Wiggle Wiggle

*Squeals!* I seem to be spending a lot of my time feeling eprmanantly excited and uplifted by the things i have the opportunity to do - how blessed am I?? On the way home from dance practice i bumped into the lovely guy Simon who was getting the same bus into town - he was just off to his regular dance class in a community centre in Lancaster, so he invited me along! My first ever salsa lesson! I think salsa is my favouritest of dances. It's energetic, sexy, wiggly and the man has to be a strong lead and sweep the lady all around the place - lots of turns and spins and wiggly bits. It's so good! We began just with Simon teaching me some moves and dancing together but when the formal teaching started - as a complete beginner in a non-beginner class - i was given proper one-to-one tuition. The teacher said i'm very responsive to a man's leading - lol. If the bank balance allows it, i'm going to start going regularly, cos i'll normally get to do hip-hop and more ballroom as well. Ooo how exciting!

New Friends :)

I'm really getting into the ballroom dancing society (LUBDS)! We had a social tonight after intermediate class - after we got fire-alarmed out of Bowland bar we tootled over to Furness bar and settled there instead to have a nice chat over some pints. I love the fact that the exec is actually paying attention to the members this year rather that being clique-y. Luke and i met two really interesting guys who have just started beginners. Martin is Polish and goes to university in Poznan which is where my family comes from, so that's exciting! I hope to pin him down for some language practice as soon as possible - especially seeing as i'm off to Warsaw next February! How handy! The other guy is Chris, who is is really interesting and had loads to talk about - hopefully many more conversations in the pipeline. He's a rugby player and pretty hard-core on the fitness front (could do 22 overhand pull-ups!) - he successfully inspired/shamed Luke into trying to increasing his record on the pull-up bar we have over the stairs!

Gonna go watch a DVD now with my two lovely and wonderful housies *broad grin* I love nights in.

*Gazes Dreamily into the Middle-Distace*

Have just floated back home from ballroom (and latin) dancing class. I love to dance. These kinds of dances – and especially the waltz – rely on God’s order for men and women. The man must lead, and lead well: he must be strong, he must know the right steps to take, he must give clear instruction, he must be confident and he must honour the woman. If he fails in these ways, the dance will never even get off the ground. The woman must submit: she must relax within the man’s strength, respond to his signals and trust him to move her in the correct way. If she tries to move of her own decision, the dance breaks up. In this kind of submission she is beautiful.

Today we had advanced competition practice. Luke, my regular partner, didn’t come but I danced with a lovely guy called Simon instead. He’s been dancing all summer and he’s good: strong, confident, patient! We didn’t learn any steps but we practiced technique for the waltz. It makes such a difference when you are holding each other correctly! It was great fun – you have to be a bit light-hearted about it when you are pressed together at the abdomen! And so we floated gracefully around the hall for an hour, my left hand resting in the groove of Simon’s biceps while his right hand directed my movement from its position on my shoulder blade…can’t wait till Thursday’s lesson!

How to Combine All the Things You Really Love Doing

After a very interesting and useful chat with two of my art buds i may potentially be making art work about trance clubbing! I'm well into the idea of creating environments - spaces that the participant wholly enters into, the conditions of which effectuate certain responses/emotions/sensations in the the participant. I've been thinking about using lighting and sound...you know how when you're dancing in a club, and the lights shine right in your eyes and you're dazzled and transfixed and totally in the moment...that's what i'm interested in. I'm exploring the idea of using a 'closet' type thing which the viewer has to go into...because of the privacy, this adds the potential to create the response of unrestrained, unembarrassed dancing! yay! Dunno how any of these ideas are gonna come into being yet though! At any rate it'll be a good excuse for lots of research...bring on Disconcertion on saturday night at the Crypt!

Jak Sie Masz?

Calloo Callay! This year's art trip with the department is to Warsaw! After avoiding the rubbishy trip to New York for the last two years, i'm so pleased that the department came up with a good idea for this year! What with my alternative art trip to Prague last year and my recent interest in learning Russian, i'm getting well into the whole eastern European thing! Love it!This'll be the first time i've been to Poland since i was a wee 6 year old (although my cousins do keep inviting me to stay.) My memories mostly consist of grey council flats and weird concrete play-areas. I wonder what it's really like.

Revival Starts in County Main!!

Yesterday (sunday) we were able to welcome seven Christian freshers to King's Church - that's good enough as it it is, but get this: they all live on the same corridor in halls, and there are two more of them who couldn't make it that morning but wanted to. NINE Christians on one corridor who all seem to be well up for Jesus!! We third years have been praying for God to provide us with labourers for the harvest. We've been praying into our vision to start a corridor-based cell. Looks like we may have been given not just one ready-made cell, we've probably got two! These cells could have an amzing influence. This particular college building, County Main, has four corridors of approximately 20-25 students in each, which all link up, so it's one huge community. All kinds of ideas and possibilites are forming in our heads now - but God's will be done, man. This needs prayer. Gotta dream God's dreams not our own, but no doubt his will be even wilder than what we could think of anyway! Bring it on!!

Pride and Prejudice

I approached this film from the position of having recently re-read the book and never having properly watched the BBC series (although I do know what Colin Firth looks like!)

I enjoyed watching this film – primarily because the central love story was really quite breathtaking. The magnetism and chemistry between the two actors – and therefore the two characters – was obvious.

Matthew Macfadyen glowered and brooded in just the right way. Mr Darcy secretly struggles with his attraction to Elizabeth from quite early on and this comes across well. He’s not really horrid enough though – after all, Elizabeth is supposed to detest him and we’re supposed to agree – but then her apparent attraction to him in the film adds to the passion I guess! I didn’t like the way he’d rapidly blurt out the first lines of a conversation because in my mind Mr Darcy is very controlled, but there were points when he was beautifully emotional and vulnerable and it worked. He’s incredibly handsome and I confess that I was rendered weak at the knees by his smouldering stares, and he also has a wonderfully rich voice. *Swoon*

Keira Knightly was really excellent as Elizabeth Bennet, capturing her wit and cheek and lively imagination. I had been worried that she’d be too pretty and too skinny, but the book doesn’t really tell us about her figure and, in contrast to the views of other reviewers, I thought she looked perfectly ‘normal’ enough and Jane could quite easily be considered prettier by the men.

I think the film let itself down by barely scratching the surface of many of the relationships and characters. Mr Collins was appropriately cringeworthy (eeuw!! He was so funny) but we didn’t see the extent of his idiocy and why therefore Elizabeth would be so repulsed by him, and we weren’t shown how horrified Elizabeth was by Charlotte’s degrading herself to marry him. Wickham was far better portrayed in Bride and Prejudice than this film (the script’s fault, not the actor’s) so check that one out to see why Elizabeth would take so much pleasure in his company.

So to summarise: passionate and engaging romance between the two leads, but skimmed quickly through the rest of the main points in the book, without fully being an entity in itself, independent from the book. Much of the time I felt I only had a full understanding of the scene because I had read the book. I don’t mind a film being different to the book, but then it should stand successfully on its own, and this doesn’t, in my opinion.