Sajia Kabir

In the morning I did Colleena Shakti's 15 minute plank workout, the third and fourth section of Heather Louise's Qanun Over Cairo choreography, the Club Belly Dance: Sonic Jam 4 drill video by Morgan Fay, and a yoga cooldown by Rachel Brice.  I've decided to begin working out at the gym on Monday afternoons before class. Today I did:

1 set of 20 leg scissors

Warm up sets for each exercise

Wide lat pulldowns - 40 lbs, 3 x 6

DB rows - 10 lbs, 3 x 6

DB bench press - 8 lbs, 3 x 6

DB RDLs - 10 lbs, 3 x 6

DB overhead press - 5 lbs, 3 x 6

Treadmill - 10 minutes.

I used 2 minutes rest between each set with my goal of body recomposition. I added the cardio at the end because I still had some juice in me and wanted to pass the time before class. Next time I will do 8 reps for the working sets. I hope to go up in weights the week after. 

I had a good year. I took a college course in public speaking in the winter semester. I was hoping it would prepare me for a career in keynote concerts. As it turned out, my public speaking skills weren't as strong as I hoped, although I did end up giving two speeches for the non-profit that I work for. I gave a speech about my experience living with disability and a second speech about my experience working as a grant writer, and was well compensated for both. As my instructor said, “Success is a poor teacher.” Since I have three college courses with good grades so far, I'm planning to complete my Certificate in Communications at Douglas College, inshallah by April 2025.

I completed a job prep certificate called Skills For Life, and certificates in WHMIS, SuperHost, and FoodSafe. I completed an office assistant certificate with courses in Word, Excel, Outlook, office administrative procedures, and telephone skills. 

My piano skills have improved a lot over the past year. I started by working with the Alfred Basic Piano book, but didn't like it. Then I started working with the RCM Level 1 syllabus material. Eventually I discovered Brenda Earle Stokes'  online membership The Versatile Musician. I can now play major triads, minor triads, and diminished triads in root position and inversions; seventh chords; and sus chords. I sketched out chord progressions for several of my original songs and started to learn several western pop songs on piano. Unfortunately, I've been playing the piano so much, my wrist started hurting, and I've had to take a break over the last few weeks and do physio exercises most days. But it's getting better. I helped my mother with her ukulele practice, teaching her music theory rudiments. I began practicing harmonica, tambourine, finger cymbals, and body percussion and enjoyed it, although I'll have to take a break from it for a while because of college, work, and volunteering.

I've started doing teacher training sessions in Indian classical music with my vocal coach Neeraja Aptikar. I recently began working on an Indian fusion cover version of U2's “I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.”

I was hoping to learn the Rachel Brice and Colette Todorov material on Datura Online and do the 365 Day Challenge, which I had succeeded at last year. I wasn't able to do that - I sprained my tendon and eventually had to see my physiotherapist. It took me a long time to get back into practice. But I took my first ever live Improv Team Sync class with Jessica Roh, who said positive things about my video for Lizzo's “Special.” I'd made a few dance videos on YouTube at the beginning of the year but had given up at the lack of response. This December I started making dance videos again on TikTok. I'm not aiming to go viral, I'm aiming to record my progress as a dancer and as a musician - I'm eventually planning to upload voice and piano covers. I'm aiming to build a body of work, a portfolio.

In June I flew for the first time since 2005. I went to Sarnia, Ontario for my sister's wedding. I had a wonderful time, I wore pretty clothes and ate delicious food. As I previously wrote, I think I like travel, as long as it involves luxurious accommodations. 

All in all, it was an excellent year. I could have done without the ongoing wars and the surge in COVID. Here's hoping for peace and well-being in 2024.

