fullmer. She turned her beloved hobby of fused glass into a tidy little online business, and has been growing with each year in both her skills and her customer demand. I was thrilled to get my hands on her website and fix it up so not only was it lovely and reflected her aesthetic, but was something she can easily edit and update herself. Now that's design I can get excited about!

At home, this new three-job life has been keeping me from my beloved home-care routine.  Dishes are not getting done every day, the bed is rarely made, and don't talk to me about vacuuming and dusting. Chris has been a rock star doing his best to help pick up the slack, but with the the many holiday obligations, it's been a challenge to find the energy.  But part of it is feeling a little cabin-fevery and longing for a little sunshine and warmth--grey and cold sucks the motivation right out of me, and all I wanna do is watch TV and drink tea! I feel confident I am not alone in this.

The thought that spring is around the corner (well, enough for me) is exciting. I am eager to get back out in the garden and make everything pretty again. We have a pile of unfinished projects from last year, plus the dream of starting our veggie garden to go with our successful herb garden from 2010. And more fresh herbs and veggies means more COOKING to be done!  We started our "Moore Family Cooking Compendium" last year--a folder where we keep our favorite recipes in little plastic sleeves for frequent use--and I intend to see a multi-volume set developing by the end of 2011.

I am pretty sure that catches us up for now. I can't say I am at all sad to see 2010 behind me. It started so amazingly, and then somewhere in the first third, shit hit the fan so hard, it was easy to imagine never recovering. We are still licking our wounds here in the Moore house, but we are a scrappy bunch and won't let anything keep us down for long. Besides, one of my Christmas gifts from Chris was a big ol' gift card from Fluevog, and with shiny new 'vogs on the horizon, how could the new year go anywhere but up?

It's yet another installment of Music Monday, and this week it's Latin-stylee for the win! A mix of titles from around the world with Latin flava', for dancing on the stage or around your living room.

Song - Artist - Album
Onda Buena - Barrio Del Rio - Baila Habibi
Flamenco Tapas (Barcelona Bounce Remix) - Ethno Dance - Club Passport Remix
Santa Maria - Gotan Project
Cumbia De Los Muertos - Ozomatli
Hanuman - Rodrigo y Gabriela
Magalenha - Sergio Mendes - Brasileiro

Most every teacher I know has run into this question in one form or another from new students--some of us hear it many times a year. "I saw 'The World Famous Debbie Dancer' on YouTube. Can you teach me to dance like her?"

The short answer? No.
The only slightly longer answer?
Neither can she!

No teacher can truly teach you to dance just like them. What they can provide you is tools for your own dance--tools perhaps they themselves used to arrive at their own personal style, which you can then take to create your own personal style.

I am here in Lincoln, Nebraska getting ready to teach my first of two workshops at the Tribal Dreams Festival, and over breakfast this morning was chatting with Jawahara of Chicago about teaching and workshops and the culture of the bellydance world today as we know it. And one phenomenon we were talking about was the propensity for some dancers to come to classes or workshops wanting to be or dance just like another dancer. Jawahara was talking about dancers who would look at old footage of Taheya Carioca and Samia Gamal, and wanting to emulate every little nuance of those dancer's performances. For others, it might be like the many people who watch Rachel Brice or Aziza of Montreal, and try to make every single detail look and feel exactly the same.

It's a good jumping-off point, but the question is, are you trying to be them, or do you want to be you inspired by them?


Jawahara and I agreed on many points, but one that I want to share with you here is that every single teacher, every single class, every single workshop has something to teach you. Much like when we talked about the steady diet of fusion (Fusion As Dessert), if all you ever feed yourself is one teacher's interpretation, or one stylization, where is there room for you in the equation? And dammit, that's the juiciest, awesomest part! YOU!

Even if your ultimate goal is to devote yourself to one particular style, it behooves you to be open to many dance experiences, and always always be looking at how your personal flavor is being injected into the final product. When you walk into a workshop, don't just try to pick out finished ideas, sprung wholly formed from the instructor's forehead. Instead, learn to look more critically at what is being offered--at the individual pieces of information that make up the body of work the teacher is sharing with you--and learn to parse out bits that really speak to you personally. Look at the information as a tool bag, not a shopping list.

