Thursday, December 15, 2011

blues practice challenge

So, I am so in love with dancing, especially blues, right about now.

But there's not a ton of blues dancing in my home scene.  Related to this, I am pretty stinkin' excited that a friend of mine who I love dancing with has agreed to make a short trip down to visit in January (when neither of us are traveling much) to work on some blues stuff with me.  I would be excited to work with him anyway, but I'm especially excited because, due to the lack of blues around here, I don't get to practice as much as I'd like.

I expressed this sentiment to him this morning on fb chat, and he totally called my shit.



He challenged me to practice my solo blues to 3 songs a day, every day until we meet again.  Oh snap.  He's totally right, of course.  While I may not be able to practice certain specific things without a partner, there is so much I could be doing to work on my movement by practicing solo movement.

And having a literal schedule/challenge would be helpful to me, I think.  I have not been good at all at resolving to practice in the evenings when have a lot of stuff and things going on and am already tired, so I decided that in the morning, right before I go to work, might be my better practice time.

So after signing off of chat, I clicked on Pandora, starting with Big Mama Thorton (no song specified), and let it play me three songs, since I don't have a large collection of blues music.  I have a hardwood floor in my living room, and I danced in my socks.  3 songs took about 10 minutes.

Here are the songs I got:
Big Mama Thorton- Your love is where...
Otis Spann- Natural Days.
BB King- You done lost your good thing now

I actually filmed the latter two songs, for my personal review, and it's amazing how much better even the third song is than the second.   If I actually mange to do this with a degree of consistency (say, at least three times a week or more) for the next two months, if I am very brave, perhaps I will post a "before" and "after."

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