Bellydance: Experiences

I feel like a rock star

Yesterday evening, I had my first experience being recognized. :)

I stopped by the library after work yesterday, and while waiting in line to check out my books, the woman behind me strikes up a conversation, and tells me how she found Egyptian-themed paper to create a scrapbook page from the library Cultural Connections show. It was then that I realized that she and her children had been in the audience at a show I had been a part of at the library, and she recognized me. I was memorable. I feel pretty awesome right now.

Is there a lipstick shortage in St Louis?

The show Saturday night was fantastic, but I did notice something odd.

The stage at the Kirkwood community center is small, and the lights aren't nearly as big and bright as lights on a more formal theatrical stage. But even though they are smaller, these lights are closer to the dancer than the lights on a big stage, so the end result is the same: washed out makeup.

So why was it that several dancers Saturday night, all of whom had danced on that stage before and were familiar with the lights, wore daytime-shade colors of lipstick? Bright hollywood red lips go with every costume, and we are belly dancers, we shouldn't be afraid of dramatic makeup! But it was amazing to me how noticeable it was to see a beautiful dancer, in a beautiful costume, whose facial expressions looked vague and indistinct because they didn't seem to have much in the way of lips.

(I wore MAC Viva Glam I, which was recommended to me by Samira who is one of Dahlal's most often-used models. It's a little darker than the MAC Russian Red that I used to use, and I like the color better with my skin tone. I have visible lips in all of my pictures from that night.)

Not so oud-y anymore

Aradia worked us much harder than I realized today! I felt good while we were in class and moving, but once I got home, I realized that choosing a song for tonight that involved shimmying for 4 minutes might be a bad choice considering how sore my legs already are. Oh well, it's a test of my performance skills, right?

Thankfully, my dress is heavily sequined, so even if my shimmies are fairly small, the stage lights reflecting off the sequins will make them visible.

Wish me luck!

Lunch break

We're on lunch break, the first two hours of the workshop just flew by. Aradia is as sweet as can be, and she keeps the class moving really quickly. Also, I was reminded what great handouts she prepares.

Look for me at the Aradia workshop

I'll be at the Aradia workshop today and tomorrow in St Louis. If you're there, come find me. I'll be easy to spot, I finally got myself a shirt to advertise myself at workshops. :) The shirt is black, with gold lettering and says "Natalia" on the front and "www.shimmyblog.org" on the back in pseudo-sanskrit lettering. It's silly, but it should make me easy to spot. :) Find me and say hello!

I'm feeling oud-y

I've been struggling to pick the perfect song to perform to at the workshop show Saturday night. I want to perform something Oriental, because as I've been listening to music, it has been the delicate, internal music that has been attracting me.

I decided on the song "Fog Al Shoq" of of the CD Oud Mosaics by Amer Amouri. It's a fairly short song, just under 4 minutes. And It just struck me as a very pretty and emotional song.

The tough part is that the whole song is performed on solo oud. No drums, no other instruments, no vocals, nothing. And since it's all oud, that means it's all shimmy. Shimmy shimmy shimmy for 4 minutes. Not really an issue for me, since I can easily shimmy for much longer than that, but as I rehearse, I've been trying to work in other shimmies: earthquake shimmies, shoulder shimmies, 3/4 shimmies. All to mix it up.

I'm improvising, but I've decided to keep my movement very simple. I'm concentrating on a small handful of details:

• Maintaining very lifted posture through the whole piece
• Restraining my floppy fish hands, and instead doing pretty, elegant things with my arms
• Including moving my head in my dancing
• Including standing still and taking a breath at some point in the song

The economy is a bummer

The economic slowdown has hit my life in a very real way: both of my weekly dance classes have been canceled for lack of enrollment.

This bites, since there really aren't any other classes out here in west St Louis county that really match with what I want to study. So for the time being, I will have to cobble together a plan out of home practice, monthly classes with one teacher, DVDs, workshops, and choreos with another teacher. I know I have a lot more available to me than a lot of other people in a similar position. But still...

I'm thinking about taking up a tap dancing class. there's a tap teacher in town who we shared a dressing room with at a show a couple of years ago. She and her students were hilarious and seemed to be having a great time back stage. Also, I haven't tap danced since I was something like 8 years old.

Excited about Aradia

Way back last summer, I went to a workshop with Aradia in Fayetteville, AK.

Andrea of Simone's her in St Louis is bringing her in at the end of January, and the details are up on the Simone's website. I am so excited!

I'm getting the hang of this

Saturday's presentation of Saiidi dance went fine. I ended up not being able to track down anyone else to join me on such short notice, so I gave the presentation by myself. It went really well! I was very, very nervous all morning before the show, and I had to come up with a plan for how to structure the demo part of the class a little differently. Once I got there, though, it all came together, everything went well, the audience had lots of questions, and it was a lot of fun.

Turns out that she couldn't make it for Monday night's presentation either, so me and another dancer did it together. It was great! The audience was a little different, no kids, just a college Contemporary World Cultures class. They were great, and had fun dancing with us.

Overall, the whole experience has made me feel a lot more confident in my ability to present and teach on my own if necessary. It was a great learning experience for me, even though I was ostensibly the teacher!

Thinking on my feet

I got a call this morning. I was going with my teacher today to do a little cultural presentation of Saidi dance. Well, it turns out now that *I* will be doing a presentation about Saidi dance. I've put out calls and emails to all of the other students who have been helping with these presentations as well, hoping to track down a partner, but it looks like it may just be me.

I'm a little anxious, but I have assisted at 4 of these presentations already, so I know the material, and I feel I am a good public speaker. But seriously, it's a new thing for me to step in and do something like this by myself.

Cross your fingers for me, everyone!