It’s Saturday morning. Instead of resting until the afternoon, I went to do my contemporary dance class at 9 am. I am glad that I did not miss the class (I was afraid that I would sleep in). I am also glad that it does make my start of the weekend more meaningful by starting it with a physical activity. My goal, though, is to finish the introduction class this term and move to the improver level class on Thursdays. At the same time, it may be the case that I would find repeating another round of the introduction class beneficial at the end of this term. There is nothing to rush.

Unlike ballet class where I am more familiar with the routine (barre then centre), contemporary dance class has a different format. We started from some warm-up to some floor, then we did some improvisions and other movements. I am still getting used to the format, and I hope that it will become natural to me with time. As I was a little bit sleepy, I was also checking the time throughout the class. The 1.5 hours feel so long. It feels long not because I don’t like what I was doing, but it feels long because there were many movements and challenges for me. It made me realise that having good cardio and strong muscle will benefit my learning (I don’t have them right now). The live music of the class was great though. I realise that I can’t do any dance class without the live music at this point of my life…

One thing that the teacher emphasised is that the most important thing that we got from our class is learning about our body and apply our learning to our life. I did learn a lot today. I can see how ballet training (which is the only physical activity I did previously) has impacted the way that I approach dance. I can also see that my mind can follow the movements from the teacher. He provides both demonstration and explanations. I find it useful. I don’t like vagueness and ambiguity in a dance class…

Another thing is the analogy that he uses between contemporary dance and recipe book. This analogy is quite inspiring. No wonder I like instructions, recipe and other explanations over purely following the movements and seeing how far I can go. I don’t think I can go too far without knowing some parts of it. My intuition will become stronger when I am familiar and confident with things in cooking, dancing or statistics…

Finally, he emphasised the alignment between backhead, pelvis and back feet. I think this is something that I will keep in mind in my daily life. They are usually quite separate in my life, but I want them to go together…

I felt so tired after this first class. I already feel the sore and walk really slowly. I hope that it will get better next time!