Nachmo, Day 20 - Process Shift (The Tech I'm Using)

I've been slowly changing how I write choreography throughout the month.

 

Since 2012, I've written all my dances out on lined looseleaf first, then either transcribed them into Benesh Movement Notation (ballet/jazz) or typed them into Pages (tap dances).

This month though, I started using my Rocketbook erasable notebook. Since it's set up to scan the pages directly to my email, that way I could continue writing by hand like normal, and then immediately have no-effort digitization AND email backup in one fell swoop. And it does work well. But the Rocketbook has limited pages and I was choreographing faster than I was uploading/backing up.

 

I sort of accidentally fell into this habit of jotting down choreography notes in the Notion app on my phone whenever I didn't have the Rocketbook on me. Then I'd continue working on the notes in Notion on my laptop, with the iTunes/'Music' miniplayer in the corner.

Two days ago, I discovered that if you hover the cursor over the miniplayer and scroll, you can scrub through the song without having to click back and forth between Notion and iTunes.

That absolutely changed the game.

Now I can keep the cursor in one place (hovering over the scrub bar) and replay 8 counts to my heart's content, while simultaneously typing notes without the extra hassle (yes, I know exactly how 'first world problems' this sounds) of clicking back and forth between the two (and forgetting which one was selected before starting to type). This means I'm losing my train of thought WAY less, and the fact that I'm doing a show on my lived experience with memory loss should tell you how frustratingly easy it is to lose my train of thought... and how difficult it is to find my train of thought again once I've lost it.

This tiny change has launched me into creative hyperspeed. I'd already half-taught my devices not to autocorrect my tap dance shorthand so I'm not facing that friction much. I'm also not sweating the specific counts as much as usual (mostly for the sake of doing a lot of output during Nachmo proper), replacing specific subdivisions with timestamps because those are MUCH easier to find when you're dealing with jazz music. I just don't have the brain space or energy to try to find the 1 and hold a very fleeting idea in my head long enough to figure out which sixteenth count I'm starting the step on while following the saxophone melody. I'm NaNoWriMo-ing this thing. Get it in writing and figure out the pacing later. I've always let the music's own dynamics and rhythms inspire me, so I'm hoping with the help of the timestamps I'll be able to hear what I was thinking later.

As far as stats, so far today I've done almost three minutes' worth of choreography. I've just finished the song I was on, and that officially brings me to the 30-minute mark of the show -- or, my goal for Nachmo 2025. Obviously, we're going to keep going and see how far we get. Maybe choreographing the entire 54-minute show in a month isn't entirely out of reach after all. I hadn't planned to speedrun creation and production the way I did with Sottovoce, and I think it might be harder to do such a thing this time. The things that made Sottovoce so unconventional for me were the things that made it forgiving... I was suffering with memory loss even then, but the lack of set music meant I could hide the blank spots in editing a little bit (that's why the editing in Sottovoce is so janky. Almost every single cut in that film is covering a 2-3 minute mental blank). Here, I am working with set music, and while that may make it easier to memorise, that will mean I actually have to know the choreography, at tempo... all 54 minutes of it.

I do notice that letting my work breathe/not choreographing at the absolute cutting edge of my ability (as of 2019) means I cover more musical ground a lot faster, and hopefully it'll be easier for my broken brain to actually learn it. I'm only hoping it's not too boring for the audience.

Ten Years At The Edge

On 10 April 2012, I completed my first piece of choreography.

I had been choreographing in fits and starts for probably about a year and a half before that, and I had been seeing the dancers in my head since around 2001.

I've told the story on this blog about the catalyst that finally got a piece done. I had only just discovered Benesh Movement Notation as a tool for writing down the dances flooding my mind when I overheard my mother mocking my dream to my dad. The rage I felt fueled me to see through the task I set before myself -- namely, to complete choreography to the song Sing Your Freedom by White Heart. I hadn't put much thought into my song choice, but as I think back on it, that was probably a very fitting launchpad. After years of quietly bristling under my mother's authoritarian rule over my words, thoughts, attitude, and activities, I finally had the courage to do something that I wanted to do. She thought I was stupid, but I did it anyway. I still remember the thrill of realising I only had two more sets of eight to go, and then finishing the piece less than an hour later. I emerged that night with a fully-notated Benesh score (which I still have) and a renewed fire and passion for choreography which has yet to be snuffed out by the 'well-meaning advice' of those who claim to care about me.

