If you've read the recent posts, Choreographing: Seeing Your Piece Come to Life (Part 1 & 2) then you have a little bit of insight into how I like to choreograph and clean up the dances I create. While many people know that a dance is created, learned, cleaned, and then presented, they do not know what goes on behind the scenes with making sure your body is prepared to perform. Dance Competitions: The Preparation is all about what my students and I have personally been going through to make sure our bodies are ready to compete.
Many people do not know how dancers generally eat. For example, some people I have met have asked "Do dancers even eat?" or "Why don't you ever eat anything bad?" I'd like to answer these questions. To begin with, YES DANCERS DO EAT! In fact we love food just as much as the next person, however we choose to eat healthy food in order to stay healthy and be able to perform properly on a daily basis. For the second question, it's not that we don't eat anything bad, while we do eat healthy, we will still eat "bad" food but in moderation. Just like everyone else, dancers like to have some ice-cream or a cookie every once in a while.
Now that I've answered a couple of questions, I'd like to explain why I chose to talk about this subject and call this post "Dance Competitions: The Preparation". Recently, I have been working with my two soloists for their previous and upcoming dance competitions. At first, I was under the impression that the two of them were going to be the only ones competing at their second competition. However, many years ago when I was working with my group of hip hop dancers I had promised them if we ever went to a large scale dance competition I would compete with them. Having forgotten this promise, one of my soloists that was in that group reminded me of my promise, long story short, I am now competing after having not competed in about three years!
A few weeks ago, I decided since I am doing a solo and a duet with one of my students that I needed to prepare my body to look and feel how it should for a dance competition. I began eating healthier and working out more often and have dropped 5 inches off of my waist in only 3 weeks. A few things I have been doing to prepare myself through healthy eating consist of eating greek yogurt with fruit for breakfast, salads with chicken, turkey, or fish for lunch and dinner, drinking water throughout the entire week, and having healthy snacks during the day. My snacks have consisted of carrots, fruit, or protein. Like I said earlier, like anyone I enjoy having something sweet sometimes. Therefore, on either Friday or Saturday night I allow myself to have one meal that is considered "bad" and one small dessert. As I said before, "bad" food is only bad if it is eaten all day long, however in moderation, such as one meal a week is perfectly okay.
A couple of things I have begun doing as a workout regimen consist of, Mat Pilates, Yoga, Cycling/Spin classes, and Ballet, Hip Hop, and Zumba dance classes and a light amount of weight training. I have been going to at least one or two of these classes a week, as well as doing light weight training to help continue to tone my body. As you can see my main source of working out consists of cardio which plays a large portion of help into the preparation process for this competition. While I may not be where I want to be yet, I am getting closer and closer to my goal everyday. I started my journey almost three weeks ago and have three more weeks ahead of me to reach the goal I have set for myself. If you are interested in eating healthier and would like to know what I have been eating for breakfast or lunch, be sure to check back later and I will have some recipes and photos for you to follow! If you have an idea for a healthy meal or snack the you'd like to share comment below and tell us about it! Stay tuned to for other upcoming posts and an announcement about an event that's coming up in only three weeks!
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