Learning to dance can be a real negative. I don't mean all the little negatives, such as the blisters, periodic episodes of ' Swarovski blindness" (caused by trying to glue micro sized rhinestones to everything you own) or even the moment you realize that your last outfit cost more than your car. No, I am talking about the negative curves. The realization that learning to dance will consist of a journey along many negatively accelerated learning curves. This is the case with most motor skills. This means that at the beginning of the learning process you will see a large amount of improvement in your skill (but hey, we started with nothing so anything will look better at this point) and then suddenly things start to slow down a bit. This doesn't mean we aren't improving, the changes are just smaller. There are good and bad points to this. The good part about this type of curve is that in the begining, we are excited about new things like sudden changes in ability. It spurs us on to want more. This gives us the needed boost to continue forward. (Kind of like marriage - no one would really be that thrilled with the idea if it was introduced as a long and arduous journey towards self-discovery. It is the thrill of being in love that gets it started!) The less curvy " bad' part of this style of learning is that it is easy in the later stages to get discouraged. We can feel like we are slow or maybe we just aren't cut out for this. So how do we avoid this? How can we really assess our learning? With dance, the first thing we want to define is the difference between "performance" and "learning”. A performance is defined as an observable behavior, such as: a competition, recital, social dance, etc. A performance is temporary in nature and how you perform may not be due to practice and can be affected by performance variables like a crowded floor or audience. Learning, on the other hand, is relatively permanent and not affected by performance variables. We often infer improvement in learning from performance but it is important to note that is only correct if based on permanent improvements across multiple performances. For learning assessment, there are five tools we can use to help us determine our progress and provide that needed encouragement along our negative curve.

1. Improvement - does our performance of the skill show improvement over a period of time? Can we releve higher today than yesterday? Are we able to develope our leg to a higher point than before? Look for improvement in individual skill sets. As these improve, our overall movement coordination will become stronger.

2. Consistency - Has our performance of the skill become more consistent? Do we find our balance on one leg easily each time we look for it?

3. Stability - a system's stability is determined by how quickly it recovers from a perturbation. When you err in your dance, how fast can you recover?

4. Persistence - learned skills should be able to return to the surface in a relatively short amount of time even after taking a break from focus on that particular skill.

5. Adaptability - can we adapt the skill set to multiple environments, emotional and psychological states of mind and physical requirements?

Evaluating learning with these criteria help us to find the positive in the negative and hopefully we can continue to enjoy the curve in our road!

 

 

My goats provide me with endless entertainment but nothing beats watching the whole "goat dating' rituals in the barnyard. Whenever I hear people complaining about the challenges of dating I always think of my little goat family and chuckle of how “it could be so much worse" for us humans, but I am sure there are a few similarities.

