Mirror, Mirror

Had my partnering lesson with Anna this morning.  Things do seem to be progressing, but true to form I am obsessing about details too much.

Had an interesting realization today - As a dancer, I have become extremely dependent upon mirrors for visual feedback of what my body is doing - so much so that I find myself really REALLY missing them at the rink.  It's as if my own kinaesthetic awareness isn't really enough for me to know what I'm doing - the mirrors have become, over the years, a crutch.  It's making it hard for me to really KNOW what I look like, if I'm hitting the right positions, if I have my weight in the right place, blah blah blah.  When Anna or Will tell me to "lean this way", or "turn the shoulders that way", I can't really tell if I'm doing it or not.  I NEED those mirrors.

I never realized how dependent upon them I had become.  Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing.  I mean - as a dancer, it's ok because you almost always have them - but as a skater it's proving to be a challenge.  You can - sort of - see you reflection in the safety plexiglass around the edges of the rink - it's there for hockey - but not well enough to tell what you really look like.

It's too bad that I have a major aversion to watching myself on video...  For some strange reason, I'm OK watching myself intently in a mirror for hours on end during a class or rehearsal, but make me sit down and watch a video of myself and I get extremely uncomfortable.  Not sure why.  Perhaps it's because, when I'm looking in a mirror, I'm looking at one specific body part (hand, leg, whatever) and don't normally concentrate on the whole thing so much.  On video, that's the first thing you get - the whole thing.  And I've never really LIKED the "whole thing" so I can't seem to get past that aversion in order to dissect what's actually going on.

Interesting.  I'm going to have to figure out how to either develop a better sense of what I'm doing so I don't need the mirrors so much - or get over my aversion to what I look like.

Fat chance :)