Tomorrow at Tribal Dreams, I will be teaching "Cook Your Own Combos"--a workshop designed for just this kind of thought process. Learning to break down movement into individual components which we can then remix to reflect our own style.  If you learn to see the dance as a collection of delicious spices and ingredients, rather than complete unalterable recipes, then you can cook up a new combo every day of the week and always inject your own flavor!  I can't teach you to dance like me, but I am happy to give you some tools to help you be your most fabulous self.

Sandi and Wendy of FatChance Bellydance are pure magic together.  Their connection is unique and inspiring. One of my favorite examples of their power as performers is in the following clip. Sure, there are some lightning-fast performances that take my breath away--the kind of speed only you and someone you know really really well, personally and professionally, can maintain together. But no other duet so far swims through my brain as such a shining example of the power of ATS arrhythmic slow as this one. None showcase the strength and grace inherent in the movements quite like this one; the way one can simply flow, like a really delicious yoga stretch, from one move to the next, luxuriating in each moment, never rushing, never pushing, but with palpable dynamic tension and oozing sensuality.

Perhaps it's the slightly gritty nature of the video. The dim, red-toned lighting. The guitar solo. The way the audience barely breathes. It evokes the feeling we're in some basement cafe in Spain, and someone with a home video camera is watching as the native dancers entertain us all.

From Mish Mish via BellyTalk, a NW discussion group for bellydancers. It is confirmed by what Jamila told us at her weeklong, that she was essentially the one who conceived the sword as a bellydance prop:

"In Turkey and Arabic countries, dancing with a sword is done mainly by men
as a display of skill in combat or to prepare for battle. My troupe used to have
a Druse from Lebanon who did a spectacular sword dance his father had taught him
and I have seen videos of a Persian dance troupe where the men feign battle and
dance in unison.

Dancing while balancing a sword on your head has become popular in the United
States with soloists and troupes but there is no such tradition in Arabic
countries where balancing something on your head is a part of daily life, so
it's no big deal The idea for this dance can be traced back to Jamila Salimpour and her
seminal dance troupe, Bal Anat who became famous performing at the Renaissance
Fair in California in the 1970's. Jamila was inspired by an Oriental painting
from the late l9th Century by French artist Jean Leon Gerome of a group of
musicians and a dancer, probably a ghawazee, dancing with a sword balanced on
her head and another held in her hand. The swords belonged to the Turkish
soldiers in the background who had undoubtedly hired the dancers to entertain
them. A replica of this painting appears on Aisha Ali's recording of "Music of
the Ghawazee" As Jamila's influence spread throughout the USA, so to did the
practise of balancing a sword on your head."

 Here's music that makes me bop around happily.  Movits! has a couple songs I love to use in high-action drills to start off my more advanced classes, and herein is one of them. Augustito 2004 is good for medium drills, with a fun spirit behind it (look up the lyrics). Louis Prima, The Beatles, Cherry Poppin' Daddies...yeah, we got a little bit of everything here.




Jump, Jive, An' Wail                Louis Prima             Collector's Series   
Fel del Av Gården                    Movits!                   Äppelknyckarjazz   
Ob - La - Di, Ob - La - Da       The Beatles             1967-1970 Blue Album\Disc 2   
Agustito 2004                          Ketama                    20 Pa' Ketama
Jump in the Line                      Cherry Poppin' Daddies          
Smile                                        Lily Allen               Smile - EP     

BTW, the Movits! video for Fel del Av Garden makes my day, too. Check it out!

My sister in law was vegetarian for many years, but in recent years she and her husband have been eating some meat.  Lucky for us in the Northwest, we have a lot of fantastic organic local resources for our food, it allows us all to be conscientious about our meat choices without too much effort (and a fairly reasonable increase in cost).

I have been inspired by my family and friends' consciousness about their food choices. And having gotten more into cooking, and thoroughly thrilled at the bounty we have around us in our area, I have been interested in cutting down on my meat intake and explore alternatives. This is partly due to wanting to cultivate a more compassionate approach to my world in general, but also, frankly, for the challenge and inspiration that comes from cooking meatless in a world of MEAT! MEAT! MEAT! You may have already seen this reflected in my meat-free cooking once a week I have been blogging about, and the vegetarian alternatives I have been slotting into my posted recipes as well.

