random thoughts – Day 2,387 (Tuesday) – dancing double header

Tuesday dance bag.

Tuesday is dance day. For a few years, there was belly dance on Tuesday nights in Hudson. This past summer, when belly dance class was on holiday, there was Denishawn in Fitchburg on Tuesdays in the late afternoon, which has been running for many years without me due to the inconvenience of a job that prevented attending an afternoon class, and then the conflict with the timing of belly dance class.

After a couple months of Tuesday afternoon dancing, beginning three weeks ago, belly dance resumed and the time space continuum caused the two dance forms to overlap. The distance between Fitchburg and Marlboro prevented attending both without missing a chunk of one, the other, or both.

As of this week, the Fitchburg dance group (two hours long) starts earlier, leaving me just enough time to get to the Marlboro class (one hour long), barring traffic jams, accidents, etc. And so it was done. The dance bag was packed with suede-soled ballet shoes and volleyball knee pads for the floor work, plus belly dance coin belts, a pouch with zills, and the light rubber soled shoes I wear for belly dance. That worked out, because the floor in Fitchburg was so slippery today I ended up wearing the rubber soled shoes to avoid wiping out and breaking something. As belly dance progresses, there will be veils and skirts needed, increasing the wardrobe packing.

The biggest impediment to connecting the two dance classes, roughly one hour’s drive apart, lies in leaving Fitchburg. Route 2 is across town from the dance site, with traffic lights and heavy volume in the way. With a lifetime connection to Fitchburg, I had anticipated this, so it wasn’t a surprise, just mildly annoying.

Another impediment in the journey is the inconsistent volume of the navigation on the phone. It might be the phone, it might be the app, I don’t know. What I do know is if I turn down the volume while playing chess on Duolingo, when it is turned back up for Waze, most of the time the navigation is at whisper level, at best. This leaves me on high alert the entire drive, radio silenced, ears staining to hear the traffic alerts and navigation, which can change based on traffic conditions.

Despite the navigation challenge, the driving was tolerable and both dance session were great. In the first dance group, we ran through all the warmups, stretching, and center technique, followed by the repertoire of dances. In the belly dance group we did an warmup and some hip technique exercises, followed by working on choreography. We finished up with arm technique exercises and a touch of improvisational movement. I almost wish every day was a double header dance class day, just without  the driving part. At least the scenery was pretty, with the leaves turning red, orange, and yellow along much of the routes.