After a full year I am back up at UC Davis teaching a little hip hop. Just as this form of dance changes, my teaching of this course is a little different. I am also listening and closely watching my students and teaching who's in the room. It's one of the mantras of yoga training and it's now part of my teaching. Doing whatever's necessary in class to challenge the students and push them to progress. The combination we are working on was choreographed to Janelle Monae's Dance or Die. It's very fun and has a driving beat, but it's FAST! And I think it's more of an Intermediate combo - and not a Beginning one. It's forced us to play with the same combination for the first two weeks. Tomorrow we will be playing with a bit more and hopefully we will be able to do it to the song it was choreographed to. We are doing our history presentations so we don't have the entire hour and 40 minutes to dance, but I plan to push them just a bit tomorrow. I am sure I will continue to feel sore on Friday.

This has all been interesting as I am getting over a bout of summer sickness. I have been going non-stop teaching and performing and the temperature changes in Berkeley and San Francisco to Livermore and Davis gave me the sniffles. Actually it started in the throat and moved up to my nasal cavities. The performances down in Livermore of The Real Thing that started at 90 degrees at the beginning of the run wound up at 60 degrees in Act 2 in the last weekend. The great thing is that we all loved doing this show. The weather did not affect each of us playing our truths. The rest of the company forced me to be a better performer - a better storyteller. And for that I am a better person. I am extremely grateful for the experience.

The sickness wouldn't have been too bad, but it's lasted 3 weeks and I had 3 musical theatre auditions. The first was a long shot, but with the other 2 even with my reduced range and strength I managed to get callbacks. I hope that's due to the technique and skill I have rather than the weakness of the talent pool here.

I don't have much else to share quite yet, but I am finally starting to feel at home here - building a community. I am hoping for one of the shows to come through, however. The remaining time will then give me the opportunity to teach, finish my solo piece and satisfy my administrative duties with the 3 dance companies for which I currently work.

Ah, the life of the performing artist and finding my way in the Bay.