A Cozy and Slightly Meta Conversation

Hello and welcome back to Embracing a Life of Dance. A podcast all about a dance journey, it challenges me face and I'll grow it along the way. All the while hopefully sharing some unique experiences and inspiring you the list now to take that next step and as I like to say embrace everything that dance has to offer on a deeper level. Today's gonna be a bit of a change of pace let's say. It's just me I'm in the studio and I guess I'm here to have a cozy conversation and discuss I guess this podcast firstly like this is gonna be a little metal this is gonna be why this is a thing I'm gonna talk about how the podcast got started why I'm still doing it and I want it I guess give you a little heads up of what's the come because I know I am like a I know I'm rambling right now and I ran very often when I'm answering questions and talking to my guests on the podcast but I'm trying to be better and better at organizing more of myself and what I'm talking about on the podcast because that is my goal and that is the structure that I want to share. Everyone that comes on always has a bit of a unique experience to share and I want to explore lots and lots of different things and give you an experience of everything there is to try everything there is to see and try to motivate you and myself I guess yes this is this is very much like a thing I'm doing for myself to keep trying I don't know it's a it's a it's a way of keeping myself accountable on my dance journey to improve the humble of where I'm at and I guess you know just keep learning more because it's not just the guests that I have on but like there is so much more out there that we have yet to discover and I often and remind that we've barely scratched the surface so this is hopefully a way of taking you alongside with me on a deeper journey of where we can go and what more there is to see because it can often seem pretty daunting trying to figure out what direction you're heading in or what more there is to see so yeah just take the plunge with me I guess they tuned you know I started dancing in maybe well late 2019 I think so I got a few months in before COVID hit and before that I'd never done partner dancing played plenty of instruments did it Punjabi dancing so I've done punk and stuff but yeah there's there's a lot to overcome when it comes to partner dancing there's a lot to overcome when you take structured classes but I can't say I've ever hated or even remotely just regretted a second of this because it's all been incredibly rewarding and I even just get rewarded seeing my friends and seeing the people who start along with me or people who I'm teaching take those steps and discover how fantastic it is to take this step you know like this it feels amazing like needless to say it feels amazing to discover new things for myself and just as equally rewarding to see other people take those steps and go oh I just did this this is so cool and then they fall more and more in love with dancing and you get to witness that journey people are taking so yeah there's so many things to pick up and discover and see and witness and yeah I guess it's nice to be able to share it the podcast wasn't really it was not a structured idea to start off with actually I'm at a point just I guess a little hard to hard I'm at a point where I'm exploring multiple different avenues of dancing it's already hard enough being a salsa dancer and trying to be a bichata dancer and then you know we sometimes dabble in other dance styles and then there's teaching competing learning careers focusing on your own training I've grown a social it's like there's so much to do and I guess I've been a little swamped with all of it and I guess that's how this started because I'm having more and more conversations about these little things and what people have experienced and trying to catch all those bits and pieces and far from anything that I would share because look I'm pretty chatty and I'm pretty open-minded and I guess I'm open to just sharing and talking about all this stuff but far from just having a conversation to myself and just sharing these thoughts one of my big things was I want to bring more experienced people on people who are not just wise or inexperienced but like people who have a very different mentality a very different set of skills and I want to take you guys the audience along on that journey with me because I'm learning more and more every time I have people on and hopefully you will too like every single guest that I've had on so far has taught me new things about themselves and about the dance world and the people I have on are just going to continue to teach me more and share everything that there is out there of course we're gonna barely scratch the surface because it's immense how much there is to do here and how much there is to see and learn but yeah it'll be a good way of sharing everything there is to see when I started dance like it wasn't even I looked back to when I started and go that kid did not know anything about what he was getting into or what it's like or you didn't even to a degree I didn't even know what it was to like passionately know what you want and have a hobby or have a thing that you just know is like this is it so dance is kind of taken by storm of self discovery and just like obsession in a way healthy obsession I'd say most of the time but it's been good and well yeah I guess so much to do there's so much to learn but yeah all right let's get to the point because I want to share there's a lot coming and I don't even have all my guest lined up some of these things that I want to talk about I just potential topic ideas that are coming to my head that I think would be unique and interesting to share and definitely have there are guests and people I can find who'd be a lot better at sharing this kind of stuff and telling you guys about this stuff and telling teaching me about this stuff so I'm going to be able to let start running you through right so one of the things that I find is really being great about dancing is it's a to some people it's a it's a therapy to cut themselves loose and let their bodies move and live and just take a break from things so I would love to I'm I'm planning and I would love to get on board with someone to talk more about