Over the past ten years, I have been able to perform my choreography both on stage and on film. I've choreographed for musical theatre productions, fundraisers, talent shows, competitions, and short films. I had a piece place first in its category in (virtual) competition in summer 2020. I have been able to at least somewhat distill the pain of three MAJOR personal losses into highly emotional and touching dances that are highly praised by viewers. And to this day, whenever I hear music, I see dancers. They are my companions on long drives and late nights.

I write choreography not because I want to, but because I HAVE to. It's an almost irresistible impulse. There is no balance in the world if I'm not choreographing.

Ten years' worth of choreography -- some 1200 pages, set to roughly seven hours' worth of music.

While some of this has been scanned into the computer, put on backup drives, and (rarely) reprinted, every single thing I create starts out handwritten. Every single mark on these notation scores was drawn by hand (and probably erased and re-drawn at least three times).

Over the course of ten years, I've choreographed 116 pieces, which doesn't sound too impressive until you factor in the five-year performing arts degree and two years of that also independently working toward a musical theatre career (since the college sure wasn't interested in getting me actual experience let alone work in the field they were supposed to be training me for). I've also been working a legit full-time job for the past year and a half. In 2021 alone I choreographed twelve pieces -- all while working full time. This was something I never thought was possible (see also all my rants from 2012-13 about how I would never work a 9-to-5. And, technically, I'm still not, so 2012 me was right as well as stubborn). This year my goal is fourteen pieces this year, and I'm already over halfway there in less than four months. I am on pace for a 50-piece year -- in other words, to almost double my ten-year output by the end of 2023. And I'm working a 'real job' full time. All you who said it couldn't be done -- guess what, I'm doing it. Don't ever underestimate me.

I fully intend to expand my accomplishments in the relatively near future. Since I now have plenty of choreography to work with, it's time to get it seen (well, more regularly). I have at least two full-length shows planned for within the next five years, and I want to start busking this year. I also have a couple of dance films in active pre-production.

Do I wish I was farther along, doing bigger things, nicer films, larger shows, touring more? Yes. And I'd be lying if I said that didn't make me sad and frustrated sometimes. But I didn't quit. Despite all the detractors, I didn't quit.

We're still only at the edge of the dream, folks. There's so much more to come.

Notation and Life...

I haven't notated any dance in a while. I haven't worked in any big pieces in a very long time.

This used to eat every spare second of my day. I would put off chores to notate. At work I would spend every second of downtime solidifying sequences in my head so I could notate them as soon as I got home. There was something thrilling about mixing little symbols together to create a record of a dance. It was beautiful, in a way.

But now, as I move into my mid-twenties and real life -- rent, food, counselling, training -- demands more money, I have to start either going somewhere with this or drop it and pursue something that does. And it's VERY apparent my original idea of putting together a dance company is not going to happen as soon as I hoped. I had hoped by now I would have twenty classically trained ballerinas at my disposal so I could realise works like Going Home, A Song In The Night, Rainbows, or even Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, I have only have one dancer -- me. And she's not even flexible. Strong, sure, but 'flexible' is on some other planet. Also, I choreograph WAY more complex turns than she is actually capable of.

So I've been doing tap solos because that's at least attainable in the here and now. I can make those into film projects and gather a bit of a following without the ability to developpé my leg up to my ear. (Well, I can as long as I can find a cameraperson...)

I'm trying to finish Elle G because it's been in my head for YEARS and it looks so beautiful in there, but I can't because I need to focus my time and energy on projects that have even a tiny hope of being seen. Elle G is for twenty-one (good) pointe dancers. That may not ever happen in my lifetime. So why bother creating this dance?

I don't know. I really don't know.

These are the things that discourage me.

Building Puzzles

Note: This was actually written a couple of weeks ago, however, the stress of packing and moving (as referred to in the post) zapped my energy to finish and publish this until just before the Internet went down for four days. As I write this note, I am actually at the college and have just began classes. Therefore the timeline in this post is a little bit out of whack (when I say 'right now,' it now actually means like two weeks ago), but the general informational idea (such as it is) is still the same.

So after that post talking about that little detour (or, more accurately, hairpin-sharp left turn) into the college thing, you faithful readers may or may not have wondered, 'Will she still do choreography?' (Okay, I know you probably didn't care, but humour me.)

As of right now, yes. Actually, I'm kind of choreographing like a mad woman. Having never been in a public school setting I have no clue what to expect from college. I hear people griping about the workload -- assignments and essays and homework and things -- but I don't know how much truth there is to that, or if they're all just being public-school whiners (crap. I said that out loud, didn't I?). As a result, I'm not sure how much spare time -- if any -- I'm going to have for personal pursuits such as choreography, so I'm trying to cram in as much as I can now, just in case. On paper, my course load this semester seems not bad (three classes Mondays and Wednesdays and two on Tuesdays and Thursdays), but who knows how much outside studying there'll be...

