CONFINED CREATIVITY - From Your Home Into Mine
One of my best friends just lost access again to her dojo, right when she'd really gotten back into the flow. Naturally, she can do the online lessons they have available but her house isn't big enough to not be banging furniture with shins all the time.
That got me thinking about the times I've tried to film instructional material in the past. I created my old dance drills in that teensy studio apartment in Florence, CO above the tattoo and new agey shop where I crammed in the first class I taught after my car wreck.
I loved that apartment. It was attached to a rooftop garden area where my landlords had planted trees and flowers in pots and big utility buckets. We had a hafla out there one night in the summer. That building was haunted, which never bothered me, because neither did the ghosts.
Right there between the kitchen counter and my bed is where I created those drills as my own physical therapy. When I moved to Pueblo into the also teensy two-bedroom, Victorian style house my boyfriend owned...all my dances from 2003 - 2009 were created between the dining room table and the bathroom door. Sometimes I had to spill out into the passageway through the dividing wall between the dining and living rooms.
I could never do kata full-out unless I was in the dojo. I had to get really good at confining them to the size of one of those puzzle-piece mats. It was mostly a memory-building exercise. (We all know how badly I need that.)
So when I've had opportunities to work with videographers who wanted to produce my dance instruction, but unfortunately got all happy with themselves about bigger spaces and more production value and--
NO.
That's one of the things that has stopped me ever filming those drills. Because I created them when I had no big space to work with, and often neither do my students when they're at home, training via video. That's why I confine my stuff to that one rug, even though I do have more space. I always wanted it to feel like we were right here, cozy in my home.
And now we are.
CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE:
--UP NEXT: OCEAN GIPSY - The Underwater Realm that is TBI...and the tale of why I disabled my Facebook account.
--OR if you want to know more about my dancing adventures, that starts here.
--OR you can visit the online school