Salon post: June 22

[jenett]

Welcome to this week's salon post!


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Topic of the week
Logistics note: I didn't realise until last Saturday that I'd forgotten to unlock last week's Salon post. If you notice I haven't unlocked it, feel free to let me know. (Most content in my journal is locked: I am very amiable about adding most people, but it means I have to remember to unlock the Salon posts in particular.)

Question for the week: What interesting things have you done recently? (Whether that's something new to you, something other people might find interesting to hear about you do all the time, or the current thing you're geeking out over.)

I went to a presentation a week ago for the Cambridge (this is the Massachusetts Cambridge) Open Archives, two weeks when a lot of the museums and archive collections do special sessions. The one I was at was at Mount Auburn Cemetery, which was the first 'rural' cemetery in the United States.

It's a really beautiful place (it was jointly designed with horticulture in mind) and the way they've preserved information is also fascinating. Families who owned plots could design the landscaping in that plot (within guidelines), and they kept all those records. I was reminded I really ought to go walk there more often.

What I've been up to:
See above! Otherwise, a fair bit of playing catchup with life.


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Comments

[havocthecat]

So I don't think what I do is particularly interesting, but in my constant endeavors to avoid doing the exact same underestimation of myself that I tell other people not to do:

I'm an (amateur) belly dancer. (Please, no debates about the name. I've heard them all and this is still the most recognizable one for everyone.)

I've been doing this on and off with breaks for various life experiences, since 2000. Maybe 1999? I DON'T REMEMBER.

I started with Classical Egyptian belly dance, which is called Classical Egyptian (aka Egyptian Cabaret, which is somewhat different from American Cabaret), but is derived from folkloric Egyptian dance styles and has been influenced since then by European ballet. I only did that for a short time, because I have plantar fascitiis, and all the releve (dancing on my toes) was not good for me. Also I took a break to buy a house, get married, have a baby, and switch jobs. I didn't do Classical Egyptian for long, only a couple years.

When I moved to the suburbs, in 2005, my teacher out there taught American Tribal Style (ATS), which is a much more grounded, 100% improvisational style of belly dance. So I had to relearn all the things and change my entire style of movement. ATS has nothing to do with Native American tribes, but the name came out of the Ren Faires where the originator of the term formed her "tribe" of dancers.

ATS used to be a lot more casual and open, but the originator wanted to regiment her style, and create a series of workshops, DVDs/books, and certifications that she could use to make specific steps for each level, and this happened during my break-- Well, I come from fandom and my feelings on copyright and trademark are complicated. As a paralegal who had to go out and pay a shitton of money for a certificate so I could get a paying job in the field, my feelings on certifications are...even more complicated. So. I will just say "complicated" and leave it at that.

(Anyone who wants to do improv and doesn't want to do ATS now calls themself some variation on Improvisational Tribal Style.)

(I will say that I hate "online" dance classes. I feel that there's nothing, nothing that can substitute for the experience of an in-person instructor.)

My teacher from 2005 also taught Tribal Fusion, which takes ATS belly dance moves and fuses them with modern and contemporary dance, as well as some Egyptian dance styles. So I got a nice grounding in both styles and performed a lot with the student troupe.

I took a break in ~2010 for multiple surgeries, going back to school, and switching jobs twice. When I realized I was able to dance again (some of my physical conditions meant that any more than 30 seconds of stomach isolations caused a large amount of physical pain), I started back up with Tribal Fusion in 2017. Same teacher as in 2005, and she's learned and grown as a teacher, which is awfully nice.

Tribal Fusion has gotten even more influenced by contemporary dance and older styles of belly dance, so I've basically had to relearn half or more of what I had known. Which has been a challenge. Not a bad one. But a big one. It means I've spent two years as a not-entirely-rank beginner, but definitely not as experienced as I was in 2010.

The whole naming debate is part of the cultural appropriate debate, which came to belly dance heavy and hard. Which I am also not getting into here, because I've read the debates enough on Facebook, I've gotten into the cultural appropriation debates enough in fandom, and I just won't. If you're interested, I can give you a basic precis of them, but I'm sure if you're up on your cultural sensitivity, you have an idea.

I've tried to give a bit of the history of American belly dance in with my summary of my history of belly dance, but if you want more of the history of Tribal Fusion belly dance, Wikipedia is a very good, very authoritative source (for once):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tribal_Fusion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Tribal_Style_Belly_Dance
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improvisational_Tribal_Style

The Gilded Serpent is an online belly dance magazine that has been around since the mid-90s:
http://www.gildedserpent.com/


Shira is one of the nicest, most knowledgeable women around in belly dance, and she runs a comprehensive resource site:
http://www.shira.net/index.html

[jenett]

This is awesome, and thank you for laying it all out so tidily.

(I've thought about poking at the various related art forms, but bodies are complicated, and going and doing things outside the necessary is even more complicated.)

