Category Archives: lindy hop and other dances

last night

Last night I went dancing and it was nice.

There was a crowd of non-dancers there generally milling around the pub, which was useful as it provided a sort of crowd-filler that really adds to the mood in the room. They were all cheery and well lubricated, which is a lovely antidote to dancers who can be a bit serious and uptight. But the dancers were also feeling cheery last night, and there was a nice mix of people, all of whom were looking for some fun dancing and were ready to socialise. I was happy with the way my set went. I just played a lot of favourites, though I did play versions that aren’t usually played. Which was nice.

Then I danced and danced. An hour and a half without stopping, only sitting out a couple of songs. All that charleston practice and swimming and running has really built up my stamina, which is satisfying. It hasn’t done much for my following, though, which is only to be expected.

And then I came home and watched Vampire Diaries in bed, eating peanut butter on bread and chocolate ice cream and explaining the plot to The Squeeze, who was still up when I got home.

here’s this one thing

Well, I have to do some practicing because I’m DJing tonight, so of course I’ve hopped straight onto the internet. Nothing makes you want to fill up your blog like a deadline for something else.

This morning my mother telephoned me to tell me she ‘is on the skype!’ and to ask me who I am on skype. I’m not sure she’s quite grasped the whole skype concept. But then I never use skype, and sure as shit can’t remember who I am on the skype. Apparently my niece (who wants to be a chef when she grows up) set my mother up on a recent visit to Tasmania. The mother is delighted. I’m not sure she’s actually used it yet, but she’s always delighted by the thought of a bargain or some sort of purchasing scam.

I never use the telephone to have actual vocal conversations any more, unless you count those long conversations with friends on my mobile while I’m waiting for a bus at the bus stop. I only make phone calls at the bus stop. Because you can’t read while waiting for a bus in Sydney because you have to be alert to hail Sydney buses and they won’t stop unless they have to. Not even if they see you standing at the stop. If you don’t have that magic public transport finger out to hail the fuckers, they’re just going to drive on by. Suck that up, commuter noob.

I do send a few text messages, mostly to my Squeeze to tell him I’m about to get on a bus, or have just been ignored by a bus driver at the curb. I do quite a bit of texting over exchange weekends when I’m working as the organisational nexus for a group of interstate dancers looking for noms. But otherwise it’s not my communications tool of choice.

The internet, though, well, let’s just say… fuck, let’s just say everything that occurs to us. In 140 characters or less. If you’re not following me on twitter (and I can’t see why you would), then you’ve dodged about sixty zillion full metal jackets. It seems I’m partial to a little annotation. Every thing I do or think, it has to be recorded for posterity. I’m fairly sure this is a natural consequence of working at home and spending quite a bit of time on one’s own, when one is the type of person who ordinarily likes a little high-impact interaction. I’ve noticed that if you’re also caring for a small child the twitter deluge is liberally seeded with poo talk. And mixed metaphors, obviously. I’m not caring for a small child, but I follow quite a few people who do. One clear advantage to following stay-home carers is the amount of kidspam you get in your tweetstream. I quite like a portrait of a child in fancy dress.

I also like the way a meme brings all the tweeple to the yard, just for a moment. Just for a second there, we’re all 13 year olds, laughing at the thought of Keenu Reeves in our trousers, or cheering each other up with very good reasons to be alive. I’m particularly fond of @jellyjellyfish’s #reasonstolive day (Thursdays, thanks, and Jelly’ll be setting the theme for you Wednesday night) because it stops me tweeting a heap of minor complaints and starts me tweeting a rapid-fire round of nice thoughts about things I like (see what I did there?). My one problem is that I’m always a little torn about whether something I really like actually constitutes a reason to live. I mean, I can live without the smell of fresh bread. So is it a reason to live? When I get to this point I usually give myself a kick in the pants and suggest I get back into the proper spirit of things. The point here is to list nice things to remind Jelly (and the rest of us) that life is good.

It is fairly good, you know, but it seems I’m having trouble reminding myself of that right now. I’ve had a couple of pretty nasty anxiety moments lately, and they’ve managed to bed down in my shoulder and neck muscles to give me a headache. Haven’t had a bad anxiety headache in a long time, but all this thinking about competitive solo dance matched with the final round of assignments in the final semester of my postgrad diploma seems a fairly good beginning for a nasty round of bad headaches. Well, it would have been a start, but by gum, I Took Charge. After a little round of public anxiety-bleating, I managed to remind myself that Life is actually Good. And I did it with a little massage (nothing reminds you that life is nice like a pair of strong, comforting hands unknotting your muscles), a little chocolate ice cream (nothing is quite as good as a little unhealthy comfort eating) and of course a nice serve of the right type of low impact muscle stretches. All enabled, of course, by my very wonderful Squeeze.

