Dance Recap

I may go back and edit this post later to add a pic or two, but the pics from the workshops haven't been posted yet.

My dance weekend in Tempe was both invigorating and exhausting at the same time. There's nothing quite like a great show and 6 hours of workshops to really inspire a dancer, but by the same token there's nothing like excitement-fueled insomnia and 6 hours of workshops to wear a dancer out!

After my usual two hours of tribal class with Anaya Tribal, I went home with my awesome friend and classmate Meghan, who has generously offered up her sofa as my home-away-from-home for belly dance weekends (I say generous because I'm going to be up there for 3 weekends out of 5!). We had fun times talking about dance, costumes, jewelry, and all the things that make tribal dancers happy.

Friday was shopping with Meghan and Jen. We went to Beads Galore, where I picked up some great tribal beads. I guess I could have photographed those and used them on this post! We also went clothes shopping, where I picked up a couple of scarves, because being a dancer makes you a scarf addict. It's true.

Friday night was the super cool and amazing show! Many of Plaza de Anaya's teachers and the workshop instructors took to the stage, each doing what they do best. There was Egyptian style belly dance, ATS, ITS, Tribal Fusion, Bollywood, and fire-spinning-without-the-fire. I even got to see Helena Vlahos, who you may be familiar with even if you're not a dancer -- she holds the world record for flipping coins on her belly, and can do crazy things like line up a row of quarters on her abs and flip every other one. But for this show, she focused on good old fashioned belly dance.

And Saturday was workshops! Dance Therapeutics with Deb Rubin, focusing on the upper body, gave us some great yoga and stretches for warming up and taking good care of the spine and shoulder girdle. It reminded me how badly I really need to get back into yoga on a regular basis. Supah Saucy Spins and Kicks with Zafira featured Spanish-inspired choreography and lots of fun belly dance roleplay exercises, including a belly dance gang fight. Ooey-Gooey, Slow and Slinky with Jill Parker wasn't nearly as slow as I expected, but Jill taught us some great traveling moves inspired by vintage belly dance, two fun combos, and gave us some time to just play with gliding around the room with whatever traveling steps we wanted and then dropping into the combos.

Because I'm really used to workshops that cram too much info into my head, causing me to forget all the combos, I loved that Zafira and Jill both gave us the chance to take what we had physically learned and apply it creatively, and explore our personalities as dancers. All of the teachers and their assistants did a great job, and I'd happily take workshops with any of them again.

Now it's back to normal life as we know it... of course, there's a three hour Turkish Romany dance workshop I'm considering this weekend!

Super fun belly dance week!

I've been focusing most of my talk lately on beads and jewelry, since this is technically a blog for my Erthe Fae Designs business and not a personal blog for all the silly things going on in my life... but hey! Belly dance is still awesome and I feel like talking about it.

This week is the start of about a month and a half of awesome belly dance events almost every week! Tonight, I'm off to Mesa to see Bellydance Superstars Presents: Bombay Bellywood. I wasn't going to go, because there are so many other events coming up and almost all of them are in Phoenix, which means a lot of driving. But then I realized, what the heck was I thinking? This is THE big bellydance show, should I really let a little drive discourage me? Especially when the tickets were half-off if you knew the right coupon code?

Of course, Phoenix is experiencing thunderstorms and hail and flash flood warnings, so it's going to be more than a little drive... but I've already got my ticket so there's no backing out now. Wish me luck!

Thursday is my usual class night, beginner and intermediate Anaya Tribal. We've been learning and practicing formations in intermediate, as well as constantly practicing and improving the moves we already know.

Friday and Saturday is the Plaza de Anaya Intensive. Friday is an awesome show, featuring the workshop instructors and many PdA teachers. Saturday I'll be taking workshops with Deb Rubin, Zafira, and Jill Parker. I'm pretty excited!

Weekend of Dancing

My weekend of dancing was a fun and educational time. On Friday night, I went down to the Black Rose Caffe to watch and perform in the hafla. It was a great evening, lots of talented tribal style and tribal fusion dancers and a very enthusiastic and supportive audience. My performance didn't go quite as well as I had planned; I started out a little nervous and as such, I forgot some of the things I was going to do and all the flaws that I had been working through in my practice came back in my dance. But people seemed to enjoy it, so that's the important part. Unfortunately, I can't post the video here on my blog, as it's 10MB over Blogger's tiny limit, but if you're one of my Facebook friends, you can view it there.

The guest of honor, Oracle from Atlanta, performed twice and was a real treat to watch. Amazing physical skill and really in touch with her music and the audience. Also, abs that I would consider selling my soul for. You know, if anyone out there is in the market for a soul...

A bit shout-out to Brandye for organizing the hafla, inviting me to dance, and gathering such a great assortment of local performers!

Saturday had a serious lack of dancing fun times and is honestly not worth talking about.