[havocthecat]

You're welcome! Bodies are complicated and you need a dance teacher who's aware of the complicatedness of bodies and how they can be injured.

I have had a great deal of luck strengthening some very specific atrophied muscles with belly dance, so PM or email me if you want info, and it's also good for abdominal and pelvic floor strengthening, but if you don't watch it, you'll fuck your knees (or other parts of you) hard depending on what you do.

Basically, if bodies are complicated, belly dance is best with a doctor and with a teacher who knows complicated bodies. My teacher knows complicated bodies because she has one. Other teachers know complicated bodies because they are massage therapists or are concurrently yoga teachers, or have other qualifications.

It's a beautiful art form and if you google it, most of the big names are super slender (because of course they are), but it really can be done at any size. I can point you at amazingly graceful 300+ pound women who are belly dancers.

The troupe that I would LOVE to try to join (someday), but which is too far away for me to ever join is here:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=stygian+sisters+metal+belly+dance
https://stygiansisters.wixsite.com/home

I also found this great article:

How Practicing Contemporary Dance Helps Belly Dancers

[jenett]

My body complication is mostly not body mechanics, but much more stamina and lungs, alas, which makes physical activity iffy at the best of times, especially since my stamina tends to drop out suddenly. Which makes 'and how am I getting home from this thing safely?' a non-trivial problem.

(This is one of the problems of living alone people don't talk about much - there's a lot of stuff I'd be more willing to push if I lived with someone and had a back up of 'I'll probably be fine, but I'm going out for a walk and if I misjudge, can you come pick me up?'. But I don't, so.)

I swim for my exercise because it's the one thing I've found I'll keep up with (I enjoy it as an activity, especially now waterproof MP3 players exist and I can listen to podcasts while I do my laps), I can modify my exertion stroke by stroke if I want, and because 'how much energy do I need to save to shower, change, and go to work' is a (more or less) constant I can plan for.

Though even then it sometimes gets tricky. (I swam before work this morning, and walked across campus at 9 to show someone some things, and even though it's gorgeous out there and not hot, my body was very much at 'You Did A Thing. Maybe Too Much Thing' for a couple of hours after.)

Anyway, it makes group class exercise things a thing that I could likely manage if I didn't have to leave the house to go to work, (and have to save energy/cope for that) but I do, so.

[jjhunter]

I went to a tree mob at the Arnold Arboretum about pigmented bacteria growing on solar panels! They seem to frequently have lots of different carotenoids, and very handily have different colors to the naked eye when grown in colonies. And the grad student studying them in Boston thinks she may have discovered a brand new species of bacteria - fingers crossed that this is indeed confirmed.

[jenett]

Oooh. That sounds absolutely fascinating.

[st_aurafina]

Oh, what a cool thing to have done! A tree mob! Bacteria on solar panels, wow. I didn't even know that was a thing.

the grad student studying them in Boston thinks she may have discovered a brand new species of bacteria

I hope that she has!

[st_aurafina]

I've started volunteering for my local Park Run, as a way to start beating my social anxiety. It's a community program where you run/walk/whatever on a 5km trail - there's a wiki entry on the movement here: Parkrun on wiki.

I should note that I can neither run nor walk 5km but the organiser is very motivating, in the sense that she got me through the social anxiety phase by promising to look out for me. I've been five or six times, and it's pretty easy. I wouldn't say fun, because, anxiety. But I like working with my community and seeing people I know in a different setting.

[jazzyjj]

I haven't really been doing much lately in the way of interesting stuff, only because of my social life here in my building. I attended a Meals at Home presentation this past Wednesday at the main branch of the local public library, along with one of my tutors. Or I should say I attended part of it. Long story short, my bus was a bit late picking me up and then the driver had to drop off 2 other passengers before me, who live past the library. The 2 ladies asked him to radio into dispatch and see if I could be dropped off first, and I sort of hinted at that but I wasn't too worried to start out. But dispatch said no, he had to do a round-about and drop off the person first who was going farthest. Then I became a bit more worried at first. But it all worked out in the end, and my tutor was not angry. At least not with me. After all, I had my iPhone with me and we communicated that way while I was in transit. More on my iPhone in a bit. But my tutor ended up driving me home, which he didn't mind. I also got to see an old friend briefly who lives in the same building as that tutor.





I've also been trying to practice more on my iPhone, and these next few days are affording me that opportunity. My neighbor across the hall is visiting family in another state, so I've got some quality time to myself. Not that he's a bad person, but we hang out all the time and I've gotten behind a bit. I recently contacted an orientation&mobility instructor at the place where I went for iPhone training, and she told me that before we start working together she wants me to practice gestures a bit more. I totally agree with her, and it turns out that I'm having difficulty with a couple things on the phone anyway. So I want to work on those areas specifically before contacting her again, because of what we're going to work on. Luckily there is a great online resource for visually impaired and deaf/blind users of Apple products.