the psychology behind it to talk more about the experiences we have and then how we address it and I've kind of to be honest I've I've started addressing that a little bit not just in my personal life but we on the podcast we had Jojo on episode two so if you haven't checked it out check all these episodes out there super interesting self-saccharium the self-plug but yeah we had Jojo and to talk about you know being kinder to ourselves and our psychology and our the mental states of what we struggle with and I guess the core message was to be kind to ourselves because we're all going through things at different paces and things are hard and easy for some people and I also had Marie-Ca on pretty recently on the last episode and we also talked about our mental states and ours you know our personal needs and addressing all of that stuff and I guess learning to grow and giving ourselves a chance to do that and not being so hard set on the way things are and what your limitations are there so much more to do so lots to talk about lots to share about that regard and you know on a different but similar level I guess I also want to cover things like you know on the physical side I guess what I'm trying to say is on the physical side we have our health and our fitness and as a dancer inevitably if you not careful when you don't take care of yourself you're gonna be prone to injuries it's it's very rare that you find someone who's you know plates bored or an athlete who hasn't come close to an injury or hasn't risked a major injury so I love to talk about injury prevention things we can take on board to take care of our bodies really of course dance is a great way of improving your mental state and it's a great way of feeling better by yourself and just feeling better on a daily basis but you know it's fitness and depending on how you handle it of how you take care of your body it can be dangerous I think we've all experienced fatigue we've all experienced pushing our bodies to our limits and dance is not different to other sports in that regard you know you're moving your body you're spinning you're turning you can trip over like on a super simple level like you know you can trip over you can hurt your ankles for follows you know you've got head rolls and you've got to watch out for your neck and making sure you stretch out so I guess one of the big things is I want to you know I want to learn more about that and I want to share more about how we can be safer and kinder to our bodies because you're going to be pushing it and it's not just about stretching right it's about how you kind of de-stress afterwards it's about the importance of proper technique and kind of watching and paying close attention to your body and what's working and what's not working it's also about how we can train outside of dancing to improve our dancing so one of the things I'm pretty keen on talking about with someone is I guess physical fitness and strength training and the role of those kind of exercises playing into supporting our dance abilities right you know like considering how we move our bodies our legs need to be strengthened to support that there's a lot of muscle groups that would need to be trained and and strengthen to support that kind of body movement. You know, like the way you move your body and involving all of those muscle groups requires them to be trained. And so I wanna talk about how we can, what things we should focus on and what things are not as important or what things might be overworked, things you could be working too much on that might be making things difficult. Like, I don't wanna crudely just state something and just kinda go with it, but you know, back muscles are important. Like muscles are important. We use our hips a lot. So opening them up, loosening up our hips, getting the right stretches. What is the right stretches? Is always a big thing. You know, like getting the right stretches in is super important. You know, stretching before and after. How many people actually take their time to stretch before their dance classes or before their practice? And even less how many people would stretch afterwards to unwind, you know, it's more common that people will go to like a gym and before they lift weights, they will stretch and warm themselves up and then do the gym exercises and then stretch afterwards. But you rarely, well, in a general sense, you rarely see it happening on the dancing. You'll just rock up, you might kinda like move your body a little bit and then just dance and then leave. So you're not taking care of it in that regards. And that's super important. And I think a lot of us need a reminder and a better understanding, I guess, of the importance that plays in, right? BS, away from fitness and mental and health. Other fun things is like, I wanna talk about different dance styles. I wanna talk about salsa and what really make salsa salsa and why we fucking love it so much. I wanna talk about Vachada and you can hear my energy drop a little bit, but it's not drop-fully because I still fucking love Vachada and the differences and look, in between each there's different styles. I'm learning I've just recently, over the last half a year, even just thought about like, hey, look, there's traditional Vachada, Dominican Vachada, sensual Vachada. We've got so many different styles of salsa. You know, if you're with me, the salsa foundation and a lot of what I see is on one L.A. style salsa, but that doesn't mean that's the extent of the world is so much out there to see. And very often, meet my friends, we'll see something different and it's like, that's salsa, right? But what is that? So I wanna get into that. I wanna share those different styles and then I wanna branch out from that, you know? Like, I'm not recommending anyone to break away from salsa and Vachada's stay, but if you like me, Variety is a spice of life, right? I love to mix it up and try a little, try a lot of other things. I wanna learn about body movement. I wanna gain confidence. So maybe, you know, maybe Afro and exploring some of that is a way to do it. I'd love to share about how different styles interplay with salsa in Vachada, especially hip hop. Like, you can always kind of see a ballet dancer or a hip hop dancer in someone's style. So I'd love to kind of talk about more