I have been doing a little reading of wonderful "meat lite" recipes, and have come across a couple interesting resources I thought I would share:

"Becoming a Compassionate Carnivore"
written by a city-kid turned farmer, who raises animals for food, which addresses the following:



And brings us the hopeful remark:

"This is an exciting time to be both a carnivore and a farmer, and I’m optimistic we’re approaching a tipping point when it comes to buying meat from animals raised humanely."
http://life.gaiam.com/gaiam/p/Becoming-a-Compassionate-Carnivore.html

From the authors of Almost Meatless comes a weekly recipe installment on Serious Eats:
http://www.seriouseats.com/tags/recipes/Meat%20Lite

About their book:
"Despite its title, almost every recipe in this book uses meat, fish or eggs. A collaboration between Manning, a former vegan, and Desmond, an unabashed meat lover, the aim is to help Americans, who they believe eat far more meat than is healthy or good for agricultural sustainability, compose meals that are both tasty and filling without having a slab of meat as the overbearing star ingredient."

The Flexitarian Diet"
http://www.amazon.com/dp/1580089615/?tag=serieats-20

The 100 Mile Diet - looking at eating regionally to cut back on fossil fuels:
http://life.gaiam.com/gaiam/p/100mile-Diet-QA-with-a-couple-who-did-it.html

Frankly, I am personally not interested in becoming a vegetarian. Never have been. I eat animals and believe humans are part of a system in which this is our role in the food chain--I don't judge people who feel otherwise in the least, and hope they won't judge me in return. But I am always interested in little and big ways that I can live a healthier, more conscious life, and this is one way that my region, finances, and energies allow me to explore food consumption with more consideration than I might were I not who and where I am at this time in my life.

What are your thoughts on all this? Do you eat out of habit, or out of actual thoughtful choice? How important is the source of your food in this day and age compared to how you thought about it growing up? I welcome any feedback.

I have not been as regular in my meditation practice this year as in previous, but I hope to get myself back on the wagon this winter.  I meditate with gentle music in the background, as I find it helps center me, and my monkey mind is a little less wild. I also like to set up playlists so that they run the length of time I would like to meditate, so that I don't shortchange myself by getting grumpy and giving up after 5 minutes, nor do I lose track of my day and sit for an hour when I really only have a half hour to spare.  I like the tracks to be 5-7 minutes or more apiece so that I am not constantly "shifting gears" with new tunes every 3 minutes like most songs run these days.

Unfortunately, much of my music is still "trapped" on an iMac that pooped out on me, but I will share these three I still have on my laptop playlist for your enjoyment. Enjoy!

Song - Artist - Album
Om Jai Jagadeesa Hare       Pt. Hariprasad Chaurasia        Om Jai Jagadeesa Hare
Moon of India                    World Meditation Ensemble    Sacred Fusion
Govinda Hare                     Krishna Das                             Pilgrim Heart    
 
Have questions about meditation? What is it? Why do it?  From me to you, there isn't anything fancy to it, nor does it have to be a particularly spiritual practice.

Find a spot that is quiet and comfortable, away from any distractions. Sit comfortably (I like a couple pillows under my bottom so my knees and legs don't get achey), and breathe normally and gently.   You don't have to have a particular pose, or put your hands or arms in any particular position, though you should sit with your back straight --not rigid or tense -- to protect your spine, with the head balanced comfortably on top.

Some people close their eyes (I do), while others let their lids hang but not close all the way. You don't have to chant anything or think on any particular phrase or topic. You don't have to have an altar, or light candles or incense (though if you like those things, create a little space for yourself and light up!). As I indicated, I liked to have some music, but some people find that to be a distraction. Find out what creates tranquility in your practice, experiment with different environments (inside or out, bedroom, living room, or dedicated space, sound, scents, etc), and settle in for a little nothingness. Because for me, that is what meditation can be. It is an attempt at pure nothingness, which makes space for...anything and everything!  Through guided practice, you can choose a focus or mantra which can be as simple and narrow as your breath, or as wide-reaching as world peace (cliche, but a wonderful exercise in compassion).