I've talked before about my experience with emotion being good for creativity (whether it's quality creativity remains to be seen). So having to leave my beloved dance school and now psyching myself up to saying goodbye to my friends and family here in two weeks and then moving -- something I've never done before in my life -- out of province is sparking a lot of creativity. Since the beginning of June I've choreographed (fully notated) Changeless, Sanctuary, and Daniel Amos' lovely Beautiful One (that last one only took 28 hours from initial idea to full notation), plus I've also sketched out a lot of other stuff and it's all quite good (in comparison to everything else I've done so far).

Following that I was working on a White Heart song (hey, DA and White Heart make good nuanced music, okay?) called Heaven Of My Heart. It's off to a slow start, though... I know sort of the feel I want for it, but the specific steps to accomplish said vision are so far eluding me, so I've been flipping back and forth between a few other songs... notably White Heart's Silhouette, John Michael Talbot's The Birth Of Jesus, and Terry Scott Taylor's Dancing On Light (words cannot explain how much I love this song). I have a lot of good ideas for all of them, but for some reason I don't want to commit to one... probably because I had committed to Heaven Of My Heart and it's not going anywhere. I hate leaving choreography half-finished (Montana Sky still haunts me).

However...

The other day while listening to the ShufflePod, David Meece's heavenly symphony God's Promises/Rainbows In The Night came through (followed immediately by the Swirling Eddies. I love my iPod). This is a gorgeous song, and it has ballet written all over it. I always knew I would do it someday, but 'someday' would come when I had really refined my ability to choreograph a smooth, flowing dance and aesthetically pleasing formations. This is a phenomenal majestic song and as a choreographer I cannot give it anything less than the best that ballet has to offer. I knew if I were to do it at that point, I couldn't even do the song justice, and even mere 'justice' is not good enough for something so sweeping and marvelous. I wasn't yet ready for a project of this caliber -- it would be six and a half minutes of grand, majestic, and very precise classical ballet for twelve people.

Last time I even thought of this song was probably in the spring sometime. I hadn't heard it in a long while (it's a crime to forget this song, and yet I keep doing it). Since then, things have changed -- I've had the opportunity to take a couple of ballet classes in the next level up than I was in, and it's one of those 'big jump' levels... you go from floating and gentle ballet to quick, precise and expressive ballet. I've noticed choreography coming far easier and far more quickly than before I took that class, plus my dancing is way more interesting now. I have a lot more technique to draw on thanks to that class.

Also, in the past week and a half or so I've been watching pretty much every classical ballet video that exists on YouTube. All the classic ballets (Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Giselle, I even saw some Alice In Wonderland...), and quite a few rehearsals, plus a bunch of Balanchine's stuff (despite having spent most of my life in the ballet community and having heard he was such a great choreographer, I've never actually seen his work).

You know how it works -- the more you watch something or listen to something, the more it sinks into the fabric of your being. Watching literally hours and hours and hours of rehearsing and excerpts of great ballets has packed my head so full of ballet stuff: intricate footwork, quick and complex movements, strings of impressive extensions, turns, and jumps without a break. (If you only watch one ballet excerpt in your entire life, watch this one... you will never fully understand how amazing this is if you've never been on pointe, but even to the untrained eye this is no doubt impressive.)

As a result of all the learning, the other day when that David Meece song came through, I began to wonder if maybe now I was ready.

So I'm seriously sketching it out now -- not officially notating, but coming up with pieces and fitting them together. It really is like building a puzzle, only you also have to create the pieces first. I did this with Sanctuary, with fantastic results -- Sanctuary is freaking gorgeous. The ending alone could stand as my best work (so far). Of course, by the time I finished I was ready to shred my sketch pages (my cross-references had cross-references which cross-referenced back for two lines of information before another cross-reference sent me off on another quest for a different page. The ending may have turned out spectacular, but sketching that first and then filling everything else in later on the following pages was insanity), but at least the final product was worth it. Because it worked so well with Sanctuary, I used the same approach with Beautiful One -- essentially choreographing the entire thing in my head and outlining it in English notes, then just transcribing it into BMN. I can pretty much guarantee that was how I managed to create the dance for Beautiful One from scratch so quickly.

