From time to time, I get questions from real life and online that may be interesting or useful to getting an idea of what I’m like. Please, feel free to ask me things via email or by commenting. Warning: Just because you ask doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be answered. However, I’m generally very open to most things
Do you exchange links?
Not exactly. I link only sites I genuinely like. If you want me to check out your site, email me.
How can I support the site?
Reading and commenting on interesting entries is a real pleasure for me; I like feel that someone is reading. If you’re talking financially, well, thanks! You can buy from the Amazon store I set up for ease of finding the products I review. Maybe in the future I’ll setup a donation account.
What do people think of you belly dancing?
Most people think it’s cool. Other people are a little misguided, but I hope I set them straight!
Why don’t you write about the more technical side of dance/physics?
I chose to try to reach a wider audience is the general reason. More specifically, I feel strongly that learning dance needs to be done via a teacher, if only because you could injure yourself (you may think what you’re doing is correct, but it’s often hard to gauge your own posture). As for physics, I can only offer what I offer as a student. I don’t have insider information, and I’m not trained enough/have enough experience to offer valuable insight beyond own life doing an MS.
Who/what is in your avatar?
That’s Jonas, one of my three cats. He’s a black and white tuxedo cat. My other cats are Yoshimi (a black cat with a white splotch on her chest) and Wepeel (an orange tabby tuxedo and Jonas’s brother). Their names are from songs, My Name is Jonas by Weezer (both of the boys; listen closely for the name “Wepeel”, because it is indeed there) and Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by The Flaming Lips.
They came from Catnap From the Heart of the Chicago-area and the MSPCA of the Boston-area. I recommend these shelters in a heartbeat and strongly urge anyone interested in a pet to adopt one from the shelter. The animals there for adoption are just as good as any other animal you’ll meet. Despite popular belief, most of them don’t have issues and may have been given up for unfortunate reasons, like financial reasons.
What style of dance do you study/dance?
I currently study Egyptian-based American cabaret (belly dancing), tribal fusion, and Bharatanatyam. I refer to the first one as Egyptian-based American cabaret, because my teachers have almost all been Egyptian-based in technique, though they do “American” things. Cabarets evidently have a negative connotation in other parts of the world, but I have yet to find something people would be familiar with and do not have a negative experience with the word, so I still use it. I’m always look for a new way to phrase it, though, so feel free to suggest!
Do you teach/perform?
I do not teach and am not performing right now. Since I don’t know where I’m going to be in about year, I don’t feel it’s right to start teaching. I would like to start performing sometime this year, on some scale. It’s matter of time (isn’t everything in life?) and finding something appropriate.
Who are your dance influences?
The people listed under the “Influential Dance Instructors.” While I love some of the more famous ones, I really feel that the most influential people on my dance journey are the people I have had the most contact with.
If you go for a PhD, what do you hope to study?
Engineering, actually. I want to move to more table top experiments, and I think an engineering background would help me learn how to design and build my own equipment. Also, a lot of fluid mechanics labs are governed by engineering.
What do you hope to do with this (dance/physics)?
Physics is pretty straightforward. I want to do academic research. I have no experience with industry, so perhaps that may interest me, but I think that I am more interested in staying academia.
With dance, I’d ideally like perform regularly any of the styles I study. I may teach, too. I don’t have quite as definite feel for what I’d like to do, but I am in dance for the long haul.
Who are your heroes?
Generally speaking, anyone who truly posses admiral qualities. These are generally people I know, because they’re at least people I can be fairly certain are admirable.
Some of those qualities are:
- Having integrity enough to not compromise your values for almost anything
- Pursuing your dreams, regardless of what others may think
- Being accountable for your actions and accepting the decision you make without being bitter
- Working hard at your dreams, despite not having conventional success
- Not letting life get you down too much
How do you do an undulation?
I don’t feel that a blog is the best place to learn it, but since this search comes up so regularly, here’s briefly how I was taught.
First, you must maintain good posture! It’ll hurt otherwise and guarantee you can’t dance into your golden years. Secondly, if you’re going for a full body wave, don’t make the bottom (pelvis) portion gigantic. It looks bad. Thirdly, I find looking at your body from an angle the best way to see and correct things.
I’ve been taught these with several methods. One is to practice smoothly rolling your body along a wall. Starting bottom, you have your pelvis touch, then your abs, then your chest, then your head. You can reverse it, of course. A visual I was told is to picture yourself being zipped into a small dress, like corset-style, for the wave up. For the down, I was told to think of being taken out of that dress.
If you just want only an upper body undulations, I find practicing in a chair easiest, so you don’t use other parts of your body.