I had my flu shot on Wednesday - I managed to squeeze in ten minutes of vocal riyaz and five minutes practicing riq and five minutes practicing finger cymbals. I also practiced the kathak warmup, including 100 cycles of tatkar footwork, and the flower, bird, and fish mudras. In the evening I watched the sus 2 and dominant 7 sus chord tutorials from Piano Skills For Singers Level 2. I improvised rough chord progressions for “Naive” and “The Dress I Wore.”

I was feeling bored on Thursday because I had to rest my left arm, so I spent the day improvising chord progressions for “Resisting Me,” “The Body Says,” “Bengali Winter,” “The Heart of the Snow Queen,” “Sang With The Tongue of an Angel,” “Seven Layers of Muslin,” “Unfold,” and “Next Winter.”

On Friday morning I worked on a grant application. I had a good teacher training session with Neeraja Aptikar. She taught how ragas involve the five senses, and the nine rasas in Indian aesthetic theory. We did laundry, and I changed my bed linens.

On Saturday, for the first time in a while, I dozed off after breakfast. I did chop onion, garlic, and peppers for Ma's cooking, and peeled prawns for her acorn squash dish. I folded and put away my laundry. 

On Sunday, I dozed off after breakfast again. I did the 10 minute object writing exercise from Pat Pattison's book “Writing Better Lyrics” that Anjalica Solomon had suggested we do as a songwriting exercise.

We had to run an errand early in the morning, and I was enervated. I did do Ashley Lopez's 30 minute “Cute Cardio Combination A” after lunch. The warmup and cooldown were ten minutes each, which was longer than in Kamrah's 30 minute cardio bellydance classes. I used to be impatient about warmups, but as I've grown older my joints appreciate them. This was one of the first videos I worked with when Datura Online first appeared. The arm exercises in the warmup felt harder this time, but I was better able to follow the fancy footwork in the dance combination.

My copy of Meg Casebolt's “Social Slowdown” arrived as an early Christmas gift from my sister. From the opening chapters it looks clearly written and full of knowledgable tips.

I practiced the C major scale on harmonica for five minutes - it wasn't as clear today as I would have liked it to be. I practiced threes on finger cymbals for five minutes, this time adding hip infinity loops and hip drops to the hip circles and traveling moves. I practiced maqsoum on riq for five minutes, for the first time ever trying to do a little of dance movement at the same time.

I'm pleased with myself that I completed Day 3 of EPIC Heat, which makes for three days of intense weightlifting in a row so far. I'd checked the description and worried that the squats and lunges would be gruesome, but I got through by modifying extensively - no elevated lunges, no jumping movements, among other things. I find that pushing my hips back during the squats really helps. I slowed down the pace where I wanted to.

I started my day doing the 5 minute warmup, Caroline Girvan's 10 Min BRACED CORE AND ABS workout, and EPIC Heat Day 2, which focuses on the shoulders. I feel that my core has weakened since my gallbladder surgery in 2016 - I used to be able to do plough pose easily, but not anymore. I'm not terribly interested in visible abs, although a flat belly would be nice. But I like the challenge of Caroline's abs workouts, and I think core work is important for posture and back health. I definitely find it easier to engage my abs during other exercises after doing a core-focused workout. I tried a couple of time to do the shoulder workout with 5 lb weights, but 2 lb weights were hard enough. The movements themselves were easy.

I did 20 minutes of vocal riyaz. Today I played threes on the finger cymbals for five minutes while performing different arm and leg positions, and managed to toss in a few hip circles in the process. I played maqsoum and malfuf on riq for five minutes each from memory, which is progress from before. I practiced the C major scale on harmonica for five minutes - I'm hoping to progress to playing the chromatic scale, and then play tunes reading tabs. I practiced the first body percussion routine from Salvo Russo's playlist from memory three times.

I started studying Class 3 in Guru Pali Chandra's YouTube kathak lessons, Padhant - How to say the bols (recitation). This class is about reciting the rhythm syllables while dancing. I'm familiar with the basic teentaal rhythm cycle she began with, because I've learned it at the beginning of my studies in Hindustani classical voice. Next time I'm going to do the kathak warmup I've devised first before practicing with the lessons, so that I can do the footwork fast enough while following along. 

