baobab
Forum Replies Created
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Another Canadian here 🙂
I’m legally blind – very nearsighted, light sensitive, nystagmus, and cataracts have more recently joined the eye issues party. Depth perception isn’t as good as someone without my eye condition, but I do see out of both eyes well enough to navigate without a mobility cane and I expect my depth perception is better than only having one usable eye. My eye condition is not fully correctable with lenses and I dance without glasses on. I’ve been poling for over 3 years now.
Taking photos or video is definitely way more helpful when I’m trying to learn something outside of a studio.
And I’d say that I rely a lot on body awareness. Think about the strategies that you use to navigate in everyday life – your home, work, familiar places you visit, the same strategies would apply.
Do you have any experience with dance or other forms of movement? Exploring movement in other areas can make working with pole less foreign. For example, if you’ve done any partner dancing, the spatial awareness involved there with a partner can be transferred to pole. You could even just play with floorwork or freestyle dancing just to get a sense of how you move and where you are in space. It all helps. If you don’t have a studio available to you so that an experienced teacher can check your technique, then I think it’s important to develop confidence working with and navigating around your pole. Walking around it. Grabbing it behind your back. Doing pirouettes with your eyes closed. And eventually when you’re more experienced, doing the aerial stuff without relying on your eyes. Just play.
Walk through moves that are unfamiliar slowly, or break it down into parts or progressions that you can build on. Veena does a good job of that in her lessons.
I don’t post much here or on social media either. But I thought it was important to reach out and let you know that pole is totally doable for those with visual impairments.
And if you’re ever in Toronto, I’ll take you to a local studio to play.
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I also recommend Pole Inc! Agree with everything already stated. From Pape Subway station you can take the Pape bus right to the door of the studio.
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This thread made me smile! Since I’ll be a year older tomorrow, I figured I had dig for something green and post a pic too.
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Regarding ordering Pleasers and an outfit – Contact the owner of RockNPole in Barrie, Ontario. I had a chat with her during the Canadian Pole Expo last fall – she sells Sweet Vixen and is a Pleaser distributor, so you could talk to her about getting whatever you’re interested in, and she can ship it out to you.
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Another Canadian option for fun pole shorts. She just recently moved to Canada from Hawaii – I had been eying her stuff for a while, but didn’t want to pay for shipping from Hawaii. And now I don’t have to – Yay!
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I got them directly from the Tezoro Productions web site. I’m in Canada, so it made more sense for me to buy it directly while they had that free shipping promotion rather than look for it on Amazon.com.
There are 2 volumes which you can buy individually at the links in my original post. If you want to buy them together it’s a few bucks cheaper in their Special Collections section.
Here’s the link to the set on the Tezoro web site.
http://www.tezoroproductions.com/product-special-collections-special-collections-1045-82-1045.html
They also sell the videos as downloads on a separate web site, but I opted for the DVDs.
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Just got the DVDs in the mail today and had a very quick look, and as a source for some new ideas I’m happy with my purchase. It’ll keep me busy and challenged for a good while.
Definitely for intermediate / advanced dancers. Some moves require a decent amount of strength, and pace of the instruction is quick. You aren’t going to get slow, detailed breakdown as much as in Veena’s lessons, but there are pointers on positioning and safe execution of moves – and demonstrations of the movements several times at various angles. The clips on the web site are a pretty good example of what you’ll see on the DVD. Ballet/dance terminology (e.g. 2nd position, rond de jambe) is used, but I don’t think it’s an obstacle if you don’t know the terms. Two choreos are included on each DVD.
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You might also want to have a look at this Kickstarter for MyYogaPro, which is another set of online classes. I haven’t signed up for it myself, but I’ve been eyeing it because the Kickstarter has a reward level for a LIFETIME membership for $55.
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Webmaster, can you also send me info on how to buy additional time to extend an existing membership? Thanks!