Sorry, kind of a ramble... but as I'm writing I'm realising I think I found my creative rhythm!

Anyway, I haven't totally committed to God's Promises/Rainbows In The Night yet, but it's much closer to what I envisioned than it was a month ago... I seriously thought it would be years and years, and it's kind of surreal to think that maybe it's not that far off. I'm excited, anyway.

National Choreography Month - Day 17

Finally finished Unchain on the 15th. It was supposed to be finished no later than the 14th. My pacing earlier the previous week had indicated that I should have been able to finish on the 11th or 12th. I had the entire ending sketched out on paper by then, all I had to do was notate it. And the 'to notate' list somehow expanded with every passing day, making sure that I never quite got it done that day. Or the next. Or the next. Or the next. It required me to pull a 4.30 am bedtime to finally drag it across the finish line. I do believe it was kicking and screaming a little too.

I can't complain too much though, because I adore that song. And the dance turned out pretty great too.

Actually, I was surprised how long it ended up being, page-wise. I knew it was a five-minute song, but there were only three people in it, and the first verse was mainly solo. Last night I was cataloguing the statistics for all my completed dances (because I'm a nerd and because my notating brain wanted a break). I was quite surprised to find Unchain had 1,675 frames. Even Speechless, that grand five-minute symphony of movement for twelve dancers in their intricate patterns and slightly staggered rhythms, only came out at 1,932 frames. And that wasn't even the biggest number, though the dance is definitely my biggest and most complex to date -- Glory To The King (remember that one?) has a whopping 1,981 frames. It's only four minutes and it has half the dancers Speechless does.

Anyway, back to the actual work being done (or not...).

Right now I'm working on Fly Eagle Fly... just notating the second verse now. I'm officially two full days behind, thanks to the miracle of the endless Unchain. And I am officially freaking out about The Dance now. I had hoped that with that rocking start on Climb The Hill, I would wind up picking up speed with the other two White Heart tracks and thus wind up with an extra three or four days at the end of the month to dedicate to The Dance. Unfortunately this doesn't appear to be the case...

I'm kind of apprehensive about Fly Eagle Fly. For the first time, I have some semblance of a story that the dance is portraying -- well, not so much a story, more like trying to capture a few fleeting moments of connection between two souls (which makes the concept all the more tricky to nail down). But while having a fairly definite pattern to follow is great, the fact that said pattern even exists and I'm not just flying blind and seeing what happens (like I usually do) is unnerving... especially under this timeframe. What if I completely destroy it? What if it doesn't turn out as beautifully as it currently is in my imagination? Will I wind up cutting corners just to get the thing done by the 21st? (Also, apologies for the adjective abuse in those last couple of sentences.)

It's the growing pains of my craft, I guess. Either this will fail horribly, or it will be a huge leap forward in my ability to capture a moment.

Focus

So I was kind of throwing myself a little pity party again (when will I ever learn to stop that?) -- an old youth group acquaintance just got a huge break into the industry he's been dreaming of for years, my sister is getting her stage script read by a local theatre producer, and a friend of mine got some of her artwork published (it was a fairly small scale, but published nonetheless).

And me... I was just kind of sitting and listening to the same fifteen seconds of the same song over and over and over trying to come up with the next sequence. Like I have for the past year.

Separately, those were all genuine 'congratulations that's awesome!' moments, but all of them in the same week had me reeling a little. Why are they getting results that have people going 'wow, good for you' and I continue to just sit here and be criticised for not having a 'real' job?

Then last night while looking through a drawer in my filing cabinet I found a pink piece of paper with my writing on it -- a list of steps I needed to take to draw me closer to my dancing goal. I remember writing that list -- it was probably only about four to six months ago.

As I read it, I realised I could already check off three things. Things that had seemed insurmountable then. So I did. I literally got out my trusty pencil and checked them off.

Then I started thinking about what I do have going for me now. I have a dance teacher who is totally excited about the fact that I'm so interested in choreography (she let me borrow one book she had on Benesh notation and just this week gave me another booklet she had that talks about it). I have one dance right now that's been absolutely on fire since I picked it up again after NaNoWriMo. In just ten and a half months, I've choreographed eleven dances -- over forty minutes' worth. That's well on the way to being enough for a respectable concert. I now have enough foundational tap that I can begin to experiment -- to choreograph (to say nothing of the fact that I now have tap shoes with which to do it).

I had none of this a year ago.

It may not feel like it, but I am moving closer, closer, closer to the dream...

So I keep working, keep practicing.

