Dance is a lifestyle

I started practicing the basics repetitively again as a cheap way to stay fit during the winter.

Don’t know why I didn’t start doing this earlier. Most likely because of the shame I felt from my old dance partner’s passing remark in one of those late night practices that are filled with fights. I sat down, took and deep look and realized that this feeling of shame came from her. From a specific remark where she said dancing is not like a robot, doing repetitive moves like chop-chop. I disagree.

Lots has changed in my body since I last did this and I noticed some added bonus from a more muscular body type. For one, I have muscles to support certain moves now. I also realized that I don’t have enough of them to support more powerful moves. Second thing that I noticed is that I am very out of shape. The cardio I gained from cycling really doesn’t translate into dancing. If you want to know, I used to be able to do this for five minutes straight. Today I lasted for one minute.

From observing my breathing, I noticed that I’d inhale in a quick gasp, hold the breath and than exhale as I perform a power move. Exhaling helps in suddenly tensing up all the muscles in my body, helping me stop the momentum of a powerful step. Which also means that I cannot separate my breathing from my muscles. Letting breathing run with the intensity means  that I’d run out of breath from a lack of oxygen, but keeping it with the rhythm means I’d hyperventilate. Take chacha for example, approximately 4 beats in a second, 4 weight changes, 2 complete breathing cycle.

So the only solution that’s the most probable, is to separate breathing from the actual dance. If my memory serves me correctly, learning to separate my upper body movements from the lower body (and later, disconnecting the mid section as well) was painfully slow. It was like dancing with your brain and not your body and I couldn’t think straight after each practice.