Two Wrongies Can Make A Right

Last night I started a Contemporary Dance course run by Evolution Arts. The course is led by dance duo Avis Cockbill and Janine Fletcher aka The Two Wrongies - the double act who dare to do the dirty! I've just checked out their website and there are some hilarious videos of them in action.

Avis was doing it alone last night, as Janine was involved in some sort of contemporary dance/parcour performance - ooh, hark at her! I have to say that Avis did very well on her own, injecting a great deal of humour into the class and making me feel pretty relaxed really - no mean feat considering the rather intimidating dance studio we were in, complete with mirrored wall at one end. She started off the class with some simple warm ups and stretching exercises, but in true dance fashion these were all performed rythmically to music. We learnt a whole sequence of standing and lying warm ups, which we will apparently perform at the beginning of each class and which will be built upon as the weeks progress. In fact I already felt like I was dancing.

Halfway through the rather hurried hour we moved on to the actual dance part itself and managed to learn a little choreographed sequence consisting mainly of jumps and hops with a rather awkward looking (well in my case anyway) floor sequence thrown in at the end. Two of the moves were affectionately nicknamed "The Dick Van Dyke" (a little side kick in the air) and "The Brucie" (a standing stance with one fist forward and one back). So when we performed the dance to music with Avis calling out the moves, it went something like this: "Right, left, right, Dick. Left, right, left, Dick. Brucie. Brucie. Brucie Brucie Brucie". Hilarious!

And that's just what you need on an autumnal Wednesday night - a pair of legwarmers, some funky music and a room full of people doing Bruce Forsyth impressions. Good game, good game!

Sorting My Life Out

I've just spent the weekend on a Life Coaching workshop at Evolution in Brighton. It was a very interesting weekend that allowed me to take a closer look at myself and to re-evaluate my life and the direction it seems to be moving in. There were only 4 of us in the group (although there are usually 6-8 participants) who happened to be all female, so there was a very open, supportive atmosphere over the weekend - not that men aren't open or supportive, you understand, but I expect the energy would have been quite different if any had attended.

The workshop was a mixture of writing exercises, visual exercises, role play and meditation via individual, partner and group work so it was very varied and interesting. We also read some Angel Cards and Medicine Cards based on Native American wisdom - just for a bit of fun really, but I like stuff like that. At one point we had to think of a persona that embodies who we want to be or a type of personality that we can emanate to help us get through things in a different way. We had to walk like that person, then teach our partner how to walk like them too. I chose beautiful singer/songwriter Carrie Tree so I was floating around the room, very calmly and rhythmically, with confidence and grace, softly smiling with my head held high - aah!

Although much of the content and many of the exercises were very similar to what I'd been dealing with all through The Artist's Way, it was good to re-visit those issues and reaffirm where I'm at now. We also looked at some confidence boosting techniques and our coach, Christine Brown, recommended a book called Confidence Booster Workout by Martin Perry, which I intend to buy as it's full of interesting exercises and has lots of brightly coloured pages (that's the real reason)!

Chris also runs weekly courses, 1-to-1 sessions and a Saturday morning group in Life Coaching. See her website at Inner Balance or the Evolution website for more info.