I'll be dancing this weekend at the Simone's Seventh Veil hafla this weekend, and I've been so busy and distracted lately that I just don't know how ready I really feel.
I went back and forth on my music, but I think I've got it narowed down. I was originally going to dance to the "Mavi Mavi" medley on The Magic of John Bilezikjian, but it's 6 minutes long. I scrapped it in favor of the version of Aziza on the same album. It's shorter, and a little slower. (Though I like that the medly actually changes songs, so it's not a boring and repetative 6 minutes)
I improv when I dance solo, so my "practice" has consisted mostly of listening to the song over, and over, and over again, until I just *know* where every tempo change, accent, and whatever is. I can only imagine what I look like in my car, dancing with my ribcage and arms while sitting at a stop light. But all belly dancers do that, right?
I've spent some time going over my previous performance videos. I have decided that my goal this time is to just slow down and chill out. That's why I'm glad I chose the slower song. This version has a kind of langorous feel to it, so I'm going to try to just not do so much. The music has a lot of accent-then-pauses. I am going to focus on keeping that pause in my dance too, hitting the accent then *stopping*, you know just for a breath, but basically breaking the momentum of my movement in the same way the music does.
I know it's something that plenty of dancers who have been dancing a lot longer than me struggle with, so I don't have this idea that I will sudenly go from frenetic student dancer to languid ooey-gooey Egyptian queen in one performance... but every performance is an opportunity for improvement, so I'm putting it out there.
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