Uninspired

So, as it goes right now, I teach about 7 hours of dance per week. I don't know if thats a huge amount, I don't know if thats too little. I do know that I have another full-time job, so 7 additional hours per week, not including prep time (can we say choreographies and costuming?), can be daunting. I think this is due in large part to just feeling uninspired lately. Why is this happening? I have always been an "ideas" person. I don't normally have a problem thinking of something totally fun to do in class, or designing new moves to teach my students...but for the past few weeks, it's as if my mind is just a totally blank slate. Are all my ideas used up? Has the creative part of brain gone on a long-awaited holiday? The more I try to disect this problem, the bigger the problem gets. Where do I go from here? What's a girl to do? Focus on something new!

So my ladies and I had an awesome party to decorate our new troupe mascot, Vigay...a lovely, lumpy elephant covered in gems, glitter and jewelry. He is very special, and totally bizarre. More important than Vigay was our girl time. We talked, we ate, we laughed and as I recall there was a hookah involved...and it really brought my creativity back to where I want it--front and center! We talked about why we dance, what dancing does for us and to us, the exhilaration of being in front of an audience, the desire to dance outside of the box, as it were. And this whole time I had been thinking I've been doing too much. I realize now I have been doing too little.

Sure, I have been spending hours per week teaching basics, students coming and going, losing something of myself in the monotony I was feeling. I have been afraid to step outside of my dancing box. I was sticking to the same old same old largely in part of being afraid to fail. But what does that even mean? What would failure mean to a dance teacher? To a belly dancer? So I offer a workshop and no one comes, or 15 people come, or everyone loves it, or everyone hates it. Would that really matter? What would actually happen if the outcome wasn't as I had planned? The more I thought about it, the more I understood. I would just learn what works, learn what doesn't, and move on. That's it.

So here it goes:

August 1st--Turkish Workshop
August 7th--Moving to a new studio
August 29th--Makeup Workshop
Month of September--Bollywood!

That's what I'm talking about!