I have 6 male goats: S’mores, Halo, Eddie, Shakes, Oreo and Bo. The first four all had their manhood taken from them at an early age. This makes them quite docile and less smelly. Oreo enjoyed the rites of being a male goat for about a year, siring several healthy kids, and then was retired from duty after a visit from the vet. (Although he did manage to slip in one crazy weekend through a fence with one of my does, prior to retirement, which ended up surprising me with a couple more kids one chilly November but that is another story) The last male is Bo. Bo is beautiful, in a smelly, masculine sort of way. Bo is short for "Bovine". He is all white and fluffy with a black head and black stockings along with a strong set of curved horns. The coloration reminded me of a cow so I thought Bovine was a fitting name. Bo had a couple challenges from the get go. He was born right after his sister, Alice, and I believe she was a space hog in-utero. Bo was born with really funky curved back legs. He couldn't stand the first week! I was so worried. He had these funny back legs and they don't make goat leg braces, and farmers give you crazy looks when you even talk about that idea. So we babied Bo and kept propping him up. Day after day and soon enough he figured out how to stand up and started doing all the normal goat things. He developed a "cowboy strut" His back legs bow out a bit so he looks like a cowboy walking into a bar after being on a horse a little too long. Things seemed to settle down a bit but then it came time to nip the whole puberty thing in the bud. Easy right? Of course not....Bo only had one testicle; at least that we could see. You don't want to miss one of those babies as male goats will pee on everything in sight while they remain. A form of territory marking which is common in many species and is fine, except when the territory is you or some innocent friend who comes over to "see the pretty goats" and leaves smelling like a barn. So we had to find the missing part... Exploratory surgery was required and bingo, the missing organ found and removed. Bo returned home and was fine; however, his behavior didn't settle down like the others. It seemed that all that hard work and perseverance he put into learning to walk was going to be carried forward into conquering the loss of his manhood. Bo just got more "bucky" and still is to this day. No kids have come forth from his loins but that doesn't stop him from chasing the ladies. This week has been tough. Two does are in heat and Bo is beside himself with concern that some other whether (neutered male goat) will cut in on his territory. He tries to keep his ladies together but when it is time to eat, they get separated and he gets so frantic trying to choose between sustenance and trying to keep an eye on the girls that it exhausts him. He is always trying to impress, with his smooth, goat moves such as: peeing on his face, making bizarre noises, hopping up and down and my favorite - sticking out his tongue! (For those of you that have experienced any of these behaviors in your personal dating lives, I am sooo sorry to hear that) It is quite the sight. Watching Bo reminds me of how what we think in our heads, about who we are; is a lot more important than what anyone else thinks, when it comes to getting things done. Bo thinks he is hot stuff and stands proudly in the pen, hair sticking up, chest puffed out, guarding his herd and it doesn't matter what I, or the vet, tells him, he is going to continue to persevere in his quest to get the job done until the "Bovines" come home.

 

That time of year has come again when every Sunday millions of Americans gather round their TV's to cheer on a bunch of men go to war over an egg shaped ball. Football season is here. Football held no interest for me until the last couple of years when I began to analyze the player’s coordination skills. My son will be shouting at the TV, “Run! Run! Come on..." and I'll be following that up with, “well, he won't make it. Look at how bad his hips are twisted. No wonder he can't run very well..." Needless to say my commentaries rarely go over well but by now my kids are starting to not only look at what happens on the field but how it happens and whose bodies are heading for injury soon. Our Sunday afternoon lessons on motor skills and physical fitness also turn into discussions on the ideas around team sports. Team sports are not something I grew up with. I was on a gymnastics team but even though you wanted your team to win; you really cared about your personal placements more. If they were good, then you did the best thing you could for your team. All that affected my ability to perform well was my training, my focus and my skill. Even the cheering of your teammates meant very little as concentration required that you ignore the noise around you, but there was still something that mattered a lot about being on a team. The reality is that everyone secretly wants to be on one. We want a team. Now a team can come in many forms and your colors can be everything from blaze orange to ballet pink. We hope that our families will be a great, first team experience but sometimes that doesn't happen and so we go looking for a new one to join. Some of us will be blessed to have a great family team and then go on to become part of many other successful teams in business and hobby. In fact, we really can't avoid being on a team. Even the rebellious high schooler, that pierces everything visible and decides to only eat soy, has chosen a team. Being part of a team brings clarity. (Except last year, for Minnesota, as we all seemed confused as to why Favre was still on the fieldJ) As humans we love to see things clearly. I don’t' know anyone who wakes up and says, " I really hope today can be more confusing. I 'm looking forward to developing that ulcer I've been working on a bit more." Being part of a team brings clarity to our place, our home base. There is no question to where we belong. It brings clarity to our actions. Our skills have direction. I know what I can do and have the motivation to do better, to improve my team. All of this was very apparent a couple weeks ago on the anniversary of 9/11. My kids and I spent the morning watching the entire memorial and archived video footage from that horrible day. Ten years ago, my son was a toddler and has no memory of the day. My daughter remembered everyone talking about "the towers" but wasn't really aware. Watching the second plane hit, the eventual collapse, seeing the people respond, hearing the accounts of those who survived - it was all tragic but during that time clarity came, teams were visible. People suddenly felt they knew where they were and used whatever skills they had to move forward. Listening to firemen remember those moments brings tears but there is also a sense of pride. Pride in one’s country and pride in one's teammates. This is why we watch football or hockey or any other team sport. It is a faint shadow of the clarity we had 10 years ago, a shadow of the clarity people had during Hurricane Katrina and something that gets at that inner most desire to know what team we are on’ why we are on it and what we should do. Having the answers to these questions brings purpose to our lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today was a beautiful day, meant to be enjoyed outside. I however spent most of it inside, actually a lot of it inside my car. School is in session for me and my daughter. We both love learning but the stuff that goes along with it can make you nuts. I have now driven up to Minneapolis twice for no point whatsoever. My first day was supposed to be a 2 hour lecture on motor control! Yay! I was so excited and then panicked as I realized that I was going to be a few minutes late thanks to I94 traffic. I ran to class got there just as she started roll call and then promptly ended the class after reviewing a total of 8 slides. Total time: 20 minutes. Total frustration: very high knowing I was now going to head back through all of that nasty traffic. Today was even better though. I made the drive for a lab. A lab which I discovered upon arrival is being taught by a kid I was in class with a year ago and who's idea of class was telling us he was going to be good friends with us and then making us play rock/paper/scissors until the grand champion was crowned (no awards were handed out; just pride of possessing the motor skills to play). Total class time: minutes. Total frustrations....don’t even get me started.

