Living the dream?

A special mentor of mine once told me (for all things related to passions and ambitions) "... focus, set your goals and it is funny how the universe aligns things for you". I suppose he meant everything is out there for grabs and no amount of hoping, waiting, wishing or praying combined will get them any closer unlike some active effort. 

Anyway, that's all that's going to be philosophical here. 

With the end of the 4th class on my "dancing on a budget" voucher, my hip hop stint came to an end. And I was just getting comfortable, dammit. The guy who taught the last class advised everyone to keep grooving to the rhythms - in the shower, in the bus, walking on the road, etc - in order to get used to the style and basic steps. I'll take that advise with a pinch of iodised salt, thank you.

These four classes have helped me to unlock several achievements:

"I love ma hip hop"

"Ain't nobody give no shit bout how I dance"

"Oh yeah, I got swagger"

And that leaves me with the following to work towards in future:

"Flawless finish"

"In da club"

The other day, I made my way to watch Ice Age 4. I wasn't dying to watch it and I went with very little expectations. So being the epic movie it was, with fantastic dialogues and animation, I was totally blown away! It's easy to tell a good movie when you come out grinning instead of having a wtf look, like I had after watching Eclipse from the Twilight series and The Expendables.

The next movie, however, I've been *dying* to see since I first laid my eyes on the trailer in June. It doesn't help when all the bus stands in the neighborhood these days are plastered with colourful posters of this movie announcing 8th August as the release date here. On several occasions, I considered shattering the glass that houses the poster, grabbing it and making a run for it. It's sooo pwetty.

OMG, I love Merida's hair! 

And she's the only reason I look forward to August.

Expressions

The sitar is, without a doubt, one of the most beautiful and expressive instruments ever designed and it holds a superior position in the world of stringed instruments. It is a popular instrument of choice for the Hindustani (North Indian) style of classical music and it is often accompanied by a tabla - making them a winning team. Combined with the talent of a player, type of raga and other vocal and instrumental accompaniments, it can evoke strong emotions in a listener. The clip below that I found on a friend's Facebook wall is an interesting and beautiful fusion of music from the East and West.

"Sea Dreamer" by Anoushka Shankar, Karsh Kale & Sting

It also reminded me of one of my old music teachers. He was a very talented and accomplished sitar player back in his day. But when I came to know him, he was passing a definite low point in his life and his glory days seemed a lifetime ago. I came to know he coached intermediate students on the violin and soon after, I became his student and continued for a few months until it was time to leave to Singapore. Violin techniques were not his strong point but he was able to give compostions and coach me on these since I had the basic skills. Apart from giving me beautiful classical pieces to play which he made up on the fly (I think he was mostly lazy to prepare in advance and follow a syllabus but I didn't mind at all), he showed me how these were supposed to sound by playing it on his sitar. Sometimes he got carried away and played a little extra. That was certainly a highlight of this class. I would often sit and watch soul-struck, speechless and sometimes on the verge of tears (of joy) before I picked up my violin and hopelessly attempted to play like that. He was that good.

Today was day 3 of 4 for hip hop classes. It's fun and encouraging to go with Katy Kat, who took an interest in joining the class after reading one of my old posts. Together we have made a pact to break out of our social awkwardness that inhibits us from enjoying ourselves as dancers. Today was the first time I felt comfortable and least conscious at class so I am quite thrilled about it. It just might be progress over three classes or the fact that it was a mixed hip hop class for beginners that didn't involve many feminine dance moves like the two previous girls-only hip hop classes I tried. 

[Edited] During these few classes, it has occurred to me that had I spent more time as a child pretending to be a diva, following those feminine moves would have come easy! But no, I spent much of my childhood like the son our family never had, being my mother's 'bodyguard' in my father's long absences from home and the kid who naturally preferred trees, bicycles and getting messy outdoors over dolls, dollhouses and playing dress-up indoors. So it's going to be a little challenging to move past my current diva bias and learn to follow a simple choreography for the sole purpose of mastering coordination in the girls-only classes.

