It's (nearly the end of) February! That means it's Zills Appreciation Month. I can't possibly let that slip by without doing at least one post on zills.
My latest zill choreography is coming along nicely. We have a large variety of dancers at different levels learning it, so we are taking it very slowly.
What excites me about this choreography is how dynamic the zill patterns are. In the past, we've always danced with a repetitive pattern, with breaks and accents when the music dictates. This time round I'm changing up the patterns as the body movements and the music inspire me to. I'm growing in my zilling and my choreographing!
And grow we must! Stagnation is a very real dilemma in every art form. If you are not challenging yourself, you cannot grow as an artist. Even the best of the best need to have new challenges in order to continue to be the best. You don't want to watch a beautiful dancer only perform the same 3 dances (or ones that look pretty much the same) over and over for years.
Here is a snippet from last weeks practice. We often video ourselves so that we can see where we need work, where we are out of sync, etc... The first thing that struck me in this video was our flappy arms. We will be working on that tomorrow night.