I started when I had my back injury, and I was spending a lot of sedentary time at home alone, unable to even walk to the kitchen without agonizing pain. I was spending a lot of time in front of the TV and computer. Well, honestly, all freaking day was some combination of computer, television, video game, etc. I was feeling really depressed and tired and sorry for myself. I decided I wanted to get myself away from all the constant media input, and focus on healing and centering myself, inside and out.  It was summer when I began, so I would put a thick towel on my back deck in the sunshine, along with a couple pillows to sit on. I would play some soft music, and just sit. And breathe. Sometimes I would think a little mantra in my mind: "I am strong. I am healing." But most days, the plan was to think of nothing. Concentrate on my breath. Feel the breeze on my skin. Allow the sounds of the world around me to diminish and turn my focus gently inward, without closing off from all that was surrounding me.  I gave myself a gift of at least a half hour of this gentleness and quiet each and every day. What a blessing that simple act can be!

If you are interested in reading more, The Google has tons of links and info of course. There are tons of people trying to sell you stuff these days--books and videos. But there are lots of free resources as well, so avail yourself of them and avoid hucksters. Here are a few to get you started:

4 Powerful Reasons to Meditate and How to Get Started:
http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/4-reasons-you-should-meditate-and-how-to-get-started/

"How to Meditate"
http://www.alternative-medicine.net/meditation/english.html

Simple Breathing Meditation:
http://www.how-to-meditate.org/breathing-meditations.htm/

Loving Kindness Meditation:
http://www.how-to-meditate.org/loving-kindness-meditation.htm/

Lateral Action hits it out of the park again and again. Thought I would share this snippet from their "Dark Side of Creativity - Burnout" article.  And if this section sounds familiar, you should read the parts about Control Freakery and expectations!

"Hypersnsitivity
Why are creative people so sensitive to criticism of their work? Because our work is not just something we do, it’s an expression of who we are. As Gustave Flaubert put it:

A book is essentially organic, part of ourselves. We tear a length of gut from our bellies and serve it up.

So when the critics get their knives out, it feels like a direct personal attack. When nobody comes to the show it feels as if your innermost soul has been rejected. And again, this is as it should be – up to a point. If you didn’t care enough to put your heart and soul into your work, there would be no reason for anyone else to care about it. But if you really want to improve, you have to learn to let go of the work, to stand back and appraise it coldly, to see whether it measures up to the standards you aspire to. And you have to be able to listen to others’ feedback and see whether you can learn from it. Otherwise you set yourself up for a world of pain each time you present your work to an audience."

(image: The Green Muse by Albert Maignan, 1895)

Ingredients:
1-2 large sausage(s) of your choice (we chose a local smoked sausage), sliced into thick half-rounds
3 thick slices of ham, cubed
2 cans Great Northern beans (or cannelini beans)
2 carrots, cut into thick rounds
1 red bell pepper, rough cut
2 stalks celery, rough cut
1 yellow onion, chopped
3 large garlic cloves, minced
2 cans chicken broth (we use low sodium)
2 tsp thyme
1 tsp cumin
dash of cayenne pepper for pep
salt and pepper to taste

Instructions:
Throw all ingredients into your crock pot, mix up well. Turn on crock pot and let your house fill with delicious smells all day. 8-10 hours on low, 4-6 hours on high. Add any additional salt or pepper to taste just before serving. Serve with crusty bread.

Optional:

• Throw in a can of diced tomatoes for another level of flavor. 
• Sub ham base/stock for the chicken broth for a saltier, ham-ier flavor.
• Use Healthy Choice  keilbasa, turkey sausage, or other low fat sausage for a diet-friendly option
• For a thicker finished result, shortly before the end of your cooking time, scoop out a couple big scoops of the beans into a separate bowl. Mash with the back of a fork and return to the soup, stir in, cook for another 20 minutes and serve.
• If you have the time, you can choose to sautee the sausage a little bit, then throw in the onions and garlic for a minute before adding to the soup, but since I wanted to make a "super quick" recipe, throwing all the ingredients in without additional prep works out just fine. Sauteeing also allows you to cook off some of the fat in the sausage, if that is something you would like to do.