So I figure it’s worth a (rare) blog post to announce that, even though there are moments of flushed, heart-pounding, scurrying-about-picking-things-up-and-putting-them-down, short-tempered, muscle-tensed anxiety, there’s also an awful lot of warm water, strong hands, good reading and gentle conversation. Life is pretty nice.

lots of talk about exercise

Another long post!
I’m making sure there’s more talk about feelings and gender and power in DJing and dance. Even if they’re just mine. :D

I’ve been doing some pretty hard core exercise lately, which you’d know if a) you follow me on twitter, b) are a real live hooman friend of mine, c) I’d kept up with posting my dailymile posts here.
I guess I’ll get on that last one soon.

So what’s the deal? I started running in March or so this year, loved it, and used to run three times a week and go social dancing once. But that hurt my knees. So I dropped one run and added in yoga. Didn’t help. I went to see my podiatrist/physio (bless his blessed cotton socks), he gave me some exercises to toughen up my knee, and I started back at running twice a week with an aim for three. Sore knees. I started doing dance work on night a week, properly, in a hall and everything. Then I started swimming laps twice a week at the pool to complement my two runs per week, my one social dancing night and my one night of dance work.

It’s gold.

I love swimming. I used to swim a lot, doing swimming club in school until puberty put a stop to that, we grew up swimming a lot, and I’ve done laps at various points. But this is different. It’s so wonderful. I love the way it’s not impact exercise – no knee or joint pain. Just lovely stretches and a serious arse-kicking. Right now I’m running Mondays and Fridays, swimming Tuesdays and Thursdays, dance work Wednesdays and social dancing Friday or Saturday night (with the odd Sunday session) and lots of incidental walking and the odd long walk in between. It’s perfect. I love it.

It’s the perfect balance, so long as I don’t push the swimming too much. Right now I’m really not swimming as hard as I could. I do 1km in 30minutes and I could do more. I did more on Tuesday and ended up with a sore shoulderback (I think it was my trapezium, on the left side) on Wednesday. So I’m taking it easy, working up to more laps gradually. Unlike running, I have some swimming Skillz, what with that swimming club work as a youngun and some sort of bizarre genetic predisposition towards it (I think it’s actually the strength in my shoulders). So I feel good about swimming.

I still love running. I love the way it seriously kicks my arse and leaves me all tremble-muscles and sweaty. But it’s rough on my joints at the moment. I have added in lots of stretches and strengthening exercises, but I’m not quite there yet with those. I don’t want to suggest that running itself is bad for you or your joints. The issue is that it’s a repetitive exercise – you do the same exact movements – over and over again. And gravity is involved. And if you’re heavier, and without proper muscle tone, you tend to just flop down into your joints. That’s me. I’m pretty fit from dancing, but I’m not running fit. And you do need to strengthen your muscles for running.

Hellz, you should really be doing lots of stretches and strengthening exercises for sitting on your arse all day. I’m 36, so I’m not at my prime, running wise. But that’s ok. I think it’s a good idea to work up to being a ninja runner. I’m gradually strengthening my muscles so that I am more efficient. That means making sure the muscles in my legs work properly, so I’m not knock-kneed any more.

That’s a real issue for a lot of women, especially ones who don’t do much exercise – arses out, no core strength, knees falling in towards each other. The opposite is often true of many men – crotch forwards (so it looks like they have no arse), no core strength (but too much upper body strength), knees opening out like bow-legged cowboys. These sorts of physiological (should that be biomechanical?) issues are party socialised, but also to do with the physiological differences between men and women. And you do get men with the ‘female’ issues and vice versa.

I’m focussed on getting good at running because running is really good for basic aerobic fitness, and also for being efficient when you’re moving quickly. Which is perfect for cross-training for lindy hopping. Which is really just lots of running. With lots of jumping and leaping and bending and stretching and…
I love swimming because it makes me apply the same principles of biomechanics I use in dancing and running, but to my body while it’s suspended in a resistant environment. Gravity doesn’t kick my arse (especially not mine – I’m still ridiculously buoyant), so I’m free to experiment with movement in new ways. It’s kind of like yoga – when you’re inverted, you get to see how your everyday movements and muscle use are shaped by gravity and habit. Tipping all that upside down, literally, helps you become aware of your habits and also more aware of how your body works. Swimming is kind of like that. But you’re in WATER.