Glory To The King - The Somewhat Extended History Of The Dance (So Far). And Music Day.

Remember the other day when I mentioned I was working on choreography for Glory To The King?

Actually, my choreographic work on it predates even Sing Your Freedom. I started working on it in early January. It was the first bit of Benesh notation I ever did.

Initially I managed to turn out six pages, however, my enthusiasm flagged and I was lured away by a different project -- You Are The One (which was also put on the back burner later in favour of Sing Your Freedom before I went back and completed it at the end of April).

A couple times over the following months I glanced over the pages from Glory To The King, but found no real desire (or self-discipline, more accurately) to add to it.

However, it's a fantastic song. I wanted there to be a dance to it, there needed to be a dance to it, but those pages intimidated me.

After finishing Them at the end of June, I was at a loss for what to do next. I had a handful of songs I was considering, but nothing that really jumped out and grabbed me.

And there it sat in my 'current choreography' playlist, like it had for over six months.

Glory To The King.

Reluctantly I brought out the pages I'd already written -- about forty seconds' worth of material -- and looked them over.

The intro was all right, but my counts were completely wrong. It was impossible to follow the timing. I revised the intro concept very slightly and rewrote the entire sequence on fresh paper, with the proper time signatures.

And then I stalled out again.

It took weeks just to reach the beginning of the first chorus -- a mere thirty seconds of music. Only in the past four or five days have I managed to complete the chorus and the second verse. Now in the trenches of the second chorus, I'm finding inspiration a little easier to find, but I feel like it's getting repetitive... I seem to have notated an awful lot of parallel retierré jumps in the not-too-distant past.

But in a weird way, it reminded me of the days when I was slogging through Sing Your Freedom. I was definitely more enthusiastic about that project than this one, but the sitting down and listening to the same ten seconds again and again and again and again, waiting for my brain to come up with something to go with the next measure, trying to wrap my head around who needs a separate stave on this page and who can I lump together as I try to figure out the details of yet another formation change -- the mood of this one is as close to the Sing Your Freedom days as I've gotten since I finished it in mid-April.

And while the small reminder of the Sing Your Freedom days was a little refreshing, the big break came last Thursday, the 19th.

While out running errands, I listened to David Meece's CD Once In A Lifetime (Star Song, 1993). Track three is this song called Brokenness. When I was little, I never paid the song much heed -- it was slow and 'boring.' However, in recent years I've been paying more attention to all the songs on the album. And Brokenness is a beautiful song. I looked it up in my choreography notes binder and found notes for both a solo and a group of five. Since I knew I would have to choose eventually, I tried to make my decision then -- save me some time and energy later. Ultimately I decided on a solo. And since I was desperate for something, anything, to distract me from Glory To The King while still accomplishing my purpose in life, I began to compose the solo to Brokenness.

And it kick-started my imagination for Glory To The King.

At first, I was just happy that I'd finally gotten a bit of a second wind (even if it was more of a breeze than a real wind, but who's splitting hairs?) for Glory To The King. But as I thought about it, I realised that Sing Your Freedom also had really taken off when I picked up You Are The One again and started working on that alongside.

Sing Your Freedom is for eight dancers. You Are The One is for four. Glory To The King is for six. Brokenness is a solo. Large dance, small dance, both at the same time.

I can't help thinking maybe I've finally figured out the trick to this.

(This 'shake-it-up' idea may be obvious to some, but keep in mind I've been writing novels at an average of two per year since age fourteen. You can't afford to mess up your plot by working a second one at the same time. You immerse yourself in one novel, one plot, until you've got it written out and the rough draft done.)

As promised -- I think it was two weeks ago now -- here is the official Music Day information:

Title: Glory To The King
Artist: Peter Furler
Album: On Fire
Year: 2011
Label: Sparrow Records
iTunes here; YouTube here.

Why do I like the song? Well, to pare it down to one little phrase, it would be this: exuberant joy. Any other words I could put to this would be inadequate. In fact, my primary struggle with the choreography is not in trying to keep it low-key enough to match the music (which is usually the case), it's the fact that short of piano wire, the excited jumps physically can't get any higher and without the threat of fire or something the joyful leaps cannot be performed any faster than they already are.



It's here!

Lift up your hands and sing
Glory to the King!
The King of everything...

Second Piece -- Done

Just knocked You Are The One off my to-do list.

That's two dances finished in just over two weeks. Sing Your Freedom took me ten weeks; You Are The One (from the time I started working on it in earnest after I finished Sing Your Freedom) took me exactly two weeks. Round up to two and a half if you like -- that's probably about all the work I'd put in on it before I finished Sing Your Freedom.