My daughter is in the same boat. Five days of public school and the only teacher really doing anything is in Geometry and even that took a couple days. She is at a point that she is realizing how much wasted time kids have in school and returning to being home and charting her own schedule is looking pretty good.

Teaching is hard but I'm a teacher too. Planning for class is just part of the job. I'm paying for both educations and to see time that is paid for being wasted - literally wasted at my school - we are actually ending the class, is disturbing and irritating as a consumer. For my daughter, the final day to drop is this week and she pointed out that it would be great if the teachers would start teaching so she could make a judgment call on things but right now it is just a competition of who hands out syllabi the best. The other element for her that I find bothersome is that each time I mention to others," my daughter is attending public school for the first time" , no one talks about what a great education she will get but simply say, " That's good. She will learn to deal with all the crap that high school has in it. “To me, this is a sad commentary on our education system.

I know my classes will get better. By the end the teachers will be wishing they had an extra day to do more. Too bad they wasted it now.

 

Mmmm. Grilled cheese. Better yet - grilled cheese with apples inside. Comfort food. Dinner at 10:30 pm. I need this today. It has kind of sucked. Not the sandwich - just the day. What makes it worse is that it sucked because I let myself get away from me; or maybe it is that I let myself get me...not sure; but either way, a small portion of comfort food is welcome.

This week has required a lot of adaptations. My daughter is attending public school for the first time, actually school in general for the first time. 6:30 am is early for dancers! We've home-schooled up to this point and it is odd not having her at home. As I was showering this morning, I realized I kind of feel like a huge load of responsibility has been pried out of my fingers but at the same time I feel like I have more to worry about. She is a smart kid though and it is fun hearing about her perceptions of each day. Another adaptation has been re-working the curriculum that I use for my son. He is still at home and we've added a few new subjects this year. My extended family is still working on a few problems that have surfaced this summer. The stress on them has been huge and it periodically flares in my system when I start thinking about being the eldest child and responsibility...you know the first born child thing. I've had a few new situations to handle with students - including a call from the middle of Wisconsin from an elderly Amish man who has back pain and wanted my help. I did my best on the phone but the frustration of not being able to do as much as I could in person always gets to me. Finally, I'm in the last week of a "Dancing with the Stars" thing in Rochester. I love my partner - he has been a hard worker but I've had to rein in my competitive nature a bit and remember it is just dancing (and as we both keep jokingly telling each other - "it is for the children" as if those words will remove all stress associated with the event) Overall I've kind of felt like I do when I am feeding a herd of hungry goats. My goats get really excited when they get sweet feed. It is like getting candy! I know they want it and they know I've got it in a bucket balanced precariously on top of my head (after which I usually realize there was a bunch of crap on the bottom of the bucket and regret that choice). I get in the pen and all of the sudden I can't walk straight. I've got S'Mores trying to get between my knees, Ebby jumping up on me like a dog, Eddie, the fat boy, almost knocking me over and Bo chasing everyone else in a tight circle around me. I just want to give them breakfast! Don't they get it??? So in what looks like a person running away from an alligator in a zig zag fashion, I move across the pen to the feed area and dump the feast into the trough. Periodically I end up getting frustrated and yelling a bit however at that point the goats just stop for a minute, look at me like" what is wrong with her?" and then immediately go back to their game. To my one neighbor, who sees me from a distance, I just look like I am standing in my backyard yelling with a bucket on my head.  That was today. I let too much happen, started to yell, and then realized that I was the idiot standing there with a bunch of crap in a bucket on my head. I owed a few apologies to the other goats in my life today  and am grateful that they just smiled and then went right on playing their games.

