After being back in the swing of things since the new year, my body has been sore and tired. When you’re working constantly and rehearsing you need to take time to recover and do the things necessary for your body to get back into the routine. Self-care is the topic and the thing I will try to begin practicing this year! Taking time for yourself- not pushing aside priorities- but knowing when it’s right to take some time out of the day and treat yourself. For me, I am working on being kinder to my body and that means knowing how to recover after rehearsal and how to prevent myself from really feeling terribly sore the next 3 days.
 
Here are my tips and tricks to the routine I am going to begin implementing into my week:

1. Hydrate. Hydrate. Hydrate. I am notorious for not drinking enough water and I feel that in my muscles the next day.
2. Don’t skip that workout in the gym the next day. Even if I wake up sore the day next day, I try to force myself to get my butt into the gym. Even if I just do cardio for 30 minutes, my muscles feel less sore for the rest of the day. For me, it helps as part of my recovery.
3. Eat potassium rich foods. I did this all the time in college. After a day of class and night of rehearsal, I would eat a banana and honestly feel less sore in the morning than when I skipped that late night fruit.
4. STRETCH!!! After rehearsal, after sitting in your car for 30 minutes driving home, please stretch! Therabands are great to help stretch out your hamstrings (usually that’s where I feel it the most).
5. Take a HOT shower. This is my favourite trick. After a day of work and then a long rehearsal, I take a long, hot shower. This helps to promote blood flow and helps my muscles to relax. This also helps me get to sleep easier and sleep is crucial for recovery.

 
Moving forward- knowing when and how to take care of your body is very important especially being an older dancer. These are simple tips and they are easy to implement into your recovery routine so try it out- your body will thank you! 

-Emily Jaikaran
Shana Simmons Dance Company Member

Surprise! Shana is choreographing a new work for our 3 city tour coming up! Recently we have been playing around and this is a short recap of what's been going down.

​During rehearsals we have been exploring female empowerment in both pedestrian but also in more complex movement based ways. We took a floor phrase and manipulated it in order to show some type of oppression. Since I am a rather small being it was very easy to feel as though Brady was overpowering me. We played with that oppression but also my pushing back in some instances offering some opposition to Brady’s constant push downwards. 

We then played with more pedestrian movement. One exercise I found particularly interesting was having Brady say, “You can’t do that,” after each decision I made. To me, this statement represented society saying I couldn’t do something and that felt rather restricting. It was a fun thing to experiment with because in my experience I've never had someone physically tell me I can not do something but it shows restrictions that society has placed on us. Restrictions that majority of us accept as just “the way it is”. 

This brings up the question: Why do we just accept societal restrictions we do not agree with, and how do we become more aware that we are doing so?

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