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The Canadian Pole Expo was the first weekend in October, a couple of weeks ago. A lot of fun and great performances during the competition shows – you can see a bunch of them here. Look for the Canadian Pole Fitness Association on Facebook so you can find out about anything else next year – their web site also has some events listed.
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAOXz3nJNKGP9cUB94PC0GQ
And there's a Vertical Love showcase and competition next year. April 4-5, 2014 for performances, June 13-14 for competition. I think they just did a call for submissions starting Nov 1. I'd love to attend as a spectator, but if there's no easy way to get there by public transit (I have a disability that prevents me from driving) and the last time they had a showcase there were no carpool or bus arrangements from Toronto (grumble grumble).
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And just to clarify, that Facebook pic is not me. I'm definitely not that talented at this point.
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It's still there – I just got it a couple of weeks ago and it's quite handy.
Here's a link to it.
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dance-journal/id417343607?mt=8
Aerial Amy blogged about it several years ago.
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There are some suggestions I posted in this thread which you might find useful.
https://www.studioveena.com/forums/view/Dance_lessons_outside_of_pole_20130618090225
Personally, I'm not a fan of stringing together combos randomly if you are dancing to music (for practice and muscle memory it's fun). The result looks "pasted" together, because it is pasted together. I think it's more effective to have the combos as building blocks, but always use the music as your inspiration and starting point. Musicality, presence, and connection with the audience distinguishes someone who just has strong technique from someone who makes it look like their body is channeling the music and the feelings in it.
In addition to the previous suggestions about music, imagery helps too. For example, climbing or doing something like a fan kick as music rises or downward motion as music becomes quieter or descends in pitch. Depending on the texture and instrumentation of the music, you can think about how different sounds make you feel or if a particular part of your body responds to it more than others – drum accents typically go with sharp and sudden moves, whereas something like a flute solo might feel lighter and more flowing. Lyrics, of course, can also suggest movement.
Ya know, I'm starting to think that the choreo topic might be an interesting area for Veena to explore in a video series. In the bellydance world, Nadira Jamal put together a series of DVDs focusing in improvisation in particular, but a lot of the advice she provides applies to pre-planned choreography as well. But the series is very much bellydance focused and has bellydance examples and exercises – I see an opportunity for someone to do something similar with choreo. A project that would be fun to work on, but which I don't have time for myself.
Info about the series is here for anyone vaguely interested – I have no affiliation with Nadira, just throwing an idea out there.
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LolaSlaytor – So based on your goals, I've got some other suggestions.
Learning other dance styles will definitely help you to extend your movement repertoire, but it doesn't necessarily make you better at choreography. It's a common problem in many dance styles – you have a back of tricks but don't necessarily know how to string them together. Or you can string them together but the moves look slapped together rather than nicely transitioned and matched with the music.
I don't claim to be a choreo expert, but there are a number of approaches to improving choreo with your existing move repertoire that I am aware of, including:
1. Watching and practicing combinations of moves that have transitions in them (like the Routines section in Veena's lessons) – and then from there playing with variations or challenging yourself to find different ways to get in and out of the combos. When you get "stuck" freestyling, for example this allows you to pull out a combo your body has the muscle memory for.
2. Playing with paths to improve the flow of a sequence of moves. Decide on a start and end position, and think about ways to get from A to B that flow well together.
3. Playing with repetition (particularly in relation to the music) as well as contrasts (high/low, fast/slow, sharp/smooth, big/small). For example, I can picture a downwards body wave standing next to the pole that starts small and slow, and then a larger one that propels the outer leg forward and back, and transitions into backward spin.
Like you, I'm not into the exotic dance style. Some moves from pole classes can be adapted though so that they are less overtly "sexy". Sometimes it's as simple as bringing the legs together for moves like hip rolls, or changing the angle of your body with respect to the audience, or adapting hand positions – and getting a sense of what changes to make would likely come from having other dance experience.
Hope that helps!
