Summer Workshops and Shows

So it's the summer, and now you're slacking in your dance. Knock it off and take some workshops! There's a lot going on in the Jersey/Philly area this summer.

7/12-13 (This weekend! Spots still open!) - Workshops with Unmata and Bellyjam hosted by Hipnosis. If you don't go, you'll be sorry! www.tribalbellies.com/events.htm

7/19-20 Suhaila Salimpour - come on, you know your butt kicked like only she can. Sponsored by Drum and Dance Learning Center. DDLC has lots of stuff going on - check out their events page. www.drumdancecenter.com/events.html

7/26-27 Jim Boz! and Pop Raqs Special Edition! A fabulous dancer and a fabulous show, sponsored by Monet and Philly Raqs www.phillyraqs.com/jimboz.html

There are also rumors of Asharah workshops and the next Hipnotique (hosted by Tempest) down the Jersey shore in August. Keep your eyes open for confirmed dates and workshop schedule.

Where I'll be dancin' this weekend

darklydramatic.com/tempest/nj.html

If anybody's gonna be in the area of the South Jersey shore, the show will be from 6-8 at Cabana's in Cape May. Reservations are reccomended since it apparently gets pretty crowded around dinner time. www.cabanasonthebeach.com/

Tribal Fest Performances!

OK, so it's time for the last installment of my Tribal Fest report - the performances. So I'm about a month late. Whatevah.

In general, the level of talent was consistantly great. It was so nice to watch and be able appreciate what the dancers were expressing, rather than just "she dances pretty" or "ok, for them I guess I have to smile and nod". In my mind, I divide the performances up into the following categories:
Performers I'd seen before, already knew were great, and kept up that belief
Performers I'd never seen before (live) but knew about, hoped they'd be great, and were
Performers I'd never heard of before who blew me away
Now there are two other categories: Performers I missed; Performers who weren't so great. But there's not much I can say about them (except that I really wish I could seen Lumina perform, but I was in a workshop learning how to dance while getting my drink on from Sam Riggs at the time). Here we go:

Performers I'd seen before, already knew were great, and kept up that belief
-Tempest - She's fab and dark - what else can you say? First she opened up the show with Anaar doing a cool ritual piece, then on Saturday she was the sweetest evil dolly you'd ever see.
-Sashi - Sashi's like a terrifying alien that you also love. Like if the queen from Aliens was totally sexy.
-Asharah - She scared us a little. Wow - loved it. She gets so into character and her technique is just awesome.
-Shakra - Stompy-stompy, yah? It's amazing the amount of strength, enegy and focus these three put into their work. I just sat there in awe, and didn't want it to stop.
-Romka' - Badass, sexy, swords, love them!
-Fat Chance Bellydance - Helloo tribal mamas! Carolena is like a queen and we should all bow.
-Solstice - Sera has such a unique perspective on dance, it's incredible. You can learn so much from just watching
-The Indigo - How..the hell..do they come up...with their performance concepts? Are they approached by pixies during their dreams or something? It just blows my mind...'first we're gonna bully Zoe into becoming a tribal girl, then she's going to dissappear and we're going to look in her bag, find these animal heads, put them on and dance. Later we're going to dance to Brass Menazeri but the record's gonna skip, so the whole friggin' band will come onto stage, we're gonna have a sing-along, and then we'll do a whole other set with regular dance, a tea party and chase scene'. Holycrap.
-Rachel Brice - Do I really need to say how awesome this was? She moves so beautifully
-Raquy & the Cavemen - They only played for an open floor set, but rocked it. Really that's enough for me, since I really like to just watch them play, and sometimes the dancers just get in my way.