But then Sunday rolled around! And off I went to my workshop with the amazing and talented Ava Fleming, who is based out of the Phoenix area. I had been warned that Ava would probably kick my butt, and the workshop was in fact pretty hard. There were moments when my muscles were crying for a reprieve, but luckily I didn't have any lasting ill effects. Thank goodness for CrossFit, it's really helped my endurance for belly dance workshops.

Ramona, the lady who organized the workshop, did a great job. The workshop itself was held at a ballet school, so there was a good floor, lots of mirrors, and good lighting and sound. There was water and snacks to keep us hydrated and energized for our 3 1/2 hours of drilling techniques and then rolling them into combos. I'd like to publicly thank her for putting on such a nice event!

After a quick trip home for a shower and a pretty dress, I was back out the door again to watch the showcase, which featured Ava and an assortment of local Tucson dancers. While Friday was all about the tribal gals, Sunday night was heavy on the Egyptian style, with a little debke (a social line dance from the Middle East) and one awesome Turkish dancer. It was nice to see all aspects of the Tucson belly dance community in one weekend -- though it would have been even better to see them all together in one show!

And to think I was worried that my dance life would slow down to a boring crawl when summer rolled around. I actually had to choose between a workshop with Ava and a workshop with Oracle, and I have more difficult choices ahead of me as the summer just gets hotter!

Bad week followed by a day of Pure Awesomeness!

Image shamelessly stolen from Levant al Sonora's Facebook page.

If you're wondering why I've been so quiet for the past week, it's because all I would have been able to blog about was the tedious list of annoying things that happened to me. None of it was truly awful on its own, just the little trials and tribulations that an adult must deal with in life, but they came all together in one week and piled on top of each other until I felt quite irritated by it all, paranoid about what would happen next.

But then I had two wonderful days. The first was Thursday, the blissful retreat of my evening full of belly dance classes. I delivered a custom octopus necklace to one of my classmates (unfortunately, I didn't have time to photograph it before I gave it to her), had a good time in all of my classes, and got some much needed ego-boosting compliments from my teachers.

The big blast of refreshing happiness was yesterday, however. Our local chapter of the Middle Eastern Culture and Dance Association (MECDA) brought workshops and a showcase down to Tucson (they're of course based in Phoenix, which has an unfairly high concentration of amazing dancers). The rundown:

Warning! Belly dance nerd content ahead!

I started the day learning American Tribal Style moves from Lenay of Kamalah (Arizona's only true ATS troupe), and then Shannon of Divine Chaos turned them into tribal fusion combos, complete with cues, so that any troupe could add them to their repertoire. I really liked the dual-teacher system here, and Shannon's combos were really cool.

What struck me as I thought about this class today is how different the belly dance world is from the beading world. At one point, Shannon said (I'm paraphrasing) "So, if you take this back to your troupe and teach it to them, you could do it this way or this way..." There was a clear expectation that dancers would want to share these moves with people who did not take the workshop, and that was OK. In the bead world, it's a big faux pas to take a class and then use the handout to teach your friends who didn't take the class... and that's just fine, I don't blame a teacher for wanting people to pay for the fruit of their labors.

Next was zill class with Mahin, a dancer that I admire very much because she sends out these great "belly dance quickie" e-mails every day, with a new tip or technique or inspirational video. I love people who give to their community like that. We learned three new-to-me zill rhythms, and she taught combinations to practice them with. I had some trouble with the moves and combos because they were pretty alien to my world of 4-count tribal moves, but I look forward to practicing the rhythms.

After a lunch break, Shannon came back and taught a short bonus workshop on double fans! This free class was actually my favorite, because I've always wanted to learn fans. Shannon taught us how to open and close paired fans with natural movements of the arm and wrist, and a few tribal-fusion style combos that look really pretty with paired fans. She even covered dramatic ways to come on stage with the fans. Afterwords, we all posed with our diverse fans for the photo above. Isn't it pretty?

Later in the evening was the Spring Showcase, featuring the teachers from the workshops and other talented Arizona dancers. It was being held at a shop called People's Imports, which seemed like an odd choice to me... dancing in a store? Would there be enough room for the dancers to move? Ample seating? Turns out it was awesome. The shop itself is old brick, decorated with imported rugs and furniture and cool stuff, and they even had a raised stage which the musicians occupied. The dancers performed in a wide open space, half-surrounded by low seats.

I loved seeing a lot of the tribal troupes that I know from the Phoenix area actually performing -- so far I'd only seen them on video, or in informal party-type settings. It was also fun to see some local Tucson dancers that I didn't know putting on some great shows! And Mahin gave a show-stopping glitzy cabaret-style performance in a costume that I'm pretty sure had aurum 2x Swarovski crystals all up in its fringe (there's a little something for my beaders!). After the performers, Divine Chaos's live band played a number for the audience to get up and dance, the perfect cap to the night.

The only bad part is knowing that this won't happen again until NEXT year! Oh sure, I can travel to workshops, but having MECDA bring the fun to me (and my fellow Tucson dancers) was a nice treat!