Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

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  • Learning Bloom

    Day 7 of 52 dance challenge

    The first two songs in Nia’s Bloom routine, Harper Rey’s “Everchanging Outcomes” and Johannes Bornlöf’s “Beauty Lives in Me”, have easily identifiable cues to help me know when the steps and moves are changing. I’ve committed to learning this hourlong routine, and my strategy is to practice two songs and their moves every day, adding two new ones each day until I’ve got them all. I ran through these two songs and the moves twice today, and then jumped over to Express, danced by Debbie Rosas, for a fuller workout.

    I’d love to hear how other Nia dancers commit a routine to memory. All suggestions welcome.

    I’m so ready to get back to dancing in the studio with others!

  • Beginner’s mind

    Debbie-Lee, me and Kellie Chambers at my white belt awards ceremony. Photo by Nanou

    Day 6 of 52 dance challenge

    So, staggering out of bed at 6:30 a.m. to dance Nia before getting ready for camping with friends.

    I pulled up an online NIA routine focused on reviewing the 52 moves. I am no stranger to these moves. I’ve been engaged in this practice for five years. I earned my white belt training with the incomparable Debbie-Lee van Ginkel and Kellie Chambers.

    But sometimes it’s good to go back to beginner’s mind. Two things that stood out: I’d forgotten how important it is when throwing cross-body punches to keep a stable base and not torque the knees. And I hadn’t ever really understood that on downward blocks, the block stops in front of the groin.

  • A blossoming idea

    Day 5 of 52 Nia challenge

    You just never know with Nia. Today, I thought I’d grab 30 minutes of dance using the video routines available at Nia on Demand, since, as far as I know there aren’t any live classes in my area on Saturday.

    I queued up Bloom because I’ve danced it several times, and it has two of my favorite songs.

    It was my first time dancing Bloom guided by trainer Christina Mae Wolf. Honestly, it was so good, I couldn’t stop at 30 minutes and I did the whole thing.

    Here are my three takeaways from dancing this morning with my computer:

    • Nia routines aren’t just dances strung together, they’re stories and the Bloom story is beautiful. It’s my body living the story as I dance it and hear it.
    • Nia lets all my selves come out to play. Bloom has me dancing to Katharine Appleton’s “Rebel Soul” (“I can be good if I wanna, I just don’t wanna”) and Velvet Moon’s “Live Your Life” (“Go on now, be good, be fine”). The dance steps move through the sensuous to the dainty to the powerful.
    • The better I know the routine, the more I can let go of watching the instructor to being in my own body and dancing my dance. That last realization has given me another goal in my 52 days of dancing challenge. I will take time to learn Bloom so that I can dance it myself.