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January 27, 2011 – Studio rented out for a night of dancing, especially catered for the Whittington Creek residents – Oana and David Harrison hosting at Absolute Ballroom (absoluteballroomtn.com); [unbelievably delicious)]cupcakes provided by The Cup (cravethecup.com).

I met Sharon and Theresa while networking at eWomen, a nationwide professional networking association.  Sharon mentioned she wanted us to organize a dance soiree for the residents of Whittington Creek, so Theresa and I got the ball rolling.  And we all had a ball! 

We met at Absolute Ballroom at 7:30pm on a Thursday.  We started off with a nice lesson, introducing the waltz, swing, and tango.  Then we let the music play and everyone got the chance to practice what they just learnt in the class.  After all that hard work (not 😉 ), the cupcakes were a nice touch…

It was a fun night and we are looking forward to more!

There are many benefits to dancing: staying shape while not having to go the gym (ha-ehm, couldn’t be me…), meeting new people, spending quality time with a significant other, etc.  The other day I thought about another benefit of dancing, be it ballroom or otherwise.  Dancing is a way to tame one’s nervousness or anxiety of public speaking or performing.  One learns to use the nervousness to give them energy to go through with the performance.  One will also channel the energy toward engaging the audience.  And yes, I’ve seen it done, so I’m not just talking…  There were several couples and singles who started off awkwardly and pretty much hated performing.  But you should see them now: they are smiling, performing and even winning dance competitions.  It’s great!

Ahh, choreographing… a shifty, finikey process but what joy to have the final creation of inspiration to share with the world!  It really helps when the partner is on the same wave-length because often the timing subtleties and the artistic details cannot be easily communicated in plain language: it’s more of a feel and vision kind of thing.  Justin and I are working on a rumba for the upcoming New Year’s Eve show at Absolute Ballroom (www.absoluteballroomtn.com) and it’s been a slow start but a great coming together of little pieces today, shaping up into a very nice routine.  We are both so open to inspiration and to combining different elements of dance, as well as to challenging ourselves.  For instance, there are lifts I thought I shouldn’t do but I should listen to my own advice: “how do you know you can’t do something unless you try it?” (some restriction may apply, of course – just apply common sense…).  The inspiration for us starts usually with a great piece of music.  For this particular one we chose Iio’s “Runaway”.  With a little help from Audacity (a nifty music editing software), I pieced the music just right and off we went.  In Justin’s words “it’s like dancing mad math”, trying to match our choreography pieces to the music counts and the feel of the song.  I didn’t think I loved math but this kind of math, I do.