Friday, October 16, 2009

Fun times not as advertised

Here's a picture of my Mistress of Ghosts earrings. Blogger is being dumb and rotating pictures for no reason again, but we can pretend that I just took the photo at an artsy angle.

So, as the title of this post suggests, last night's concert was not quite what I and my fellow belly dancers expected. First of all, despite the fliers saying that the show started at 9pm, they didn't let people in until after 9, and then we had to sit through 2 hours of the house DJ, who was playing very loud hip-hop. Things at least got interesting after an hour and a half, when the previously empty dance floor became the stage for a few hip hop/break dancers to show off their very impressive moves. At around 11, the opening act came up. Unfortunately, this was another DJ, and his music wasn't that great.

Finally, Beats Antique took the stage at somewhere between 11:30 and midnight, and the dance floor filled up. It was an interesting mix of belly dancers, burlesque dancers (and some bleed over between those two groups), break dancers, normal people at a club dancers, people standing on the floor just swaying a bit, and one annoying trancy guy who was taking up more than his fair share of floor space.

The music was pretty good, though much more skewed towards the hip-hop end and not so much the Middle Eastern and Gypsy influenced pieces that I've seen belly dancers performing to. They also didn't have Zoe Jakes dancing for them, which was a big disappointment. I still managed to have some fun dancing (after all, I've applied my moves to disco, metal, and classic rock), but it was really not what I expected.

After a bit, the breakdancers pretty much took over the floor, and I got shoved into a corner as everyone else crowded in to see what was going on. Now, admittedly, those guys had some awesome skills and I really enjoyed watching them... But I came there to dance as well! Maybe if the club hadn't set up tables on more than half the dance floor (most of which were not occupied), there would have been room for everyone to have their own little space to dance.

I think I'd probably see Beats Antique live again if given the chance, but only if I knew they were actually coming on stage at a decent hour, and with a reasonable sized dance floor.

4 comments:

  1. I'd be very unhappy about being there so long without the band that was advertised and then being shut out by other dancers. Maybe you should let the venue know.

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  2. AJ. I'm so sorry that your event didn't work out the way that you'd hoped. I was really looking forward to an upbeat post tonight. I can only imagine how disappointed you are.

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  3. What a bum! I would be disappointed too in not being able to do my own thing...but dance at home, right???

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  4. Marilee, a lot of people were pretty unhappy about it -- seems like the club regulars didn't mind, but it seems really ridiculous to me to have a concert on a work/school night not start until after 11pm. I'm not sure if I'll write to the venue about it, that's probably just how they normally do things.

    Karen, I'm actually not too disappointed. It was annoying at the time, but I did have SOME fun, and it's important just to get out of the house and try new things, even if they don't work out as I had planned.

    Dot, I'll definitely dance at home! I'm struggling with the slow moves, need more practice. Snake arms hurt so much O_O

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