Happy belated birthday, Shu. You are now twenty-seven years of age.

Un-wiring and Re-wiring the Brain Circuits

It's about time to do something about my chorophobia (yes, they even coined a term for the irrational fear of dancing!), which is but a small side effect of my larger and more complex issue of social anxiety. 

It's hard to understand all the factors that led me into being like this. For all I know it was a slow transformation that occurred subconsciously for many many years. But what I do know now and what actually matters is that nearly all these associated fears are irrational and worse, it holds me back from enjoying the things I like, getting the things I want and living my life to the truest potential. Sometimes, the solutions aren't too clear or easy, yet sometimes, it can be as simple as strapping yourself to a paraglider + paragliding pilot and jumping off a cliff or even buying a $20 Groupon voucher for 4 dance classes.

This was an open Hip Hop class for beginners. Salsa wasn't really my thing, as I found out last year. After a rather disappointing interview earlier in the day, I was very much looking forward to this and made my way there early to sign up. I did the mistake of skipping dinner and tea before the class.

Very soon the instructor walked in and made us do some warm-ups. Ouch! Those hurt. Then we all stood up to start, and WHOOSH - Shuri was hit by a wave of postural hypertension. She announced "Today, we are going to learn a very sensual dance and it involves a lot of touching yourself" O_O Anyhow, it turned out she didn't choose her words carefully because it wasn't as bad as she put it. Sure, there were some hip shaking and butt pointing, but nothing too freaky. 

The class was actually okay. The instructor was really good at what she does and a pleasure to watch. It seemed to come naturally to her and she clearly enjoyed dancing [Awww, I wanna be able to dance just like that!]. There were about thirty students packed in the studio but it was just nice that no one bumped their hands and feet on others. Some of the students were very good, some bad and some in-between. To my nerves' relief, I didn't know anyone and no one seemed to care about the others because they were all struggling to keep up with the moves. I picked a spot all the way at the back and later, suffered trying to get views of the instructor at the front. I was easily one of the worst students in the class. Although I followed the first half of the choreography, things got complicated later, I got a little disheartened and messed up all the steps subsequently. I even had to skip doing one of the twirls, because it seriously made me dizzy. Blacking out and hitting the glass was the last thing Miss Self-Conscious on behavioral therapy needed!

Ignoring social anxiety for the moment, I realised I had so many other issues to work on. First of all, my brain keeps getting confused over mirror images and it's relation to my left and right. I vaguely remember I had this issue while trying out Dance Central on the X-box kinect. As I was following the instructor's image on the mirror in front, I kept wondering if I was doing it right. Then, I have BAD, no wait, I have NO mind-body coordination. My brain has spent too many years worrying about how I'll look or what others will think of me while I make an ass of myself, that I haven't spent enough time learning to move or coordinate the different parts of my body. Maybe I should have spent more time observing my movements (rather than looking for irregularities of my appearance) in mirrors like normal people do. For all my brain knows, it is fixed to a stump of a torso and four appendages that are the legs and hands and complex coordination is...not possible. Following the instructor and keeping up was therefore overwhelming. Next, remembering the sequence of the moves was very tough. And finally, without practice and persistence, I'll be going nowhere further than square one. 

At one point she said "Don't be too stressed, just imagine you are a diva!" [Gee, I wonder what that is like.]

Anyway, she left us with some helpful and hopeful advice saying, "Don't be too self conscious, you have to find a way to break out if it. I myself was extremely self conscious when I started out. It's only after you manage that, can you really enjoy dancing."

Man, I'm so looking forward to this movie. The background stories of the characters are often cheesy in this series of movies, but the choreography is guaranteed to be mind blowing. Kathryn McCormick, Travis Wall and Twitch from "So You Think You Can Dance" will be involved as characters and choreographers in this movie.