Making Mistakes With Confidence

Last week in Bellydancing Class as we were dancing, one of my Zills, fell off my thumb.

Zills are the little cymbals we wear on our fingers and play to the beat of the song while dancing.  One goes on the thumb the other on the middle finger.  The elastic on Zills are always stretching and they constantly need to be adjusted.

When my Zill fell off I just kept dancing, moving my bare thumb against the cymbal on my finger no longer making any sound, but also not missing a beat literally or figuratively.

Kathleen, one of my teachers, complimented me on not stopping when the Zill fell off, saying that’s just what to do when something like that happens during a performance.

And things like that, happen all the time.  Kathleen and Julz have lots of good stories to tell about the mishaps that have happened and how the dancers dealt with them.

If a Zill or a piece of jewelry falls off one of the dancers and is in the dance space someone will kick it out of the way when they’re close enough to with making it too obvious.

I’m nervous enough about performing without having to think about everything that can go wrong. But it’s an important part of performing and there are some things that I’ve learned from experience.

Such as, if I floreo with the wrong hand, I shouldn’t try to correct it, most of the time the audience won’t notice it’s wrong unless I stop mid-floreo and switch hands.

But since I can’t be prepared for every situation, I know the best thing to do if I make a mistake is to make the mistake with confidence, to pretend it’s exactly what I meant to do.

That way the audience might just believe it.

However, I’d rather have as little go wrong as possible.  That is why I was sewing the elastic on my Zills, before class tonight, tightening them up so they don’t fall off my fingers while I’m dancing.  I’ve been told that you know your Zills are tight enough when your fingers turn blue from wearing them.

I still need to shorten those bright yellow pantaloons that Kat gave me, but that will have to wait till next week.  I’ll let you know how it goes.