Dance Advantage listed an article recently on dancers and injuries. Specifically the idea that injuries can take away dance from your life. I am familiar with this, having been on and off battling a severe back issue, and more recently knee problems surfacing, and my foot issue which will require surgery I cannot afford at present, which leaves me in pain every day just walking around, let alone dancing.  I have had to give a lot of thought to the possibility that I may not be able to have dance as my career any more, and how betrayed by fate it has made me feel over the past few months.  This is something I am really really good at--the first thing that really resonated with me so deeply, and was validated in the opinions of my peers as well. To imagine it not being my profession any more was impossible to contemplate, and yet I had to give it some serious "face-time" in my meditations this summer.

So this article is somewhat encouraging in its tone and message. Summing up the message in one line:

"As a young dancer, I felt pigeonholed into thinking that I only had two options (dance or don’t dance), when plan C was as simple as being a barefoot dancer who wears shoes – and it took me six years to figure that out."

In trying to figure out where dance fits into my definition of self , this article presents the idea of creative experimentation with the ways dance slots into your life when factors seem to push against that possibility.

In other news, I started Music Monday a few weeks ago, and pre-loaded some posts to release on Mondays. Then didn't go back and check to see if they were posting. Oops! I had them in the queue, but hadn't released them for posting. So keep an eye out for Music Monday NEXT Monday, and hopefully I will have that all cleared up and ready to post for your auditory enjoyment.

Started the weekend early with a matinee movie with my friend Arya, followed by tea and stimulating conversation. Friday night was a chill night in with hubby. Saturday morning was breakfast, then some food prep for the potluck mini-family reunion later. SIL and hubby came over a little early for a little chat, then we head to the reunion, which was filled with kind, funny, friendly relatives Chris n' sis hadn't seen in maybe two decades or more (as well as delicious ham!).  Went later than we planned, so we went home instead of the Tiff's birthday (sorry to miss it, Tiff! Hope your 30th rocked!) to chill out and watch a couple episodes of Dexter before going to bed early.

Early to bed, early to rise this morning, and went to breakfast at the Jewel Box Cafe, splitting a breakfast panini and a sweet berry crepe.  Came home and knit some on my new mitt design. Spending the afternoon cooking a wild mushroom soup while hubby performs delicate surgery on my iMac to try and fix it (replacing the video card *fingers crossed*). Chopping veggies, plucking some of the last of the fresh herbs from our garden (leaving my fingers smelling of thyme and rosemary all day long), sipping wine and smelling a rich, earthy soup simmering on the stove, all with a background soundtrack of Ella Fitzgerald on Pandora= one thing I can easily adore about the changing of the seasons.

I hope everyone is enjoying the beginning of October as I am.

It is alarming to me how often I hear about people leaving their smart phone or their iPod touch behind at restaurants, in their cars in plain view, or it slipping out in a parking lot or theater. Losing an iPod touch or a phone these days is more like losing your wallet, with ID and credit cards all in there. (And a lot like losing a laptop, too!)

Recently on Ravelry, a woman said that her iPod touch had slipped out of her bag on a university campus. The young man who found it opened it up, and she was logged into her mail and Facebook (among other social apps and such), which she uses all the time and keeps up and running. Luckily, this young man posted his phone number to her wall, so she could call and recover it (unfortunately with a broken screen from being dropped and run over by a car, apparently, but still running!).  But to think what he COULD have done with the data on that "entertainment device" is alarming.

These things hold a lot of data that can be used inappropriately, for sure.  So guard it like you would a wallet! You wouldn't just let a wallet slip out of your purse, would you? You keep it in a secure spot in your bag, don't you? Do the same with your iPod touch or phone. You don't leave the restaurant without your wallet, do you? I sure hope not. You keep it tucked in your pocket or purse when not in use, right?  Do the same with your devices.

Just a friendly reminder to keep your identity secure, and not let these "entertainment electronics" become a ID theft nightmare.

Over at Lateral Action, there is an interesting (& rather deep) post regarding a conversation between Brian Eno and the developer of Sim City, and the application of rules bringing about successful spontaneity. Read the full article here:
http://lateralaction.com/articles/brian-eno-will-wright/


The simplest, and most profound, summation of this conversation came in the final segment, quoted here:

Play It Simple

A point that comes up repeatedly in the Eno/Wright talk is that complex results emerge from simple rules. No rules mean there is no system, so nothing is generated. But if you add too many rules and risk breaking the system. The trick is to find just enough rules to get the system under way without destroying it prematurely.