As per usual, I’ve thrown myself into this routine with somewhat obsessive enthusiasm. I am a little ob-con, which means I’m good at things like PhDs, exercise programs and other tedious tasks with perceivable goals. You usually see the results of a new regular exercise routine at six weeks or so. Provided you’re actually doing the exercise regularly and with some sort of discipline. And I am.

My results? Dancing is much easier – I can breathe and jump and leap with more energy and control. But my improved fitness and muscle and control means that I can actually do more while I’m dancing. I can experiment with new ways of moving. Which was one of my main reasons for doing this in the first place: decreased fitness and increased physical girth (as in not-muscle but just generous flesh…ooo, I do like that thought – generous, bountiful flesh!) make it difficult to do some movements. They also prevent you doing movements for longer periods of time with more repetitions. Which is what you need to practice something. I find my decreased size means I have a greater range of movement – I can move my legs at the hip within a greater range, I can bend further, extend further and jump higher. It’s quite exciting. It’s also very interesting.

I want to make it clear. I’m not rushing this. We started changing our lifestyle a couple of years ago. I don’t want to ‘drop a lot of weight’ or suddenly get really fit really quickly. I wanted to make slow, gradual changes so that they could be sustainable. It is nice to be slimmer – it simply feels better to be able to do more exercise with this increased fitness and smaller physical size. It’s less weight on my poor foot and joints, and it means I do have that greater range of movement and flexibility and strength in my joints.

I also want to be clear: you can carry lots of flesh and be fit and healthy. But you can’t be fit and healthy if you don’t do at least five 30minute blocks of sustained exercise per week. That means a brisk walk (not a slow stroll) FIVE times a week. One of the consequences of this exercise, though, is that your muscles develop. That means you get stronger, not just in the muscles your body is using to move you around, but also in other systems – respiratory, digestive, pulmonary. You also use food more efficiently – you use food. So you’re less likely to ‘put on weight’ because your body isn’t storing as much ‘excess’ calorie as it was when you were spending your whole day on the couch.

And – best of all – exercise fires up your body-chemicals, and improves your mood. Exercising regularly just makes you feel good. It’s really hard when you’re weighed down with depression or caged in by anxiety to get out there and walk or run or swim or cycle or dance or stretch or tai chi or yoga or whatever. But once you do get out to it regularly, your general mental wellbeing improves. I find I have far less trouble with anxiety when I’m exercising regularly. Without it I can find it difficult to leave the house, to go do social situations, to even catch a godDAMN bus without freaking about missing it.

Exercise sort of dissolves those feelings. It lets me out. I think that this is the part I like the most. It’s like exercise makes me strong enough to do things I can find very difficult. It makes me strong, emotionally, but also socially. It helps me free my sense of humour and my wit. I make better jokes when I’m exercising regularly. It also lets me do creative things like dancing or telling stories or whatevs.

For me, this is where exercise becomes a feminist issue. Because happy, healthy women with confidence and creativity and happy, healthy bodies are in a very good position for fucking up the patriarchy. And because happy, healthy men with confidence and creativity and happy, healthy bodies are also in a very good position for fucking up the patriarchy.

At this point I want to write about wellness and (dis)ability and health and feminism, but I don’t have the space. I have a post brewing, though. But let me state this, very very clearly:

The ‘right’ amount and type of exercise for YOU is determined by your body and by your self. There is no point whatsoever in comparing your exercise with someone else’s because:

  • you are unique;
  • you have a unique genetic makeup, therefore your physical/emotional/mental potential is unique.
  • your lifestyle is unique – you might be a mother like other people, but you are mother to your children, living your lives, not someone else’s; you might be a student like other people, but you are student in your body, not their’s;
  • Your body and your brain – the way they work together – is unique.
  • You are the sum of your life to this point, and that means you have to take that into account. You might have had some troubles with alcohol or with depression or with your parents. You might have been a hardcore sprinter as a teenager. You might be wondering where your gender is at, and what or who you are. You might have broken a bone years ago and have it left more fragile. You might have some serious long-term illness. All this stuff comes with you on every run and every swim and every walk. So you have to be gentle with yourself.
  • You’re here for your whole life, not just a weekend of it, so you have to plan your exercise for your whole life. Don’t think “I have to lose weight for my wedding” or “I have to get fit by christmas”. Think “I deserve to feel really good, and I deserve to feel better every single day” and work on that. Long term goals, short term pay-offs.