Granted, Sing Your Freedom was far more of a challenge -- the main rhythm (that I followed, anyway) was five beats per measure for the verses, four for the chorus. During the breakdown I actually had one part where half the dancers are working in five-beat measures (following the lead guitar, plus they were dancer's counts*) and the other half are working in eight-beat measures (following the bass guitar) -- simultaneously.

Add to that the fact that it was my first ever piece in BMN and the dance kind of took on a life of its own as I worked on it... honestly, there are steps in there that I don't think I could even perform. (But oh, do they look good on the stage in my mind...)

After such a steep learning curve in Sing Your Freedom, I'm not actually surprised that I cut my composition time down to a fifth. Not only am I far more comfortable with the notation now, You Are The One has half the performers of Sing Your Freedom, plus it's two and a half minutes shorter.

Still, it's a nice feeling to be able to tell myself yes, I can compose an entire dance in two weeks.


*Dancer's counts -- When you count to the music according to the timing of the dance step, not the actual number of beats per measure that would be written on the sheet music. We have one exercise in our ballet class that's actually (from a musician's perspective) in 9/8 time, but we dancers count it as 1-2-3-4-5-6, because that's the timing of the steps.

It's Done!

Those were the words of the hour at 3.13 this morning. I posted it once as my status and I wrote it on a friend's wall as well. Plus, of course, I squealed and danced and jumped around in excitement. In fact, about half an hour ago I just jumped around my room totally randomly and squealed in excitement again.

The Sing Your Freedom choreography is done!

I've written eight novels. Of course, now it's gotten to the point where writing a novel is totally normal and more of a lifestyle than something to celebrate, but even when I finished my first novel draft back in July 2008, I don't remember this. I was definitely excited, make no mistake, but I wasn't this excited.

It was so surreal, too. I was listening to it on YouTube, the closing twenty seconds, over and over and over and over and over... counting beats, visualising movements, notating, erasing, rewriting, marking out measures and formations...

Sometime after 2.50 am (I'm not exactly sure of the time), I listened through the twenty seconds again and counted beats once more because I'd lost my place.

And I realised I had only one measure to go.

All I had to do was get the last four dancers off the stage and it would be DONE! (This was where I started jumping around in my chair and silently squealing in giddy anticipation.)

And at 3.13 am I drew the exit symbol.

My first ever finished piece is complete!

It's interesting that when I logged onto Facebook tonight, the White Heart fan page had posted that today is Rick Florian's birthday. (Lead singer 1986-1997, sang lead on Sing Your Freedom.)

Doesn't that make this so much more epic?

Snippets Of Now

I've been trying for a week to complete the last forty seconds of Sing Your Freedom. Today I finally got it down to 31 seconds remaining.

I was hoping to have You Are The One half-finished by now. I've only got the first four or five bars and those I composed back in January.

There's a Canada-wide publishing contest looming -- it closes 15 June. The winner gets their novel published and marketed for free. My mother has convinced me to try to speed-revise Reuben (August 2010). I've done the first three pages. I figure if I don't get it done by this June, I can keep working at it and have it ready for next June, as it's an annual contest.

I'm almost completely out of money. Today I doubled the inventory of the Etsy shop, but so far no-one's bought anything. At the moment I don't even have enough money to cover the cost of developing the film I shot yesterday.

I made up a daily schedule the other day that I plan to implement starting this Monday (9 April). I carefully scheduled in time for revising Reuben and time for composing choreography. I was rather surprised to find I had nine and a half hours three days out of the week that I wasn't really making the most of. I had no idea I spent that much time on the Internet.

Under terms of my new schedule, I will have at most an hour a day on the Internet (excluding Etsy shop upkeep -- I have forty-five minutes for that). I'd better learn to write blog posts faster and/or lower my impossible standards or I'm not going to post much...

I've recently become fascinated with buttons -- the little pin-back type. I searched for old Christian band buttons (Petra, White Heart, etc.) on eBay and Etsy, but yielded nothing. (However, I did find a lovely leather jacket from Petra's On Fire! tour in 1988.)

I hope to finish Sing Your Freedom tonight. I'm midway through page twenty-nine of notation.

An Announcement

Hi everyone! Quick post today...


I've just opened an Etsy shop here:

www.etsy.com/shop/dancerbygrace

Do please check it out and buy something if you can. I'm hoping to use the income from this to pay for distance courses on Benesh Movement Notation (dance notation).

Thanks!