Listening to the talk, I was reminded of playing improvisation games at The Spontaneity Shop: when actors try to improvise a scene in which ‘anything goes’, the results are flat and lifeless.

But introduce a simple rule such as ‘one of you is higher status and the other’, and it starts to come alive. Tweak the rules slightly – ‘one of you is the servant but acts higher status than the master’ – and you have a recipe for spontaneous comedy.

Twitter is another good example of a generative system. When I first tried Twitter, I didn’t see the point. There was so little I could do. Type a 140 character message? Get messages from other people? Is that all?

But when I was persuaded to persist with Twitter, I discovered the incredible richness of the conversations and connections it facilitates. Now you can find me there most days. It’s one of the very few web applications I would genuinely miss if it disappeared overnight.

I’m not the first one to be puzzled by Twitter’s lack of ‘obvious’ features that can be found in similar – but less successful – networks such as FriendFeed or Plurk. But Eno and Wright would probably argue that Twitter is so successful because its rules are so simple.

But how can you know in advance which rules will bring you the best creative results? Which ideas should you pursue and implement, and which should you leave on the drawing-board?

You can’t.

Which means you have to try things, play around with them, test quickly and test often. Allow failure to tag along as a daily playmate.

Isn’t that the beauty of real creativity, that you wake up every morning not knowing what you’re going to discover?

How much do I love those final few sentences. Testing ideas, playing, and being open to failure. Knowing that we *don't know* the outcome, and letting it reveal itself through the process. This is what I mean when I talk about organic creativity! Rules are powerful! Rules are what gives structure to our attempts, what binds together disparate ideas and aesthetics into something solid, tangible, impactful. The results are something familiar to everyone on some level, yet truly unique to us. We use the rules as a tool to create something greater than we could have if we had not defined them and honored them to begin with. And of course, the other lesson in this article is to not impose too many rules. Find those which are truly important, truly valuable to the process and the outcome, and let the rest flow as it will. I aspire to be this confident and comfortable in my creative process, through the thoughtful, sparing, application of rules.

Particularly in programs which are essentially "participation certificates" rather than tested on demonstrated knowledge and ability, I feel it gives a false sense of accomplishment to the participant, and sends a confusing message to the public that one need only take a few days of workshops and suddenly you can be "officially certified" in a given style or skill. It diminishes both the idea of a certificate and the art/style itself, in my opinion. This is one way in which I have a lot of admiration for the Suhaila certification program. While it has never been of interest to me to pursue, I can see the tremendous value in the way it is structured, and the tangible feedback it provides the dancers--as a friend once said, it can be a roadmap for personal goal setting, and that's fantastic.

I found my certification training with Gypsy Caravan, FatChance, and now Jamila (still to test, but took the course) to have been incredibly valuable to not only my technique, knowledge, and teaching ability, but also gave me a tremendous sense of history and perspective. Like the proverbial elephant and the blind men, we're all touching different parts of the dance, and are limited by the part we have in our immediate reach. By being exposed to other teachers' and dancer's experience/part of the elephant, I feel I have a better idea of the bigger picture and where I fit into it. If slapping a certificate on it encourages more people to pony up the cash and time to commit to these programs and grow as a result, I suppose in the end it's a Good Thing. But I didn't care one tiny bit if I held a piece of paper at the end of them, because what I got out of these experiences couldn't be measured in that way.

Had a few more contracts crop up for web design lately. I am trying to streamline my design process, but am finding it tough. I just like the visual design part so much better than the code part!

So today I "attended" my final online Web Design Bootcamp webinar, and it covered HTML5 and CSS3 in brief. In particular, "embedded" fonts in web page design. But it's so much more than that. Whew!  I feel overwhelmed with the possibilities and what new things I will need to learn to take advantage of it. With 98% of all browsers supporting the new font functionality, we can start using it RIGHT NOW. how exciting is that? Even IE is ahead of the game on this one. Looking forward to seeing what it allows us to create...