I was feeling tired, so I didn't practice any of the piano exercises. My knees were feeling sore, so I did Ashley Lopez's “Knee Stabilization - Mat Exercises.”

I've discovered a new thing on YouTube, videos of kathak dancers minus their upper bodies performing percussive footwork with ankle-bells to popular Indian songs. I told Anjalica Solomon about this when we were having our second song poetry course. The theme of this week was grief. I talked about how although I know Tori Amos's “Spark” is about her miscarriages, it resonates with me as a song grieving the death of a homeland due to ecocide and climate change. During class I wrote one song about grief and came up with a song idea for the object writing exercise from Pat Pattison's “Write Better Lyrics.”

I got an extra hour of sleep due to the Daylight Savings Time change, which was nice. I was pleasantly surprised that my abs weren't screaming due to DOMS after last night's core workout. 
We went to Walmart to exchange the Saskatoon berry jam we'd bought by mistake for blueberry jam. When we came home Ma made us spiced chai. I usually don't have a second caffeinated drink in the day after my cup of coffee at breakfast, but it was cold and I wanted some nice black tea.

I chopped shallots and garlic for a noodle dish and peeled prawns for an acorn squash dish that Ma cooked. I wrote the previous post on kathak - I had asked a friend for feedback on my blog, and she suggested, among other things, that I go into greater depth into my practice. Slowly, slowly.

I decided against studying diminished 7th chords for the time being - I like my dissonance in moderate amounts. I watched the tutorial on sus 4 chords from Piano Skills for Singers Level 2. The sus 4 chord apparently shows up in a lot of pop and musical theatre, and substitutes the 4th for the 3rd in the major triad. It resolves to the major triad frequently in compositions. When I had viewed this tutorial previously I had noticed that it was easy to play, although Brenda cunningly has you play left hand block chords with right hand broken chords extending to the octave above at the end of the tutorial.

I watched the Week 4 tutorials from Piano Technique and Ear Training Exercises. It goes into A major. Here Brenda does something different, she has you play the chord progressions first singing the bass notes with scale degrees and solfege note names, and then doing the same with the top notes. This week's ear training focuses on singing the tonic triad in solfege, which is what I've been doing this past week as part of studying the Crash Course in Solfege. 

After dinner, for the first time this year, I lifted weights. I completed Day 1 of EPIC Heat, Uncomplicated Complexes, first doing the five minute warmup and the hip/knee/ankle mobility routine I had found on YouTube, and wearing my new supportive shoes. My knees still felt a little sensitive, but in several sections less so than when I had previously attempted this workout. I've learned how to do micro-adjustments to make things easier on myself. By the end I was dripping with sweat, even though it was a cold fall night in Vancouver.

I've made a practice plan for the next couple of weeks - I have a flu shot on Wednesday, so I'm taking a little more time to work on stuff:

1. kathak - learn how to speak the bols or Indian rhythm names while doing the basic footwork;
2. Bengali dance - practice the flower, bird, and fish mudras;
3. fusion bellydance - continue studying the Datura Style Focus program and practicing freestyle dance;
4. weightlifting - work on the EPIC Heat program, skipping the HIIT workouts;
5. body percussion - study the second tutorial and revise the first tutorial from Salvo Russo's YouTube playlist;
6. riq - practice the maqsoum and malfuf rhythms, hopefully in the same sessions so as to keep them fresh;
7. finger cymbals - practice the gallop and Masmoudi Saghir pattern, using the tips from Shira's article and eventually playing them with an Arabic song;
8. harmonica - practice the C major scale;
9. piano - practice singing moving notes to rest notes with solfege note names and hand signals. Practice the Week 4 Piano Technique and Ear Training exercises. Practice improvising the mini blues scale over the blues progression. Practice major 7th, dominant 7th, minor 7th, and sus 4 chords. Clap the beat of songs in ¾ time.
10. voice - practice vocal riyaz. Listen to the ragas that my teacher suggested.