about, I'd have to kind of talk more about how they play into each other especially because I do believe, like, I'm not a professional, I'm not the highest order or person to make a statement on this, but I think I'm pretty confident, I can say I've seen people who have those backgrounds of other dance forms that come into salsa dancing, for example. Like, you'll see those styles start popping in. And it's just the taste of everyone's individuality, you know? So I think it's a really interesting conversation you have of what is out there and how that can benefit or play into finding your own style because everyone has their own style. Like, we're all learning from each other and we're all picking up little bits and pieces, but at the core of it, you have your individual taste and your individuality that will start to shine through and that's the beauty of dance. Like, yeah, there's so much out there that we can learn from. Oh, another thing is where we can dance and what kind of big dance events there are, you know? Like, if all I heard of festivals, I've, extremely, I'd love to talk to, I'd love to bring some people on to share about those experiences and tell you about why they're so great. As of this moment, I can say, I'm pretty inexperienced, haven't been to festivals or congresses, I haven't done any competitions, but I want to learn more about it and I think looking at them, they seem like such a fun time and such a strong experience of how much more there is out there. So I want to share that with people. So we'll hopefully have an episode where we talk about festivals and congresses, maybe talk about the competitions that happen there and like the choreographed dances that people learn over a weekend of just dancing. So definitely look forward to that. We'll really get into what's so great about them and what the experience is like. And I guess one of the big things, other last big things I have lined up is artists. I want to talk to musicians like, before you, before you get into me of like, "Hum and we're dancers, why would you bring on a musician?" Let me, let me give you a chance, give me a chance. I think if you've been to night cat, you've experienced, or if you've been to places like night cat, where, sorry, for night cat, for context to anyone, it's just that it's a venue in Melbourne where on Sunday nights, a live salsa band comes in place for the night. I haven't really experienced live music elsewhere, not saying that it's not available. That's just my experience of it. And I just enjoyed the shit out of it, even though the music was a bit too fast for my preferences. But yeah, I think it's a fantastic experience of live music and how that can play into a dancer. And this is back and forth that can kind of happen and I love to see the, I love to see the world. I love to see my favorite song sometimes be played by bands and to hear them take their own take of it. But yeah, I want to bring on, especially like, you know, like a salsa band, I want to bring on some musicians. And I think it's a really interesting conversation to have about how they've seen things change over the years. I want to get into their heads of how they, what they like about playing salsa to live dancers. You know, like it's one thing to be the dancer on the dance floor dancing with a live band. It's the other side of it where you're a musician playing a band and you have people dancing to your music. And responding to the way you play your music and the things that you do and they're kind of responding live to it. So as a musician as well, I guess that's the big part. I absolutely want to have people on someone on board to talk about what that experience is like, talk about how the dancers influence the music and how the music influences the dancers back and forth. Like, I think it's ever involving, like ever evolving. There's always things being changed and new stuff popping up. And, you know, the dance is always evolving as well. Like the moves that I see these days were probably pretty different to the most frequently used moves years back. So I can't really say it's stationary. You know, there's things are always being developed. And the music has to, in my opinion, the music has to change and develop alongside with it or sometimes drive that change. So we'll be a fascinating conversation, I hope. And yeah, that kind of just sums me up. That's where I'm at, you know, big plans for future podcasts. Absolutely loving the state of where I'm at right now. And there's a lot happening in life, you know? There's a lot going on. There's a shed ton going on in terms of what we're all doing and what we're experiencing and how things are changing on a monthly basis of taking new experiences on board and changing our style and training and experience, like learning new things. So yeah, change is pretty much inevitable. And sometimes things don't go to plan. For example, I'm having a podcast episode by myself. I'm just kind of, yeah, this has been weird. This has just been a completely impromptu, well, I say impromptu, I've got a piece of paper in front of me that you might have heard with some notes on it or things I wanted to cover. But yeah, it's been a pretty relatively impromptu conversation just because, you know, this podcast means a lot to me. And I feel very grateful for the opportunity I've had on board with people supporting this and where it's going. So stay tuned. I hope you're not too disappointed of just hearing my voice in my nonsense. I think things only improve. And I'm still working on being a host. All right, nonsense aside. Yeah, I'm really grateful for anyone that's been listening. Anyone who's come and said, "Devilist" and anyone who's giving me some feedback and shared their thoughts, I appreciate it. It's so damn much and it just makes my day. So if you're still listening, if you've listened to any previous podcasts or if you've any, if you're gonna listen to future ones, just know I love you guys so much. And I will hopefully see you on the dance floor because that is what it's about. It's where my life's at. So come join me. I don't really know how to end a podcast alone. But yeah, it's every two weeks. So if this was a little chill, hopefully in two weeks time we'll have something interesting and more structured for you. So stay tuned. Thank you.