Performers I'd never seen before (live) but knew about, hoped they'd be great, and were
-Urban Tribal - They have such confidence and grace. They blend a lot of modern in with their bellydance and it's so beautiful.
-Karim Nagi - Hehe. This guy is awesome. He's got goofiness and personality out the wazoo, and incredible technique to back it up. You can't watch him and not smile.
-Princess Farhana - Burlesque mixed with old school cab. Very cool.
-John Compton and Hahbi'Ru - Fantastic. John Compton is such a flirty ham. They were really fun to watch
-Unmata - Seriously, my favorite all weekend. I can't stop talking about them. And they'll be here in less than a month! hooray! Excuse me, but I need to go listen to more Primus now.
-Shalah Sutra - Very cool piece interpreting "The Raven". Hella cool costuming too.
-Artemis - How is it that I've never seen her perform before? She's incredible.
-Black Sheep Bellydance - They looked like they had more fun performing than anybody else all weekend. I try to take a lot of inspiration from them in my own tribal performances

Performers I'd never heard of before who blew me away
-Satya - They were the first group after the opening ritual dance, and blew me away. They all moved beautifully, were uber-bendy, had great stage presence, and their choreography was really friggin' good. They really knew how to use the stage and shapes and partnering, etc. Faboo.
-Dholrhythms - Very high-energy Bhangra, and huuuuuuuuge smiles :) There was nobody in the building who didn't have a good time.
-Michelle - Pin-up bellydance. Very hawt.
-Verbatim - Unmata's student troupe. Very solid and kickass.
-TribalTique - OK, so I had heard of them because I signed up for their workshop, but I hadn't seen them dance before. Wow. Fosse is sexy on it's own, but add in fringed panties, glitter, bedazzled shoes and a pair of very talented, cute dancers, and kaboom - mega-hot.
-The Sexy Scallywags - Like with TribalTique, I had heard of the Sexy Scallywags as I took Sam Riggs's workshop. But really, I had no idea. Blend rum, bellydance, rum, badass pirate chicks, and rum, and get a kick-ass performance. Who wouldn't love all these things?

OK, so that wraps it up. Now I begin counting down until the next one. Only 11 months to go!

Tribal Fest - part 2: workshops

The workshops I took at Tribal Fest were so great. I took eight of them, and if I had more time, money and stamina, I would have taken more. They were over four days, so Sunday could be a day of recovery. One cool thing that worked out was that every instructor was new to me. I didn't plan it that way, but I really liked getting exposed to as many new things as possible.

Wednesday: Kirsten and I had an early-ass flight out of Philly, landed in Oakland, hopped in the car and headed north. We squeezed in lunch and a way-too-short nap at the hotel and headed to our first workshop.
*Swirling Skirts in Tribal with Kahlea - This class was really fun. I love skirt work, and this was cued combos you could use for improv tribal. Kahlea's style of teaching really clicked with me, and movement-wise, this is probably the class I retained the most info from (keep an eye on the FB chorus line at SC).
-Then we were pooped, so we went back to the hotel and I slept for about 12 hours.

