The new spirit of DIY adventure

I had a very successful livingroom dance session this morning, which I believe represents a new level in this progressionary move. It has been the general case that to really achieve a level of thereness and attunality in livingroom dancing requires a few cocktails, which is not a good thing. Moderated cocktail hour is certainly okay, and there is definite evidence that a beer, a glass of red wine, or the equivalent of a shot of whiskey a day is quite healthy. The problem is that strenuous exercise in combination with even a little alcohol is quite unhealthy, and I can get pretty strenuous with the dance maneuver, so...
Anyway, this morning after breakfast I spent about 45 minutes really getting into Fiest's album The Reminder in a way that has traditionally been reserved for the live setting or mild to heavy drunkenness. This I consider to be a major breakthrough, and the movement was also more fluid in its' transitions between the three vaguely outlined stylistic approaches that I've somehow developed.
Now it's hard to get a handle on a description of my style in relation to the other stuff that's out there. It has a definitive element of hip-hop movement, but moreso with relation to the dancing that hip-hop dancestyles developed from, and it owes some debt to ballet and martial arts.
Let me try to explain how I think my style has developed because it's not entirely clear. I've never taken any kind of formal dance classes and learned entirely through mimicry. When I was an adolescent, I would tape all the stuff MTV used to show with Micheal Jackson. Of course, this was before all the molestation accusations started flying, and back then they used to have whole weekends of programming dedicated to MJ. They'd have the long form video for Smooth Criminal, which has my most adored dance moment. In the longer video they have a break in the middle of the song when Micheal is in the pool hall all dressed in that white suit from the album cover of Thriller, and he and the other dancers do this kind of circular slow-mo moonwalk, which is just awesome. I used to spend hours trying to imitate that or learn, in it's entirety, his performance from the Motown Twenty-Fifth anniversary program where he does Billie Jean and performs the moonwalk for the first time. For whatever reason I was completely obssessed with learning how to move like Micheal Jackson. I even had some documentaries of the Jackson 5 days, and learned a few of those routines, altough they were way easier. Still, for whatever you have to say about Micheal Jackson (and certainly pedophile is a pretty damning criticism), he did choreograph all the J5 stuff when he was 10 years old.
Another percieved influence was that moment from Doctor Detroit when James Brown performs. That's the only JB stuff I can ever remember seeing, and I would try to recreate those moves minus the split, which I just can't do. There is a distinct element of his moves in my own. Also, I think seeing my sister's adolescent ballet performances is in there somehow because I do have an element of ballet movement in one particular approach I take. It is coupled with martial arts inflected movement, which comes from having studied Tae Kwon Do for about six months five years ago and watching Bruce Lee, Sonny Chiba, and others.
So there is a serious DIY quotient to my dancing, but it is becoming a naturalistic self-choreographical expression that is beginning to develop into a serious pursuit. I have been serious about dancing for probably eight or so years, but only within the live musical context. I've been dancing on and off for almost fifteen years now, but with a bit more determination and conscious intent now for about eight. Still, it is only within the past six months that I've begun this newfound personal, private, livingroom choreography, and it has exponentially changed the way I move, which is exciting. Soon I'll get the vid.cam, and begin to process the development through that filter and also post some of it maybe, so stay tuned for that. I'll keep you updated on how that goes. Sorry about the wierd tone of this post. I was listening to Chuck Klosterman's killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story this morning, and his formal style coupled with devestating ironic distance was so hilarious that the formality seems to have seeped in a little here.