Kathak was actually the very first dance style I had attempted to study, back in my early twenties, long before I had ever heard of Rachel Brice. When I arrived in the lower mainland as an adult my family friends had taken me to a Indian arts function, where I watched two kathak dancers. One of my family friends put me in contact with their teacher, who was gracious enough to accept me as an adult beginner. When I had shown interest in South Asian dance at the age of 12, the teacher at Scholastica's extracurricular dance club had refused to take me in because I was too old. I had had no sustained experience with any sort of sports, dance, or movement arts, and I struggled to learn the movements. I fretted about bothering my neighbours with the stomping footwork, and I found it difficult to do the basic spin the way my teacher taught me. So I found it hard to stick with it, especially when I was struggling with college and living on a low income. I frequently worried that what was the point if I was starting at such an “old” age. 

But I never quite entirely let go of kathak, even after I discovered fusion bellydance and then Linda Arkelian's ballet and contemporary classes. At one point I even looked into getting a BA/MA in kathak with a different teacher, but I didn't have the money back then. 

I was especially interested in how kathak and Hindustani classical music complemented each other with the Mughal influences tying in. My first serious vocal lessons were in Hindustani classical music, because I loved the songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam and they were based in that tradition. Later on, as I studied finger cymbals in bellydance, I was fascinated by how the percussive footwork in kathak acts as a musical element in the dance.

In one of her Bedtime Stories on YouTube, Rachel Brice talks about how she had considered professional training in kathak following her dance ethnology degree at San Francisco State University. It makes you wonder what might have been. She wouldn't have become immediately world famous as THE Bellydance Superstar, but then Colleena Shakti developed her own Indian fusion bellydance style studying Odissi at a professional level as an adult, alongside kathak and Rajasthani folkloric dance. 

I had attempted to study Guru Pali Chandra's online kathak classes, but had failed because I couldn't figure out on my own how to practice with the lessons, and my neighbour downstairs complained about the stomping. I've finally worked out how to practice, and how to do the footwork quietly (the old neighbour slept in the daytime, and I think my new neighbours are at work in the morning.) As I've hit my forties I don't care anymore about being too old to do something that I truly love. Right now I just want to practice with Pali Chandra's free material on YouTube, and see where I go from there.

I'm mostly resting on the weekends. Although I did chop up onion and garlic for Ma's basa steak dish, one of my favourites. I watched and sang along to Lesson 4 of the solfege course in The Versatile Musician, which focused on transitioning from moving notes to rest notes using the solfege note names and hand signals. I started creating a body percussion routine for one of my songs, “The Return of Shyama Mojumdar.” I learned the fish mudra from Riya's Dance Tutorials.

The trailer for “Hadestown” had kept showing up as an ad in my social media - they're touring in Vancouver right now. I'd been interested in learning “Our Lady of the Underground” as a song when I was considering auditioning for the Douglas College Music Diploma. I decided to check the songs out on YouTube. I was blown away by the performance of “Wait For Me” at the 2019 Tonys. I would have loved to see the show, but two tickets cost upwards of 230 dollars.  I remember when I was doing the Basic Musicianship program at Douglas I got to see “Rigoletto”, “Eugene Onegin”, and “Sleeping Beauty.” 

Today I watched the first 38 minutes of the American Ballet Theatre's staging of “Swan Lake” on YouTube. Ma told me she had watched it performed by the Russian Ballet in Dhaka with my brother when we were young. I hadn't gone to a lot of live performances back then, but I did see “Amadeus” and “Tasher Desh” performed by the drama troupe of my school Scholastica.

