Happy Birthday to me! Me as a baby-dancer

Today was my 29th birthday, and I celebrated with pork chops from Greenwood farm today, and a night out with friends last night with Ethiopian food and a trip to the City museum.

Anyway, I figured what better occasion than my birthday to talk about myself shamelessly, right?

A reader named Rach asked me the following question:

May I know how you went from a beginner to performing?

I was giving this some thought, and I thought this might be a fun time to look back at my performance history... Some people look at baby pictures on their birthdays, I'm subjecting you guys to baby-dancer pictures.

My very first performance was a year and four months after I started dancing. It was a group performance at a dance recital organized by my first teacher, Monica.

You can see a very blurry picture of that first performance to the right. Our whole group wore these matching beladi dresses made from $20 veils. Best. Beginner. Costume. Ever. I still have that veil-turned dress, and have worn it since then, and have lent it to others. I am very glad that Monica had us wear a costume like this. At that point in my dance experience, I would have looked like I was playing dress-up in a full-on bedlah.

The performance itself went ok. I think we did about 3 songs, a plain oriental piece, a veil dance, and a cane dance. If I remember correctly, my classmates all opted not to do the cane, so my teacher and I did it as a duet. And thus a love affair with saiidi music and mizmar were born.

I was terrified before this performance, and in all truth, I think I kind-of stumbled through the choreographies. I had felt pretty confident in them when we worked on them in class, but I wasn't really ready for how different it felt to actually perform. Even though we were performing for less than 20 people, half of whom were there to see the adult ballet beginners we were sharing our recital with. (Who were also adorable, by the way) It could have been 5 people, and would still have been terrifying.

I felt exhilarated when it was over. I knew I had a long way to go in my learning, but I was so proud that I had gotten up and performed. At that point, the idea of dancing solo seemed completely unimaginable. I thought I might get there some day, but that day didn't seem particularly close.

Oddly enough, my first solo ended up only happening about 6 months later. I had by then moved to St Louis, and started taking classes with Diana. Since Dahlal is here in St Louis, I got sucked into buying a costume right away. This one was relatively inexpensive by bellydance costume standards, I think I paid $275 for the bedlah. I still have it, and still love it. I don't care if that super-long fringe is less fashionable right now, I love making that fringe fly.

I didn't really feel ready to solo, but Diana wanted me to, to see what my dancing looked like. I danced at a hafla, it was a very low-key thing, and a perfect venue for a first solo. I danced to the first 3-4 minutes of Ranet al Khul Khal from the first Jalilah's Raks Sharki CD.

The performance went reasonably well. Looking at the video, I looked basically like a two-year dancer. Not great, by any means, but enthusiastic. Too many oddly timed turns, some weird choices of accents, floppy fish/helicopter hands, etc. But for all that, it's a performance I don't cringe when I go back and look at. I'm happy with myself for having danced to traditional, non-pop music for my first solo. I don't think I did the song great justice, but I'm proud that I started out challenging myself.

Since then I have danced at a lot of haflas, and a handful of workshop shows. A lot of those performances continue to be group performances, with my friends, or my classmates. I also do a handful of more formal group performances organized by my teacher.

I haven't really moved very far into the world of professional dancing. As many of you readers know, I dance a few times a year at charity fundraiser variety shows organized by a couple of my friends, but I have not put myself out there to look to be hired by people I don't already know. To be honest, the world of professional bellydance doesn't seem particularly appealing to me - this is my hobby. I go to a lot of workshops because I want to be the best dancer I can be, and because I love learning, but I'm not looking to turn it into a job - strikes me as a waste of a perfectly good hobby. This is my escape from my daily life, I don't want to have to worry about hustling for gigs or students.

It was fun to dig these pictures up! Thanks, Rach, for the inspiration to reminisce.