Big announcement at Southern Fried Tribal this weekend!!!!

First registration will be available at workshops and Red Light show this Saturday for a yet un-announced surprise workshop coming early Fall. YOU DO WANT TO BE FIRST IN LINE FOR THESE!!!!! PROMISE!



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Southern Fried Tribal @ Red Light Cafe!!!! Saturday July 12th

w/ Awalim (GA), Devyani (AL), the Mezmer Society (NC) and Jahara Phoenix(GA)!

Doors open at 8, show starts at 9pm
Tickets for the show are only available at the door, price is $12
Each workshop is $35 and you can reg at southernfriedtribal.eventbrite.com


Workshops with our out of town guests! Workshops already filling up so get your reg in soon, this is your chance to get to study with these popular TribalCon teachers in a more intimate setting.

It is a long standing tradition to have an out of town guest at our summer Red Light show and to invite them to teach a workshop....this year we have TWO! The workshops will be taking place at Red Light (very exciting!) so space is limited to 20 people for each workshop.

The schedule for during the day will be:


Registration will take place at 12 noon at Red Light Cafe.


12:30-2:30 Burlesque-esque with Onca- Get in touch with your vaudeville attitude, with bad*ss strengthening drills, work on dance combos, theatre excersizes, and more! How to walk, emote, etc...Now that you know how to dance, how do you PERFORM?

~The Mezmer Society was founded in autumn 2007, debuting at the Yard Dogs Road show in Asheville and and this year they were invited to teach and perform at TribalFest in CA! Onca is the Director of Baraka Mundi and August is the President of the Accordian club, together they are the Mezmer Society, fusing the spirit of the speak easy with bellydance.


2:30-4:30pm ATS formations, fades and combos with Devyani!- Our favorite subjects!!!

~Devyani performs pure American Tribal Style Bellydance (ATS) in theFatChanceBellyDance format. ATS is a modern style of bellydance with roots in Egyptian bellydance and stylistic influences from Spain and India . The dancers interact through a system of non-verbal cues to create a fresh, high energy performance unique to each venue and performance. This style is the launching pad for many Tribal Fusion groups. All pieces performed tonight will be in the traditional ATS improvisational style perfected by creator, Carolena Nericcio.


Follow the link to attend the workshops!
southernfriedtribal.eventbrite.com

All events, workshops and show, will take place at RED LIGHT CAFE!

553 Amsterdam Ave
Atlanta, GA 30306
404-874-7828

For more information contact Ziah @ 404 581 0199

www.awalim.com

Prepping for Pennsic

In place of my regular classes at Several Dancers Core, the next couple of Tuesdays I will be brushing up on my zill workshops that I will be teaching at Pennsic. Anyone is welcome to come to these classes or the ones at Pennsic! I think I am teaching Wed afternoon of War Week at Pennsic.

July 8th & 15th, 2008

7-8pm Basic Technique:
Ziah's infamous Zill Drill and basic rhythms. Ziah's Zill Drill will get your arms and feet moving while playing your zills, you . Basic zill patterning and rhythm recognition will be covered. Great resource for teachers wanting a zill drill for their classes. $15 drop-in fee or $25 for both of the 7pm 8th &15th classes

8-9:30pm Tribal Boot Camp - Zills:
Traveling drills with Zills and dissecting rhythms. $20 drop-in fee or $36 for bothof the 8pm 8th &15th classes

$58 for all four classes. Extensive handouts will be given for each level.

The next full 6 week session will start August 12th.

404 581 0199
Awalim Dance Co.
www.awalim.com

All done!!!!!!!!

Oh my God...see that little leaf that points to my boob??? Yeah, that will always scream "PAIN" in my head. I had to take a break because I felt like punching the tattoo artist, Rob. I said "Why does THAT part hurt so much ?!?" and Rob said "It could be the needles." ba dum bum...I got to take an even longer break because I was laughing so hard. Many many thanks to Christy who came and kept me company while under the needle!!!!!!

ATS and Hafla tonight!

There ain’t no party like an Awalim PARTAY!!!

Join the Awalim Dance Company on Sunday, June 15th for a mini show and hafla at
Nicola’s restaurant! Bring your hip scarves, zills, and drums because Awalim and
Nicola are ready to bring down the house!

ATS Show starts at 7:30 PM with hafla to follow directly after. Tickets are $15 for
mezza dinner and craziness!

Warning: Ziah and Awalim are not responsible for the insanity that will
commence! This is secretly just an excuse to unveil my big ass drum!!!!

Sunday, June 15th
Show: 7:30 PM, Hafla directly after

Nicola’s Restaurant
1202 La Vista Road
Atlanta, GA 30329

Anyone understand YouTube??

I just created two montages of our show at Nicola's last week and posted them on YouTube. I am very puzzled with the search process on YouTube. If you search under tribal belly dance and select "date added" our video doesn't show up AT ALL, if you search belly dance things that are NOT BELLY DANCE show up but not mine. Plenty of things posted before and after show up but we do not. If I search Awalim or even TribalCon it shows up. Any clues? Anyone? I am very perplexed.

www.youtube.com/watch
www.youtube.com/watch

Siddha Yoga on the brain

I can't get all these memories from tooling around in my head tonight... too many things have triggered it all....lots of women pregnant in my life, Krishna Das coming to the Variety Playhouse (??), and a sinus headache today which I always use chanting to help head off, stepping into my shower and looking at the corner of the bathtub where I writhed in pain during the early parts of labor... so I am going to dump a bunch of those memories here. I'm not even going to go back and look for typos or insert commas so deal....just gonna type and hopefully get some restful sleep.

