Monday, March 15, 2010

Gentle dancing

A lifetime of injuries from sports and dance is catching up with me.

I live with recurring muscle aches and joint pains for years now. I keep downgrading my dance activities with the aim to prolong the dance shelf life I have left.

I put bellydance on hold for now, because I cannot do both hula and bellydance. It puts too much strain on my knees.

I enjoy the less demanding folk dance sessions with the aunties at the cc. The repertoire covers cha cha routines from the 70s, Taiwanese alishan tribal, and circle folk dance which covers the israeli and greek hora, arabic dabke and the folk circle dances of Eastern Europe.

Less demanding, yes. Less dangerous, no. Because somehow there is always the odd one who will lose her sense of direction with the turns and spins and collide with the dancer next to her.

The strange thing is you know it two seconds before the collision will happen. And you try to avoid the full impact of a moving body slamming into you by jumping out of the way. Which is how I end up with aches and pains in muscles and joints - jumping out of the way whether my body and limbs are aligned or not.

How can such a gentle dance with a bunch of sweet old people be so dangerous?

7 comments:

wildgoose said...

Do yoga? My knees are definitely much improved since I took up yoga.

sinlady said...

wildgoose - i've tried yoga many times over the years. never could get into it.

zewt said...

what sports did u use to play?

wildgoose said...

:( sometimes finding the right teacher makes a lot of difference.

sinlady said...

zewt - in school, track and field which i hated. later, water skiing which i loved.

wildgoose - i hear that all the time :) of course it makes sense.

Dancingbunny said...

Did you try pilates?
Must find a good one though.
Pilates are for people who had injuries and are looking into conditioning the muscles and spine

sinlady said...

bunny - thanks. will look into it :)