 

I love my students. I don't always love teaching. Not because of my students and not actually because I don't like to teach; but because there are days when I really just wish my students would like themselves as much as I do.

I had a chance to revisit a chapter from my youth recently; and I do mean an actual chapter, like from a book. It started with a visit to the floor. I was lying in my sunroom doing a wonderful static back and trying very hard to relax. I have difficulty in slowing down sometimes, and as my mind searched desperately for something to distract it, I looked to my right and noticed the bottom shelf of my bookcase. It is full of books on the body, kinesthetic sense, how to teach dance, how to learn dance and one book I had forgotten about: “How to Dance Forever" by Daniel Nagrin. This book was my dance Bible in high school. Itopens with this line, “To choose to be a dancer is a lovely act of defiance." As a quietly, defiant teenager, I loved that, more importantly though, this book talks about surviving, "Surviving what? “you might ask. Well there is the obvious; dancers are hard on their bodies. We spend every day pushing them to their limits, not unlike any other serious athlete. There can be broken bones, torn muscles, the usual blisters, scrapes and of course missing toe-nails. (I still remember, after one particularly brutal summer of pointe, losing both big toe-nails. They turned purple and then took their sweet time in falling off. I taped them for class and painted my other toe-nails pink. An elderly man in the elevator of Mayo once looked at my feet and asked me if that was a fad - toe nails of a different color.)

We also have to survive the possibility of "artist's poverty”. A dancer's paycheck is often not consistent, if it exists at all! This was a big concern for my parents, and honestly once I decided to dance and really found out what it was like, kind of annoying to me as well! I feel blessed that I've been able to do what I love but there are days when not being in charge of my own destiny seems appealing. Doctors have "Mother Mayo". Dancers have a fantasy man, made of wood, who cracks nuts for a living. (Yes - I know we are all really in charge of our own destinies but you get my point...now back to the book)

There are other things we have to survive: diet, cross training, loss of identity, etc; but the thing I like best about this book is that it talks about surviving ourselves. This brings me back to my original point about teaching. Nagrin talks about "noise" not noise from outside our bodies but inside, things that we say to ourselves. Sometimes we say them to justify why we are struggling with a certain step; sometimes we say them because we feel like we don't deserve to be dancing and sometimes we say them because we are scared that we might really be able to dance and that brings a whole new set of possibilities up that could be life changing. As a teacher my job is to be louder than the noise. This is hard. I have days where I feel like I've been shouting at a football game when I come home, knowing that I contributed to cheering but not sure that the player I was shouting at heard me. It is tricky. Especially since the really important stuff in dance is the quiet stuff, the simple but challenging movements. I think the biggest challenge that I face, and teachers in general, is that of teaching others to believe in themselves and how to turn off the noise!