From my background in theater and dance, to a life seeped in bellydance and dance in general full-time, I have learned that one of the most powerful methods of showing emotion in performance is having a story firmly in mind as you perform.  Just saying "I am going out there to have fun and smile," doesn't quite have the same impact as coming up with a more detailed motivation or imagined goal in mind when you take the stage. So You Think You Can Dance liberally uses themes, props, and elaborate stories to create their unique dances, which is inspiring. We, too, can be guided by a story through the entire creative process, which can inform not only our movement and emoting on stage, but also costume and musical choices as well to support the story further. Though I would caution that one must be careful at becoming too literal or trite.


After all, a large cross-section of the recent vaudeville-inspired theatrical-circus-theme craze has been disappointingly unbalanced: Over-storied, over-costumed, over-propped, and under-danced. The dance is the central and most important part, and the story and any trappings built around it should support and supplement the emotional content and skilled execution of the dance itself. A really great dance can be performed with the dancer wearing a plain white tee shirt, or something similarly mundane, and can still clearly communicate emotion.

So how does one create a story? Soloists have an easier time at this because the stories need not have a universal and shared emotional meaning among a group, but instead can be something very personal to them alone. (For example, Sa'Elyssa's "For My Grandmother"--a dance to honor her grandmother who had passed away--reduced me to tears.) But with some thought and discussion groups can create a story and stage their piece with a collective image in mind to help channel their emotional energies. My last troupe did this on many occasions with great effect. Our "Home" piece was one that is lovingly remembered not only by the audiences that saw it, but we who danced it. The story we built into it was very very personal to our dance family and surrounded universal feelings of loss and fear, friendship, and of course as the song name and lyrics reveal, the feeling of being home. We didn't have any sort of intro at most performances of it, and we did not costume or set a backdrop or props of any kind, so there was not always an opportunity to lead the audience into our story with any kind of explanation. The only cues were our physical selves--the way we staged our movement among and with one another, the way we felt as we imagined our story when dancing it, and the way our faces and bodies communicated our thoughts and feelings as we performed came through for our audiences, who sometimes were brought to tears without knowing quite why it impacted them so profoundly.  Of course tears aren't the only way we would hope to have our audiences manifest their appreciation of what we do, but it sure is a powerful one!

Another method to add further depth to your audience interaction is to put characters of your story in the audience. Planting archetypes in your mind and then acting as if you are seeing them and playing to them when you dance can have great effect. Say you plan to find your new best friend to the left of the stage, your ex-boyfriend you are showing off for to the right of the stage, and your proud mother in the center. Find people in the audience and fix them with your eyes and intention and dance for those imagined characters and see if it doesn't change the way you move and emote!

What other ways do you build story and character into your performances?

Nancy Young posted a really articulate and well-considered response to Carolena's message, and I wanted to share my favorite part of it:

"By giving this gift, you have, it seems to me, officially acknowledged ATS, your baby, as a mature art form with a life of its own and sent it off with your blessing. For me—and maybe this is just me—the gift also feels like your official acknowledgment of us, the ATS community, not just as acolytes practicing your dance but as artists inspired by your vision."

See the rest of her post on Monday, September 27th, HERE.

Alright, I have never been one for the "every day of the week has its own blog theme", but I have been wanting to give a little more space for music recommendations and discussions 'round these parts, so I am going to implement a "Music Monday" theme and see how it goes. Let me know what you think, eh?

Music Monday will have a little bit of whatever it is I am listening to right now. Some will be dance music, but some will just be my listenin' and enjoyin' music!  Most everything I listen to these days is available on iTunes and/or Amazon, so you can snag it for yourself. :)

I have been listening to a lot of love-themed upbeat music lately to keep me singin' along and feeling positive. So here are some of my favorite "Feelin' The Love" tunes right now, with links to iTunes:

Song - Artist - Album

Super Duper - Joss Stone - The Soul Sessions
Whenever I Say Your Name - Sting Feat. Mary J. Blige - Sacred Love
Home -  Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros - Up from Below
Throw Your Arms Around Me - Neil Finn - (live bootleg, sorry, but here is another version, and here)
Three Little Birds - Bob Marley - Legend
You Give Me Something - Jamiroquai - A Funk Odessey

I wanted to make an iMix to put all the songs in one place, but apparently some of my music wasn't "approved" for use in the iMix by iTunes (even though they sell these exact songs). I will look further into this in the future, to simplify browsing the music in one place, rather than with individual links. For now, enjoy the music!