I just checked out Astrid's Aala Dameeti performance part 1 and 2 and I love the way she has her own style and interprets the music. She's very womanly and sensual and-it sounds corny-but after watching the videos I actually had a tear. The Japanese people there seem so appreciative of her sharing her art-it's intimate and heartening. Belly dance used to be this way a lot, each woman her own style, a lot now, too much alike. The music is very nice as well.

Keep on dancin' Astrid!

About Astrid the poet . . .

“And if you want to know more about me, my poetry is maybe just about as naked as I get, emotionally”, you said, and that you need not to say to a man from orient twice. My dear Astrid: I die to see you naked as you get!

Well know I have been reading your love poems and I am very thankful to may to take a look at the colourful world inside you. Sometimes there is this intellectual woman’s voice I hear, she knows different perspectives and has her own surprising view about the world. The other time there is this suffering archetype lover burning in the fire of love and nostalgia eyes full tears asking for even more fire and pain.

But there is beyond and above this, there is a drunken poet in you, her creations are like magic, here is alchemic transformation on work. The poet colour the life with heavenly yet humanise metaphoric silky substances:
But you moved like a cat
And so I stretched my body
Under yours and relaxed . . .

Not the intelligent brain of the poet and not the echo of the burning prototype lover in pain but the drunken heart is talking to as, no even better, singing for us the hymen you only hear in the temple of the priestess wine of love worshipping:
. . .
And the violets are
Piercing their petals
Through the melting snow
Is when I will feel your hands on my skin
When the sky turns red
And the birds are silent
And the thunderclouds gather behind the horizon
Is when I will feel your lips touch my ear
When the lightning cracks
And the thunder rolls
Is when I will cry your name

And it is then that my heart trembling and I feel honoured, touched and (allow me to say it like it is) in love with the poet. I bow for you. Thou Art God.

With love and respect,

Shervin