So my fitness and exercise plans aren’t ones that will work for everyone. You have to find your own balance point. That might mean yoga once a week or it might mean cycling to work every day. This brings me to my other serious point:

Exercise should be fun. If it’s not, change what you’re doing. Really, seriously, it should make you feel fucking AMAZING. It might pound and pummel you, but not in a bad way. It might leave you buggered and breathless, but it should also leave you thinking “YES! I am doing that again tomorrow/next week!” You mightn’t have any interest in exercise that’s hardcore – that’s also cool. It might be the way your gentle yoga leaves you feeling light and calm and centred and full of happiness. But it should be good feelings, not guilt or frustration or shame or anger or unhappiness.
For me, dancing is the very finest thing on earth. When I’m dancing, when the music is good, and I’m feeling good, it is the best feeling I’ve ever felt. It can be any music and any dancing. But the way I feel at that moment is beyond words.That’s why I run and swim and stretch – because it improves that. Sure, I enjoy running and swimming and cycling for their own sakes as well, but dancing gives me direction. It’s the payoff. I also find that fostering that part of my life – with its creativity and physical challenge and partnership with other dancers – fosters the other parts of my life which are about stillness and calm and quiet.

So I think we should all seek out exercise that pleases us. Running isn’t for everyone. You mightn’t be a runner or swimmer. You might be a trapeze artist or a juggler or a ninja or a climber or a hiker or a gardener. Keep looking until you find that thing that makes you feel that good. And the best part is that the more exercises you try, the better able you are to try more exercises, and more things generally!

For me, that’s the other best bit. Hurting my foot made me suddenly think “oh shit, I might never be able to run/dance/garden/hike again!” so when I did get some mobility and freedom from pain I was NOT going to put off trying new things. No fucking way. Our bodies are phenomenal things – there is no way I’m going to miss out on trying as much as I can.

This is another thing that makes exercise feminist. It makes us strong and convinces us to seek out good stuff. Good stuff that mightn’t have anything to do with heterosexual monogamy or buying shit.

Here’s another thing I want to mention. Being fat does not equate to being unhealthy. I actually don’t like to use the expression ‘being fat’, because it’s meaningless – it’s relative and requires comparison with other bodies. And that way leads bullshit self-loathing and division between women. Not to mention paranoia, depression and unhappiness. Exercise is about being strong – physically, mentally and emotionally. It’s about feeling good. It is NOT about comparing yourself with other people. So you can have lots of lovely booty – you can be a lushly fleshy creature – and still be fit and healthy. But not if you don’t get your heart rate up, work your lungs and muscles and sweat a little. Sorry, sex, heavy drinking and sixteen course banquets do not qualify. :D

I want to end with another point. One that’s really at the heart of this. Simply ‘being skinny’ – ie just some bones covered in skin – is not a good goal. Aim to be ‘healthy’, and aim to be well. I wish some of the women I know would realise that muscle tone is the sign of good health. Every now and then I see a sister cringe when I talk about my muscles. It’s not ‘mannish’ to have muscles. And, to be honest, ladies, you’re going to have to work really hard, for a really long time to even approach a man’s musculature.

I really think of my muscles as proof of my strength. Not just of my physical strength, but of myself. I’m strong enough to get out the house, or to make a joke or to tell a story or to manage a relationship or to run my household or hold down a job. I’m strong enough to know how to ask for help, and I’m strong enough to help other people. I think this idea of strength is the opposite of what a lot of women are raised to think. We’re raised to think – constantly told by telly and advertising and almost every single relationship we have with other people – that women are physically weaker than men, and that we aren’t strong enough to make decisions or to run our own lives.

I also see a lot of women using ill health or physical weakness – pain in particular – to gain control of their lives or relationships. If you have a headache you don’t have to go to work/deal with that conflict/solve that problem. You have permission to go to bed or to be looked after. I mean – most women I know carry pain killers in their bag. How many men have pain killers on them all the time?

This was a big one for me, because I used to get horrid headaches which were stress related. I find exercise keeps anxiety and stress headaches at bay. I’ve also learnt that when I feel a headache brewing I can reach for a painkiller (because sometimes you just need to), or I can go for a walk or get a massage or choose to let go of that trigger point (saying ‘no’ to a responsibility, for example).

I think that my relationship with medical professionals is a good example of this. Pain in my foot or knee? I could take a bunch of pain killers or stop running. Or I could go see my physio, who then works with me to set up a strengthening program where I work to manage my pain. This is the sort of pro-active, empowering relationship many men have with their sports coaches, but which women don’t have because they don’t do sport, competitive or otherwise. For me, this is the most exciting part of all. Having a ‘bung foot’ doesn’t mean not dancing or not walking or taking lots of pain killers. It means getting orthotics, doing an hour of strengthening and releasing exercises per day and managing the amount and type of sport I do.

