We got to Catalina yesterday and it’s so lovely, I wanted to incorporate the landscape into this one and let it inform my dance.  My friend Xavier gave me a wonderful album by the Jackie Gleason Orchestra, and the music is perfect for the 1930’s -40’s style architecture and flavor of Catalina Island.  Thanks Marky for being such a great camera man.

We’re spending New Years on Catalina, courtesy of our friend Ed Moore – who is treating us to 3 nights at the Avalon hotel as a wedding present. He’s Marky’s longest time friend and a really good person.

Yesterday I got a message from my sister that my mother was having a “procedure” where they were going to shock her heart.  This put me in a strange mood. I really didn’t feel like dancing today, plus the extra challenge of doing it while traveling made me less enthused because I was feeling quite sad. My mother loves boat rides and as I stood at the bow of the boat, I contemplated life and how short it is and told myself to really pay attention to how great this moment is – because it passes so fast – and because I wanted to enjoy the boat ride for her too.

I looked to see what song I had on my iPod that would work and the first thing I saw was this version of Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life/Death”.  It seemed appropriate and after dancing to it I felt better.  Not long after I got a call from my sister saying Mom was ok, hungry and wanting a cup of coffee. So I guess she must be ok for now.

My friend and ballroom student, Jennifer Ross is (among other things) a master seamstress.  Her Christmas gift to us this year was specialized homemade aprons made with the image of our respective occupations.  Mine has ballroom dancers, feathers and beads. Mark’s has leather pockets and images of motorcycle racers all over it! We love them. So this dance is for you Jennifer. It’s a prequel to our “Kitchen Tango” that we’ve been fantasizing about for a while now…

All night I was waking up, dreaming about dancing…what the next dance will be…how to keep it interesting. I saw myself using one of the sturdy tables at the studio and that was it.  Then this morning I checked my email and there was a song request for “History Repeating” by Shirley Bassey and The Propeller Heads from Marilynne Morsehead.  Marilynne is a new FB friend who has excellent taste! I am familiar with and love that song.

I told Marky that was the song and he suggested I wear his T-Shirt from his friends at Vicious Cycle in Portland, OR. that he got doing a book reading for Riding Man.  The idea that History Repeating is just a Vicious Cycle.  So…on we went from there.

Today I went to teach Ron and Jennifer a ballroom lesson in Kearney Mesa. Afterward we decided to head to the bowling alley and film our dance. Here’s what we came up with:

Some of my concerns about this project right now are that each day this week I’ve bumped up the complexity of the video project a bit and it’s only Day 15.  What will I do on day 23, 48, 67, 95, 117, 233, and 364?  Am I setting a standard for myself that will become problematic_stressful_unattainable?  What I know is that I have choice and I get to keep practicing non-attachment. Like, I thought yesterday’s dance was fantastic and fun and I really worry that people didn’t tune in for that and that they’ll tune in on a day when I didn’t have/wasn’t able to produce something quite as juicy.  Oh well.  Too bad.

I have to do this project for the sake of _doing this project_ and all other factors are, necessarily, of secondary or less priority. Today’s is all that matters. Yesterday’s is in the can and tomorrow’s isn’t thought of yet.

I want to make a note about the technical aspects of making these videos so far. The first few days I was in the studio with a static shot set up by placing my MacBook on a table under the stereo. I hooked it up to the stereo and played music from there.  There was very little editing – as I was doing a one-take static shot.  What editing I have done so far has performed in iMovie.

About Day 6, my camera in my mac stopped recording. I borrowed Tsha’s handheld camera and then had a more mobile shot, so I played with that.  Then I discovered that I was unable to import the video directly to my Macbook – my second trip to the genius bar revealed that not only was the camera broken, so are my USB ports.

I have another older Canon ZR60 which has a fire wire. So the last few days were shot with that. It’s great, except it records to tape and I’ve accidentally lost footage by recording over stuff. The mobility of having a handheld camera has opened up a lot more options – plus Marky was out of town the first week I was doing this so now I also have a camera person.  This has been a lot of fun – as I love editing video.

Since using the hand-held camera, on some of the days I’ve tacked an audio track on over the dance. Some were the same song, just a cleaner version and others were different songs or – as in today’s case – there was no song at all. Another reason I love my Macbook is that from iMovie I can access my iTunes library and just pull an audio track over from there.

Another consideration on the audio subject is copyright and Youtube. I’ve had videos stripped of their audio in the past and so each day when I’m uploading I pray that won’t happen. So far I’ve been lucky -where there are copyright issues the video either is only banned in Germany or they simply put an ad on the video to buy the song at Amazon (which is the smart thing to do!)

There’s more I’m learning about connecting my blog to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube…but that’ll come in another post. I still have so much to learn!

I hope you enjoyed today’s dance and that you’ll leave a comment and share this on Facebook or somewhere.  Oh yes…and get up and dance with me will ya?!

Thanks to Troy, my favorite yoga teacher, for requesting this song. I just got a cool new Skunkfunk jacket from Marky for Christmas and he wanted to go to the beach to surf, so we put it all together and this is what we came up with today.

This is a great exercise that takes connection to subterranean level (literally).  In order to have a solid connection with a partner, it’s imperative to be grounded in my center. This is level .01 – fundamental information that lays the foundation for much more complex partnering.  Plus…as with all dance – it’s a great metaphor for connecting in all relationships.

What a great gift I got this morning, the day after Christmas while I’m still lounging in my bed at a time where I recently have been in the studio dancing. I opened my messages on FB and there he was…dancing joyfully for us all. Thanks Rob, I love this one.

I invented this game a few years ago and whenever we do it, we have a lot of fun. It’s great for developing spatial awareness and instincts. Plus it’s simple and oh, so much fun.  Thanks to all my dancers who were there to play and agreed to be video taped today.

Merry Christmas everyone! Today we had an open Freebox dance and quite a few of my dance friends came out to play…we had a great time. This one goes out to Mari Holbrooke because she requested that I dance to this song. Our group this morning was in fine form and we played a lot of fun games, which I will post video of under a new section soon.  Hopefully you will enjoy watching this at least half as much as we enjoyed doing it.