In the late 70's my mom taught psychology and her main interest was meditation techniques. She was divorced and took me everywhere with her, to the classes she taught at the college and the Siddha Yoga ashram where she was studying meditation. Siddha Yoga was founded by Swami Muktananda and the ashram in Houston was a tiny house. When we would enter the Indian ladies would laugh at me because I got upset I couldn't put Kum Kum on my forehead, this was way back when only married women wore the red Kum Kum dots or bindis, things are more liberal now. My mom was big so she would sit in a chair and I would sit on the floor to the right of her. There was a big framed poster of Swami Muktanada up at the front on the alter, the air would be heavy with incense and the acrid smell of the vegetarian cooking coming from the kitchen. I can still picture the Indian women squatting on the floor cutting up vegetables and I remember how much I hated eating their beans. I have vague memories of fast and furious chanting, something about looking for a blue pearl when meditating and being cajoled to dance with cymbals on strings. I was 7 or 8 at the time and really got into it all. I still have my Siddha Yoga Nectar of Chanting book but have lost my cassette tape (wah!). In my room I stacked up empty boxes on one wall, draped a sheet over them and put my poster of my swami there...my alter. Not sure when my fervor abated but I know my mom only went to the ashram a short time, maybe just a few months. I have always used my chanting to help me deal with my sinus headaches and even played around during high school with sending orange light around through my body while I meditated and feeling my fingers buzz with the energy (not sure where I even got that idea).

The next time I paid attention to any of this was when I went to massage therapy school and we had lessons on chakras and Indian mysticism. I "knew" all of this stuff already! It was very startling to have such a distant memory come back so vividly. I mentioned it to my mom and she just smiled and said something vague like that there is probably some thing to all that stuff since it has been around for thousands of years.

The next time that part of my life came up I was teaching dance at Jaya Devi Yoga here in the Atl and was invited to come to a kirtan, a devotional service. Their swami was going to be in town and it was to be a fun evening. All the chanting came rushing back to me the second the shruti box got going! It was a much calmer service than I remembered but still very similar. I asked Jaya Devi, the owner of the studio, about it a few days later, telling her what ashram I went to when I was little and got a great tidbit! Swami Muktananda was quite a rebel in the yoga meditation world...he believed in forcing the shakti to release/ the kundalini to rise instead of letting it happen naturally. He did this by starting the chanting slowly and working it up into a frenzy and adding trance-like movements to aid in the release. Yep, that was totally the description I remember! No wonder I love the guedra so much!!

Fast forward another 7 years and I am going into labor. I went to a birthing class and they had us try all sorts of pain management techniques and told us to pick the one that seemed the best and to practice it by holding ice in our hand and trying to deal with the pain. The second my real labor starts I don't remember that part of the class at all...what kicks in is Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare! Over and over again through each contraction. I chanted through the pain, giving voice to it but not giving in to panicking over it. My doula had never seen anything like it, she said she could tell when I went into transition because I started the faster portion of the chant, the "release" portion...heh talk about something being used correctly! We got to the hospital and they didn't know what to make of me other than to say that I was the calmest natural birth they had ever seen. I never decided to use the chanting, it was just like a switch going off in my head. It had never even occurred to me during all the birthing classes. I told my mother about it afterwards and she said that she believed that all of those thousands of years of developing and carrying on the chants were all meant for that one moment...

thats deep.

Interview with me!

zanbaka.blogspot.com/

I hope I don't sound too much like a dweeb!

And now for something completely different!

Majda and I went to the Dames Aflame show at the Laughing Skull Lounge tonight....lets see...it can best be summed up as the funniest evening I have ever spent seeing sparkledy pasties and man junk all in a Southern style...we really didn't want the show to end!

Riverdance live is worth it!

I got to have the amazing experience of seeing Riverdance live at the Fox Theater. I totally splurged and took Ava and I on Wed, they say it is their last tour but it still took me a while to get up the nerve to blow all that money. Finally after tearing up when listening to Freedom on YouTube I just couldn't make any more excuses, I had to see the show live! It was totally worth it!!!!!! It took me until intermission to get over the fact that I was really seeing this live and not during some PBS pledge drive. The singing was amazing and the dancing was beyond great and not flawless which makes me relax a bit as a performer. The tap dance piece and the song Freedom (the guy's voice vibrated my insides and I had to cover Ava's ears because he was too loud for her) were my favorite parts but I loved all of it. Ava enjoyed it but she sees so much live music and dance I am not sure how special it seemed to her (we had already been to a free concert in the park that day for lunch). Of course the Fox is beautiful and we got there early so that I could show Ava all of it. The picture of her is in the bathroom...well, one of the FOUR rooms of the bathroom, first there is a sitting room with cathedral ceilings and a fireplace, then you pass the room that Ava is in with about 7 or 8 of these dressing tables, then you finally reach the potties, then the room with the sinks is next and you exit by passing back through the sitting room. Just the restroom is about the size of my house.

My tat is finally getting finished!

Here is my side piece I am slowly getting done. The pics aren't great but I am tired now that my adrenaline rush has gone...if you haven't had your ribs done you can't imagine the pain. The left pic is the front view and the fish is the back. You can see the portion up at the top where some of the purple stencil ink is still there, that is about an hours worth of work left to be done. There is still some other accents and such that aren't there yet but it will all be done soon.

It is full of all sorts of symbolism and has been a pain in the butt to design. I have had a small portion on my hip for a long time and have not been able to finish it due to pregnancy and breastfeeding but finally my body is my own again. Hopefully I'll get the rest done in two weeks, I have to wait a bit until I don't have any gigs for about a week since my top will rub on it.