Frustrated

Today may have been the worst day of jazz class for me ever.  I actually walked out.  I get so frustrated!  I recall getting frustrated a few weeks ago, to the point of tears, but I also remember not remembering that it will be ok.  Today, I knew it would be ok and that this was probably hard for a lot of people.  I do not know why I cannot see the steps and mimic them.

Elements of my frustration include:

• I do not feel like my ability to do the movement at the pace of the class is improving.
• I know that I have the physical strength to do these moves.  I tend to believe that I am one of the physically strongest people in the class, true or not.
• I know what will help me, but it is either not realistic to ask of the teacher or most people don't see how it will help.
• I know I am able to do the movements, but simply cannot feel and remember them.

If I am going to meet Autumn 30 minutes before class, I think that time is best spent on the material we are going to cover in class.  I have a processing disorder, not immovable limbs.  i.e., my body is fine, it is my brain that gets in the way.  So even though we aren't going into as much detail in class, seeing it for the first time before the warm up in a small, low pressure setting will allow my brain the extra time it needs to digest of all the stuff it was just fed.  When she goes over in detail during class, I've already had time to start working it.

I really think that a slow, physical and verbal run-through of the piece will be most helpful.  Reviewing the previous class day's material isn't helpful because we don't repeat it.  We don't need to stop and do the first x-number of counts and then repeat, just start at the beginning, go straight through to the end.  My anxiety doesn't get as high in this situation either.  That keeps my brain free to do other things besides get upset that I'm not getting it as quickly as the rest of the class.

My gut tells me that we are going to repeat the stuff we did today because it didn't seem to be going well for the rest of the class.  Autumn kept saying that confidence was the biggest problem, trust our bodies to do what they know to do... She is so right, but it is easier said than done.  So I'm going to watch the video again today and commit to do it tomorrow.  I'll check back in here after I do... If I don't, then I didn't do it and I don't deserve any extra help.  So there.

The Music

>> TUESDAY, MARCH 16, 2010

Today we had something of a forum with Matt, our percussionist for jazz class.  I have been talking and thinking a lot about the music.  I can feel the rhythm in my body and consider it to be part of me.  I cannot really verbalize it, which is unusual for me.  I usually don't understand something until I can say it.  I don't mean repeat it, I mean really say it.  Sometimes I tutor topics such as physics or math, and any success I have in doing this is due to my ability to break stuff down verbally.  I also draw pictures, but I digress.  I am wondering if being able to verbalize the pieces of the music that I can feel will help with the movements in class.

Choreography has proved difficult for me for as long as I can remember.  I finally found something that requires some structure and a lot of rhythm: Lindy Hop.  Lindy Hop is a jazz era dance, so naturally there are a lot of jazz elements in the structure of it.  When I come to jazz class and we start counting and doing the steps, I feel my body change.  I lose the music.  It isn't even a factor in my body, only in my head.  I get frustrated because I don't feel myself dancing to it, I am only concerned about what the steps are.  Even more frustrating is that I am not concerned about the next step, I don't even know what the current one is.

The music helps me come back into my body.  Acknowledging the music in class today gives me hope that I will one day be able to find the words to tell my body what to do and let the music guide when to do it.  I find this come naturally with movements I already feel.  I also need to learn the way that I learn, and hope that somehow this fits into the class.

Motivation

I'm not sure if I took the dance scene by storm, or just got caught up in the existing storm, but I'm glad it happened.  Dance has become a critical part of my life and nothing has ever made me happier.

The above is about Lindy Hop and Blues.  So I decided to take a jazz class at school.  I'm supposed to keep a journal for this jazz class.  I am not particularly good at this kind of thing, but I'm hoping that having a general forum for writing about dance will make this assignment part of a bigger process.

Sometimes I will write about class, sometimes I will write about lindy hop, blues or just social dancing.  I might write about a workshop or maybe my own thoughts on something.  I don't know what this will consist of, but I'm going to try it.  My journal for the first half of the semester was practically worthless because I don't feel like I used it for me.  Now it's about me.