Thursday: Thursday was the first marathon day. Three workshops, a retarded dinner, and Motif (more on that later).
*Fundamentals of Isolations in the Upper Body with Rachel Brice - Jeez, it's Rachel for Pete's sake. Could this class possibly have been anything but awesome? The focus was on upper body which was good for me, because that's where I need the most work right now, and what I'm trying to concentrate on lately. Some parts were pretty challenging, but I never felt overwhelmed or anything. I just wish I could remember more of the combination she taught.
*Unleashing the Inner Spaz! with Zoe Jakes - Faboo. Zoe's crazy-awesome and she gave us a peek into how she does what she does. There were crazy-fast spins, hits and locks - so much to take away from this workshop. There were some good combinations, and I feel like such a bad fangirl because I now I can't remember them all. I'm now debating whether or not I'm going to take the more in-depth workshops with her next month in Brooklyn.
*Bad Ass Bellydance with Romka' - Wow. I <3 Romka'. This was all about bringing edge, attitude and confidence to your performance. Any workshop that helps me become a better performer (emotionally, not just with new moves or technique - which of course are important too) is always at the top of my list. There was this one exercise we did where they put on music we just moved to however it made us feel. It was Marilyn Manson's version of Sweet Dreams, and I'm not sure what happened, but a brief story popped into my head about getting cut off getting cut off in the grocery store parking lot in the pouring rain, and then stalking the bitch throughout the aisles. So that's what I danced. I even did this weird, dark, bellydance version of the Shopping Cart (SHUT UP I AM NOT A WEIRDO!). Anyway, I think I may try the story thing next time I choreograph - I usually do characters, but not full-out plot. Back to the workshop. They also taught us a really cool combo (hooray for two-people choreo) that we got to see them do in their performance later on. It was all way cool.
-We then headed back to the hotel and stopped for dinner at this weird bear-themed diner. Results were not good. I don't know what was going on with the kitchen, but they were slow as shit. After about an hour we hadn't gotten our food, and needed to leave so we got it to go and took turns eating while the other showered. We were more patient than others, some of whom walked out without even leaving money for their drinks. As we (finally) got our check the waitress said we could talk to the manager (like he didn't know how slow things were and that people were pissed?), and of course he high-tailed it to the back when I headed to the register. Sigh.
-After food and clean we headed back to Sebastapol for Motif. Not a workshop, but not really a performance, so I write about it here. It was an event organized by Tempest, Lee Ali, Tim Rayborn and Karim Nagi. There was some ceremony and opportunity to dance freely to live music (Tim and Karim are awesome - can't remember the last time I danced to good, live music that wasn't performed by troupemates or friends). There was also time dedicated to trance, which some people really got into. It's cool, and I tried it a bit, but I mostly learned that it's just not my thing. So I just sat back, watched and grooved along to the music.

Friday: So Friday was a bit calmer. We only had one workshop.
*New Urban Tribal Combos with Heather Stants - So again, we only had one workshop that day, but it was great. Heather Stants is incredible and everything felt really good while i was doing it. The movement had a whole lot of modern in it, so I really haven't moved like that in about 9 years. It was so well fused that you could probably teach the same meaterial in a Modern II class and it would completely work.
-Afterwards we went for lunch at Olive Garden (and Kirsten's burfday Chocolate Almond Amore). Then we did the clean/nap thing again and went back to the festival to have our minds blown by kickass performances.

Saturday: Marathon day number two.
*Why is the Rum Always Gone? with Samantha Riggs - Pirate bellydance. Seriously. This class mixed bellydance, drinking, dirty minds and piracy - how can it get better than that? And we learned hinge drops. I can't think about this workshop without having a huge smile on my face, it was just two solid hours of fun.
*Turkish Rromany Dance with Artemis - I can't believe I've never taken a workshop with Artemis before. Like she said, "Why did you come all the way out here for this? For 20 bucks you could hop a bus and be in my backyard". I loved it. She's awesome. It was so cute to see how she got a kick out of the tribal gals: "Yeah, you're the bad girls - I can curse in front of you!" And oh yeah, the material. It really was a master class (she is the authority, right?). She's such a wealth of information that I can't even begin to describe it.
-After this, we took a little class break to watch some of the show, and well, perform in it. It was weird - it went really fast, like, 'that was it?' Maybe there was just too much going on because I didn't even relax to start enjoying it until the middle of our second piece. Stimulus overload I guess.
-During the afternoon I met up with Cerisa, one of my troupemates from Fringe Benefit. She was out in CA on vacation with her husband and managed to squeeze in a day at TF. Nice. She also took the evening workshop I did, which was cool.
*Fosse Style Tribal Fusion Combos - Now with 100% More Jazz Hands! with TribalTique - What a cool way to finish up my workshop run at TF. Though I'll admit that by the end I started to run out of adrenaline and things just started to hurt. Anyway, the workshop was a lot of fun, with the focus on combinations. They were very sexy and sassy, floating near the edge of dirty - so yeah, very cool. Just as enjoyable, though completely different from the Fosse Fusion workshop I took with Aubre last month.

So that was my workshop (plus a little extra) experience at TF. If I try to decide which was my favorite, I just can't pick. I'd reccomend them all, and can't wait to see what there is to choose from next year.

