I will never forgive you Practice Video

Recently, I have had the opportunity to work with an extremely talented group of musicians in Greenville, SC by the name of "Wasted Wine." In addition to jamming and improv work, I've gotten to go on the road with this group and am really looking forward to where this new avenue of artistry may go in the future. Above is a video from practice before our Knoxville, TN show with me performing a sword dance to "I will never forgive you"

Hopefully I will have more pictures and videos to share soon - because this is just TOO MUCH FUN!

Sword Dance Workshop Follow Up

Balance Practice: Shifting your weight with Swords

Sunday's sword workshop in Williamston, SC was a ton of fun!

I spent hours working on my handout for the workshop, and what was supposed to be 3 pages ended up as 5, but no one seemed to mind. Luckily, I planned a day of placing the sword on the head, taking it off, and then putting it back. 3 hours is a bit long to keep a sword on your head (ouch!).

Sword dance: Angling the body

I began the workshop with a brief discussion on what to look for when choosing a sword for sword dance, sword dance history, sword care, and sword dance safety. We moved from there onto balanced body posture, exercises for balancing, and balancing the sword on your head. With the sword on our heads, we practiced shifting our weight from one foot to the other, onto the balls of our feet, and from there to walking.

Flat rotations with the sword balanced on the palm

New sword dancers are often surprised by the weight of the sword on their head, so we took the swords off our heads and spent some time discussion body angles, framing the body with the sword, and dancing with the sword before we place it on our heads.

The sword is an extremely dynamic prop  for dancing so we spent an hour swinging the sword around, dancing to and away from the sword, isolating parts of our body while we used the sword to frame our moves, and putting all of these concepts into dance combinations. I taught some of my favorite sword dance combos with coloful names such as "shave the gypsy" and "I'm gonna wash that sword right out of my hair."

Sword Dance

Personally, I am a huge fan of spinning and turning with my sword, so I spent a good amount of time teaching spins and turns as well as some combinations of rotations with the sword balanced on the palm of the hand mixed with turns, swings, and catches to round out this section of the class. After turning with the sword in our hands, we put the sword back on our heads and did some more spinning.

I love swords for a lot of reasons. I also love dance...and I love science. In spinning with a sword on your head, I got the opportunity to have all of my loves collide and give a brief physics lecture (really brief, I know not everyone is as big a nerd as I am).  So, we spent some time learning to start spinning, and a whole lot more time learning ways to stop spinning.

So many options on where to balance a sword!

 When I first planned the workshop, I also planned a time table for everything, and amazingly enough, I stuck to it, so we had time for 30 minutes of floorwork. I started out by teaching a variety of exercises that will help strengthen and tone the muscles that are required for safe floorwork, and then we spent a little time practicing hip circles and round the worlds with the swords on our heads.

I finished off the day with a short demonstration of some of the other places where you can balance your sword (and my caveat that utilizing too many of these in one routine gets a bit kitchy) and some strong poses.

Sword Dance Poses

We stretched, happy to have the swords off of our heads. I was extremely proud of everyone who came out and worked so hard to learn the basics of sword dance - everyone did great!

Thank you to everyone in Pelzer/Williamston, for being so welcoming. Thanks to everyone else, for driving out and spending your Sunday with me. Big super duper thanks to Kim Alexander for having me. Hopefully everyone now has the tools to embrace sword dance safely and with joy!


If you want to learn sword dance, my intermediate/advanced level topics class will be starting soon in Greenville, and the first topic I will cover is sword dance!

Uniq by Jaidra's Upcoming Events

Uniq by Jaidra Silk Scarves

I will be exhibiting artwork at Freedom Weekend Aloft this coming weekend on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday (May 28 - 30) . The artists' showcase will run from 2 to 7 pm each afternoon. If you're going to be in Greenville this weekend, this is going to be an incredible event with concerts, frisbee dog competition, games, hot air balloons, and of course ART!
I will have silk scarves, pillows, veils, and paintings available as well as jewelry.

Jaidra Sword Dance

The following Sunday, June 5, I will be teaching this Sword Dance Workshop in Williamston, SC. I am looking forward to this one. Some bellydance experience is necessary to get the most out of this class. I will be focusing on swinging and spinning the sword, balance, and fluidity with a brief lecture section on proper care and storage of swords.

Custom Fairy Henna Back Piece

I am following this up with henna at the Savannah Asian Festival as a guest artist with Crimson Arts Henna. Elizebeth, Crimson Arts' main artist taught me how to mix and apply henna and continues to function as my henna art mentor and I am honored that she asked me to help out at this event on June 11.