I was watching TV recently, and the commercial pitchman extolled the virtues of “out with the old, in with the new”. Since this is the start of a new year, it seemingly makes sense that we would want to discard those old habits and ideas that haven’t served us well and replace them with newer, shinier, better habits, thoughts, beliefs, actions, etc. But I would posit that not everything old is bad, and sometimes it is in looking to what we already hold in our minds and hearts - not to mention our closets and music stashes - that we might find some forgotten treasures that can still serve us well.
One example of this is when the contents of my iTunes library recently vanished into thin air. Still don’t know exactly what happened, but it was all gone. In my efforts to restore the many lost playlists, I rediscovered some favorite music that I hadn’t listened to in years- great tunes that I can love and use anew. This discovery compelled me to dust off some old choreography and workshop notes which I found to be full of wonderful ideas for class and performance. There were great combos and moves that I had totally forgotten about which I am excited to reincorporate into my dance repertoire.
Along these same lines, during my end-of-the year household purge, I found a VCR that I thought was long gone hidden in the back of a closet. And it still works! So I started to sift through old performance and instructional videos, and I found some real gems. (Does anyone else remember “The Dancer’s Toolkit” by Baraka or FatChance BellyDance’s “WomanPower Workout”? How about Domba’s “Belly Belly Afro Belly”?) I had just been thinking that I needed to purchase some new DVDs, but now I have plenty of golden oldies to keep me occupied for quite a while!
Of course, the merit of shopping at thrift and consignment stores for costuming items and elements is well- documented, but just going through my closet recently yielded some real finds that I can either use as-is or reconstruct into something fabulous. Have you ever found a $20 bill in the pocket of a jacket that you haven’t worn in a while? It is a great feeling, and it was exactly how I felt when I rediscovered these old pieces that I can remake into something new.
So the moral of the story is like that Girl Scout standard: “make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver and the other, gold.”
Speaking of things of value, anyone who emails worldinmotindance@gmail.com by 4 PM, Sunday, January 8 and mentions the keyword “salvage” will be entered into a raffle for a $25 World In Motion gift card. So be sure to re-purpose this post for a chance at something great!
