The joke among my students and me is "New Week; New Tweak!" It's like a game of spot the differences from a newspaper or magazine, now coming to you LIVE in your living room. LOL If it's not some new piece of tech--like a new camera, upgrading the WiFi, or an improved lavalier mic--it's a new way we're setting up the space to make it easier for students to see us on whatever device which they are trying to study with us.

In this slideshow, look at the evolution of backdrops in our teaching. From a bland beige we blend in with too easily, to vibrant colors, and even a move to a new studio space. You can see how the different colors and textures of a background, in combination with what we choose to wear each week, can make a big difference.

What tweaks have YOU introduced to your online classroom since you began? I'd love to hear other ideas and inspirations!

Everywhere you look right now there is some dance teacher experiencing an issue or complaint with Zoom and their audio. If I had a dime for every time I ran across a post about these frustrations, our studio would be set up for the rest of the pandemic, let me tell you! If you are one of these teachers, I thought I'd break it down into some simple concepts so you can at least understand the issue, and maybe you can start to find the solution that is right for you. In a future blog post, we can look at answers (or perhaps you will be empowered to employ better Google-fu than you felt able to before!) Here we go...

In short: Zoom doesn't like processing sound from multiple sources. In fact, it is specifically designed NOT to. It was optimized for office environments, where it wants to prioritize sound from a single source at a time, and actively suppress or de-prioritize sound from any other source. Think of all those clickety-clackety keyboards, or conference rooms with squeaky chairs. Zoom was offering a solution to certain problems. Unfortunately, they created problems for us dancers when we tried to use it for our unique use-case.​

New session begins this week, May 21st. Registration is open now, and we can't wait to see you in class!

What will the new tweaks be? Who knows? In the last few weeks we jazzed up the live studio to add a little pizzazz. We really take your feedback into account to help improve what we bring to you each week, so thanks for everything you share with us over on the Deep Roots Live! Facebook Page, guys. And if you haven't joined us over there yet, we hope you will. It's just for you livestreamers!

What tweaks have we seen over the last 6 weeks? Take a look at our first week photo vs. now...peek at the tweaks:

As we move to the internal during quarantine, and examine way we are spending our time and energies now and in the weeks and months ahead, I want to share this dancer blog post with excellent advice. Here are just a sampling of the gems:

7. Strive to constantly make new discoveries about dancing (rather than waiting to be spoon fed the answers). This is a crucial part of developing your unique perspective and voice. Don’t be a dance robot.

8. Seek out instructors/mentors they mesh with and who push them.

9. Practice the shit out of everything. Does this one need explaining? Of course you’ll need to do high-quality practice, not mindless practice.

10. Disregard their inner critics’ harsh thoughts. Your inner critic is just a little child trying to distract you from doing worthwhile things. Hit the ignore button.
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Read the whole article here:
http://rebeccabrightly.com/good-dancers-differently/

My feed seems full of friends playing with make-up right now during quarantine. What a fun way to break up the monotony of COVID-19 quarantine, to add a splash of color and sass to your day!

To get you in the spirit, here's a link to a blog post I made way back in the day, and the tutorials within are still some of my faves for basics in everyday makeup skills for those getting started. And of course, I still think my basic tutorial on tribal bellydance makeup is a solid guide, but I'll let you be the judge. Check it out, and have fun playing!

​http://www.deeprootsdance.com/2014/07/getting-started-with-makeup.html