Like most people, I love getting praise for my dancing or writing. I'm nearing the end of Toasted Cheese's Engage With the Snark workshop, and as the number of participants has dwindled down, the critiques have been a little bit meatier, and I've been getting a lot of good comments about my writing.
The last piece that I posted actually had quite a few comments about my ability to weave in subtle nuances and show a lot of about a character and setting without shoving it in everyone's face. This was pleasing to hear, since I didn't know I actually had this talent, but what will inevitably happen is that I will try to replicate this in my next assignment and fail miserably.
The same thing happens in my dance class. I'm going along, doing my drills, and the instructor will wander over and tell me that my timing is really great today, or my shimmies are really sharp, and then the next time we do a casual turn, I'm off count with sloppy hip work.
Though I'm not a student of meditation, I've done a little research here and there. I've found a basic principles shared by most how-tos for beginning meditation: mindfulness, or being in the moment.
I've tried to apply this to my dancing and writing. When someone compliments either, I always try harder to replicate what I did before, but then I think too much and go overboard. What I've found that works to prevent this is mindfulness. Rather than try to concentrate solely on what my feet and body are doing when I dance, I just feel the moves. Or, if I'm writing, I just concentrate on filling the page (much like Julia Cameron's Morning Pages from The Artist's Way). Once I get my first draft done, I can go back and clean it up. What's important is that the basic structure, where whatever talent I possess expresses itself, remains.
One of the best ways I've seen to describe is to pretend that my brain is located somewhere near my chest or my stomach. This seems to pull me into the moment, rather than watching myself in the mirror or trying to keep count, or thinking about the best way to describe a character to my audience.
With dancing, this only carries me so far. Writing alone in a room I don't have to worry about how I look, but when it comes to dancing, I eventually need to develop a style--or at least look like I'm enjoying myself. By the time I begin performing this summer, though, I hope to have developed my mindfulness to the point where I can smile at my audience and dance without worrying about what count I'm on.
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