If you are a student and reading this has started to create more noise in your head such as " oh no. Am I a problem student? Do I make my teacher crazy?" The answer is, of course, yes; but we all make our teachers crazy at some point. That is why we hired them in the first place, to deal with our craziness, quiet our noise and to share our thoughts, hopes and dreams with!

Why do we move the way we move? As a dancer this question has always fascinated me. As a student of Kinesiology this is a focal point of study. It always amazes me that people take their bodies for granted. The one thing that is always with you most often gets overlooked. I was discussing posture and muscle tone with a student the other day and asked if they had ever read the manual on their body. They had read the manuals for just about everything else they might use in life, but the body? It had gotten skipped. Anatomy and Physiology can seem daunting but the great thing about those areas of study is - YOU HAVE EXPERIENCE AND A FRAME OF REFERENCE! You own an actual body.

I spend a lot of time looking at people and how they move and trying to figure out what they spend their time doing. Unless we are conscious about controlling how our bodies are shaped, the environment will to a great extent, shape ones' body. The hunch and twist of a surgeon, the rolled shoulders and head drop of an engineer, the lopsided pelvis and raised shoulders of a mommy, even the twisted spine of a ballroom dancer - these are all created by what we do to survive in our environments. Another level of movement patterns are the ones we carry forward from our formative years with our parents. I am always amazed watching children and seeing what little quirks they've gotten from mom and dad; and regularly horrified when I realize I am doing something I used to see my parents doing! (Especially when it is something that I typically am trying to fix on them) We always talk about the emotional baggage we all carry forward from our parents, guess what? We have physical too! Some bags are good and some are well worn and need to be chucked. This brings me to my actual point... (By now you are all wondering when I will get around to butts)

This week has had some pretty serious family trauma in it for me. We all have these times in our families; things that you think may not work out and are a little scary. Sometimes they do and sometimes they just don't and sometimes you are left waiting a really long time for some sort of resolution. I was talking to one of my support system about it though and he brought up butts, horses butts. There is an urban legend that the modern day width of railroad tracks is based on the width of two horse’s butts and a chariot. (Something that carried forward from Roman times when roads had to be designed for the popular mode of transportation at that time. The Romans were really good and spreading fads around so I am sure a few roads across Europe probably did follow this thought process. (Rome spread a lot of stuff around the world including a base for our modern day democracy) I thought this was funny, partly because stress makes my sense of humor fairly easy to entertain, and partly because the idea that we would still be basing part of our modern day building concepts on a couple of horses butts to be quite funny. It got me thinking though; which was the friend's intention. Sometimes we carry silly thoughts in our heads about how we need or should re-act to certain situations based on how we were raised or our fears that we've carried forward, but do I really want to keep basing my decisions on a “butt”? An amazing thing about our lives, like our bodies, is when we consciously start asking " why do I do what I do?" and take the time to read an owner's manual or talk to an experienced user, we can start basing our thoughts, movements and words on something other than a couple of butts; and be free to build our tracks any size we like.

 

 

 

My house is quiet this weekend and I have been home for the most part. My family took off for a weekend of fishing and due to my dance company commitments on Sunday evening, I stayed behind. It has been so restful. I often don't realize how tired I've become until I suddenly take a break. On Saturday I had a full day of no required trips to anywhere - no Decorah, no Minneapolis, no Winona, no teaching, no rehearsals and no mommy taxi. It was quite the day. Don't get me wrong, I love all ( well at least most) of the things that my life is full of and I actually get a little scared when I have sudden drops in activity levels. My brain has a hard time slowing down. This weekend has been wonderful though. In fact the whole week up to it was great.

I...

·     made some new friends

·     found a new place to eat

·     experienced a new partnership

·     got to play with dance

·     performed 3 times at the MN Fringe with an awesome group of ladies

·     got some major web work done and strategic planning for my business

·     took ballet class - pink tights and all!

·     enrolled my firstborn in school for the first time

·     and actually took time to enjoy and be present in everything I did.