My glutes were sore today, probably from doing two sessions of dance yesterday, one with leg extensions that I haven't used in a long time. So I decided to work on my core with Ashley Lopez's “Powerhouse” from Datura Online after dinner. It still had its difficult parts, but a lot of it was easier than the previous times I had worked with it. My left thigh, however, cramped up at one point.

I was feeling tired, so I started my morning by practicing the C major scale on harmonica for five minutes. I practiced riq for five minutes. I practiced 3-5-1-3 on finger cymbals for five minutes. I'd found an excellent article on Shira.net  on finger cymbal patterns to play with Arabic songs in 4/4 time, including examples of songs to begin playing finger cymbals with. She includes information on how to speak the sounds associated with each pattern in ME rhythm terms, and how to count the patterns as musicians and as non-musicians. Later I saved all four of Suhaila's “Belly Dance Rhythm Identification” albums to my Spotify.

My energy levels picked up after I practiced the kathak warmup. Today I tried doing it without referring to the namaskar and general warmups video. I did miss a few steps in the namaskar, but I'm getting a handle of it. I also did Salvo Russo's first body percussion routine from his playlist from memory correctly.

I did 30 minutes of vocal riyaz. Today I tried an exercise that starts from Re, instead of the usual Sa, and it was so hard to do correctly. But it's good practice for training one's ear.

I was really hoping to start EPIC Heat today wearing my new supportive shoes. I did Caroline's five minute warmup, then a hip/knee/ankle mobility routine from YouTube - her team had suggested I do such a mobility drill prior to lower body workouts when I had posted on the FB group about my knee issues. But when I tried the first set of exercises from Day 1 my knees protested. 

I did manage to fit in a cardio bellydance class from Kamrah's YouTube channel and a brief piano practice before we went out to get groceries. When we were out I had some chocolate marzipan, so after dinner I did 20 minutes of freestyle dancing to “Wild Winds” from Suhaila's “Remix” album. I worked on my three quarter shimmies on the up and on the down, and incorporated some leg extensions from ballet.

Today has been an exhausting day. I practiced the second tutorial from Salvo Russo's body percussion playlist, “Rock - Pop - Funky”. It was challenging, but I think I'm learning how to actually snap my fingers. I did the kathak warmup, two physio exercises, and “Maya, Jewel, and Arcs”, completing Week 2 of the second month of the Datura Style Focus program - I noticed details in Rachel Brice's video that I hadn't picked up before, such as how to transition the foot placement while doing the Arc. I practiced the malfuf rhythm on riq for five minutes. I practiced the 3-5-1-3 pattern (mostly) correctly on zils for five minutes. I practiced the C major scale on harmonica for five minutes. I chopped a bunch of aromatics and vegetables for Ma's cooking.

I had a good teacher training class with Neeraja Aptikar. She gave some information and raga examples of the last four thaats in Hindustani music, Poorvi, Asavari, Bhairavi, and Tori. She talked about how Hindustani ragas have to have a minimum of five notes, including Sa and at least Ma or Pa, and how ragas by definition must evoke feelings. She talked about how raga names derive from place and season.

I practiced singing the solfege scale up and down starting on low C, D, E, F, G, A, and B, and on middle C, D, and E flat - I tried going up to E natural, but my voice cracked on the high E. I practiced the solfege tonic triad with Do Mi Sol and hand signals in C and D. I practiced five note scales on the piano and technique exercises in D major. I tried improvising on the mini blues scale over shell voicings in a blues progression in C.

I was planning to start Rachel Brice's “Rib Up Study” today, but didn't feel up to it. I tried doing Heather Stants' “Dance Flow Yoga: Spiral & Fly” from Datura Online before dinner. I had trouble doing a pose in the opening floor sequence. But I could do Fallen Triangle, which I couldn't do the last time I tried this class. I tried practicing the sequence on my own without looking at the screen. So I was able to do the first 30 minutes, but didn't feel up to the challenge of learning the standing sequence, which I had never worked on before.