Yoga taught me: you don’t skip yoga because you’re injured. That’s when you most need to go to yoga. So exercise has taught me that your physical (dis)ability is not about opting out. My physical limitations aren’t actually limitations – they’re just part of how my body works. So I need to work with that, rather than in spite or or around that. Dancing helps with that thought too – an unusual body shape is a very useful and creative thing.

I’m not really sure how to end this, other than to say that I think it’s a very great shame I didn’t do much exercise between 15 and 25. A very great shame.

fitness: dance work

duration: 02:00 effort 3/5 feeling: good

Woke up with really really sore traps (I think that’s the bit that was hurting – it’s where my shoulder joins my spine, but in between, in the muscle). I’d felt that ache earlier in the week (Monday?) but it was super bad today. I’m thinking of blaming swimming, but it could have been some of my stretches.
Anyways, the dancing didn’t hurt; it was nice. I worked hard.

am i being paranoid or is this dodgy?

I’ve just realised (courtesy of a link in a comment from lindydandy) that this blog has been linked to by http://www.rabbitsandtoasters.com. I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand this linking directs traffic to my site. On the other, it directs traffic to my site. I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea of raising my profile in the online international swing dancing world so explicitly. There are as many disadvantages as advantages to this, and dancing is my hobby, not my work, so I don’t particularly need my site’s profile lifted. Or my own.

I also have trouble with the fact that the format of the linking site means that they score money from their ads every time someone clicks on their site. I’m assuming their links to other blogs are scoring them points in the google ranking and that this directs people to their site. And, much more importantly, their aggregating a series of feeds (or whatever) and publishing them to their site means that they’re making these scores not through their own work or writing or creation of content, but through the work of other bloggers.

I’m not naive. I know that this is how the internets work. But I’m also aware of the fact that the dance world is quite small – this isn’t some ‘anonymous’ dodginess. It’s the work of people I actually know. Who are gradually increasing their web presence (or rather, their presence in the online dancing world) via range of tools. They have a number of pots on the boil, and it’s this relationship between the pots (dodgy metaphor much?) that’s tingling my spidey sense. It feels particularly dodgy because this linking site appears to be offering a ‘helpful’ guide to swing dancers’ blogs. It also presents this aggregating as ‘syndicating’ a series of blogs. Thing is, unlike a real syndicated column, I’m not getting anything from this besides traffic. Certainly not a share of the advertising $.

It’s also dodgy because they don’t actually provide any ‘real’ biographical information on their site, not even in their ‘about us’ page. So I can’t grab them next time I see them dancing to have a chat, nor can I follow this up with a mutual friend who can clue me in on their intentions. That’s how these things work in a small community – word of mouth is the most valuable commodity we have. I’m be suspicious that the ‘about us’ and ‘contact us’ pages are actually a bit of a tool for harvesting emails for spam, so I’m not really ready to send them an email just yet.

This site also misrepresents its content, suggesting that it is in some way hosting ‘contributors’ and ‘authors’, or that these authors are in some way affiliated with the site ‘syndicated’ in some sort of official sense. The list of articles in the body of the page includes a chunk of writing from the linked sites like this:

This is the dodgy shit. The link from someone else’s blog was the first I’d heard of it – I’ve not been contacted. The site doesn’t quite contravene copyright and I still haven’t figured out how to put my creative commons license onto my site (which tells people how they can use my content). So this site isn’t doing anything wrong, it’s just kind of muddying the water. Which is a bit dodgy in a small community.

For now I’m going to let it lie while I have a think. I’ve been too busy lately to really get onto my site (the styles are shit, I don’t have my blogroll up and it’s not really a fun place to read my massive big posts :( ), so it’s just item number eleventy on a list of twelveteen Things To Do.

fitness: stretching and social dancing

This is the week I record all my incidental exercise.

3xstretches
duration: 1.00, effort 2/5
My usual lot of stretches take 20mins all up, and I do them three times a day without fail. They include: four foot exercises (1×12 of each); 1 hamstring stretch (2×12); 2 knee exercises (2×12 and 1min hold); 2 ITB exercises (1×12 of each); 1x core thing (1×12).
I’m thinking of adding another core strengthener and a psoas stretcher.

social dancing
duration: 1.00, effort 3/5 feeling: good
I danced a bit and then I didn’t dance any more because I lacked inspiration. My improving fitness is making dancing a lot more fun and a lot less work, which is really nice. I have more control over my body, which is very satisfying.