I think that last one is really the key to happiness. I get so caught up in looking ahead most of the time, that I miss what is going on around me. This morning I took my herd out for a leisurely stroll through our yard for breakfast. Most of the acreage is not mowed so they enjoy a feast as we walk. It wasn't too early but there was still dew on a good portion of the grass. I decided to move through the tall stalks to another area and was just about to plow through when I realized that there was a massive spider web in front of me. I like spiders. (Except for the medium grade, fuzzy ones.) They are amazing. Every day they start fresh and spin a new web. A web that is unique to the environment they are in and that serves the purpose they need. As I turned to back up, I saw another one behind me and soon realized that I was surrounded by probably 20 - 30 webs throughout the grass! Big ones! Getting down to my goat's eye view made them much more visible. It was beautiful. Had I continued to simply push through the grass I would have just ended up covered in sticky spider webs (and wondering if any fuzzy spiders were on my body) but that moment of slowing down let me catch a glimpse of something beautiful that happens every day in my backyard, something that can disappear in a moment if I don't slow down enough to see it.

 

 

The Dancing Goat...Blending Life and Dancing

Welcome to the Dancing Goat. Written by a non-writer.

This blog was born out of a discussion on social media with a few business advisors who said, " Start a blog and see what happens. You are kind of odd. It might be interesting."
Discussing it at home brought up a couple points that made me pause. My daughter ( the avid writer) agreed with the "odd" part and then went on to reminded me that I have no skill with the English language. She is hoping my grammar doesn't embarrass her to much and is going to do her best to proof read my work.

Now I needed a name, all consistently visited blogs have good names. They are either practical, telling you what they are exactly; or fanciful, telling you somebody is perhaps a little romantic, imaginative or an oddball. Since I was already labeled odd, but those who know me will tell you I am very practical and to the point; I decided to go with the obvious : dancing ( I own a studio) and the odd : my goats ( I have 11 in my backyard).

I dance. As of right now I have danced for 3/4 of my life. I'm not that old so I figure by the time I stop, if I do, that will be a really long time. I also teach dance. Ballet, tap, lyrical, ballroom...etc. I've taught a lot of styles. When you teach people to dance and understand their bodies you get to see a lot of really interesting behavior. How people interact, how they view themselves, how they learn, how their parents have screwed them up, how they've screwed themselves up, how they succeed....you get the picture. It is fascinating. Which brings me back to the goats.

I grew up in a faith based family where, biblically speaking, humans were typically referred to as sheep. Sheep are those fluffy white farm animals that say" baa" and provide us with wool sweaters for our cold Minnesota winters. I spent a fair amount of time with sheep in highschool. ( dreams of veterinary medicine that were washed over by dancing) In our church people always compared humans to sheep because sheep are kind of stupid but lovable. They wander off, get lost and need a shepherd; or at least a smart dog. Good Shepherds take care of their sheep and will always look for the lost one so I understood the metaphor; but I have to admit, I really didn't see humans as sheep. I saw them as goats. Now don't get me wrong, goats can be really stupid too! They get their horns stuck in stuff, eat things they shouldn't sometimes, and pee on their faces - yuck! But goats do it intentionally. Sheep always seem to get in trouble with this blank expression of stupidity on their faces, kind of like they have fluff in their brains not just on their bodies. Goats will look right at you, grin and then do something so idiotic or something so brilliant ( like unlocking doors) that you are shocked into saying things you usually might not say. They've got some really great qualities too: creativity, sweetness, mowing your yard without ripping the grass out, following you like a dog and removing all of those unwanted trees you have on your property as well as Christmas tree disposal are all perks with goats. But I digress...back to why people are goats.
We do some really crazy stuff; and most of the time, I think we do it like the goat. Smiling wickedly and pushing forward with our horns. Stubbornly ready to hit whatever thinks it might stop us. Afterwards we'll come back to our " good goatherd" or "bestest" friend begging to have our horns unstuck or looking for that belly rub ( goats love having their bellys rubbed) and then it is back to the next attempt at stupidity or brilliance; and sometimes we don't know which until we've finished and hear someone say something they usually might not say!