Tribal Fest - first update

So I guess I’m ready to start updating about Tribal Fest. Regarding my family stuff, things are still just really sad, but I don’t feel like pouring it all out in a blog so it can just stare me back in the face. If you see me and want to ask me about it though, that’s cool.

Anyway, back to Tribal Fest. I’ll also be cross-posting this in my lj.

I’m going to have to do a few posts about this, because there’s so much information. So this first one will be about the general stuff regarding to the trip and experience. I’ll get to workshops and performances later (awesome and awesome though).

So it was totally awesome. There was a crazy heat wave going on, and I spent most of my time sweating my balls off and being tired as hell. I even got some tan lines.

Shopping was great, though I didn’t go crazy like I thought I would. I guess I’m just at the point where I don’t really need much costumey stuff. That and I’m not really a splurger. I got some hair flowers, a t-shirt, cd, hip scarf, and I managed to get a sweet deal on a 25-yd skirt. It’s got a tiny hole close to the waistband (hard to notice, easily fixed or covered up by belts, etc) so they knocked $35 off the price.

Hanging out around the festival was fun, though the only real negative with that was me. I suck at interacting with people I really don’t know. I felt like the dork kid that somehow got invited to a cool people party. It’s like I don’t know how to talk to people. Ugh. I’ve got to get over that, but it’s a habit 31 years in the making. And it’s even harder when I’m around people I already know of (who have no clue who I am) who are awesome and that I admire.

Anyway, with workshops, performances and exhaustion, we really didn’t get a chance to do anything else (like TF isn’t enough?). But on our last night we stayed at a hotel in Oakland so we could easily get to our early am flight. We took Asharah’s advice and drove up to Bodega Bay (where they filmed The Birds – my favorite Hitchcock movie), and then headed down a more scenic route closer to the coast than how we came up. It was gorgeous. We then went to see the Golden Gate Bridge, but as we approached San Francisco, the fog rolled in big time (beautifully though). We didn’t see the bridge until we started crossing it. Then we stopped at the park area at the base of the bridge where it was wet, windy and freakin’ freezing (it had been warm, calm and clear in Sebastopol). Then we headed to the hotel, and within 10 minutes it was clear again. Wacky.

It was really fun to be part of this whole artsy, creative, supportive community for a few days. I’m totally ready to go back next year.

Got your ass lost...

Kirsten posted our new dance which we debuted on Saturday at the Mahira Hafla. Here it is:

www.youtube.com/watch

Add a wrinkle

So in my last blog post, I listed my basic dance schedule for the next couple of months. Think I can squeeze yet another performance in there? I found out last night that my tribal troupe, Fringe Benefit, will get to perform at Spring Caravan after all. We're really happy about it, and although it's another show to prepare for, it really doesn't add any stress. Schedule-wise, I had still factored in our regular rehearsals; costumes - anything new I'd need, I already have to have done for this Friday; dance set - not determined yet, but since we only have less than 6 weeks, we'll probably do some goodies we already know, and we can always do total improv for something new; day of performance - heck, I was already going to be there anyway. And now our student troupe gets to perform at a Rakkasah show. So good news all around.

I can't keep up

So does anybody else have, like, a really full schedule for the next 4 months or so? It seems like every time I go to rehearsal, go to class, open my email, read through LJ, or check tribe there's another performance or workshop opportunity. And I want to do them all. There's just been like a bellydance frenzy going on in this area lately. A year or two ago events were spread out enough so that when anything came up, it was just like, am I interested? can I afford it? yes - ok, I'll go. Now it's like every weekend there are multiple options that are all good and I have to choose, and in addition to the two questions above, I also have to factor in commitments to (and a desire to support) troupemates/friends/teachers/solo work. I've also got to factor in family commitments, dental appointments, troupe rehearsals and the fact that the weekend is the only time that my and my boyfriend's work schedules both allow for free time.

This is getting overwhelming.