Pirate Belly Dance

Trying to find my pirate belly dancing tribe to upload a funny video I found on youtube just now.

More blogs by me.

I just updated some of my blogs here: bellydancetips.blogspot.com/ That particular one is my belly dance blog but if you go to my blogger profile you'll see the whole list of blogs. If you are a blog junky I have a few daily blogs in there too. That is they are daily when my computer is cooperating and I'm not out of town.

I don't blog a lot or do a lot on tribe anymore because other blogging venues give me a chance to earn money. My time is worth something.

International Talk Like A Pirate Day 2008

I dressed up a bit for the day but alas, had no one to play with and no where to go. But at least I participated.

Huell Howser features belly dancing

Huell Howser is having a belly dancing show on tomorrow night at 7:30 PM on channel 28 for S. California from a belly dancing event in Glendale. And I never even knew there was one. I just don't keep up like I used to. It was in Glendale and I wish I'd been there to see it. But I will be glued to my TV tomorrow night at 7:30.

Projects galore.

I declared today Project Day and worked on a different project each hour. So in one day I designed a dress, started a knitted hat, worked on a crocheted hat, made a belly dancing skirt, wrote a tutorial on making a dance skirt, and worked on my quilt. I'm tired but I feel good inside that I got so much done today.

Dancing ahead of my time

I learned to belly dance in 1977 but I was also taking jazz and modern dance in college and I took ballet in the 80's too. I remember combining belly dancing steps with jazz and modern in the 70's. Of course back then people just thought I was odd. Now everyone is all over tribal fusion belly dancing.

Back in the 80's I showed up to a cabaret gig wearing a costume that combined cabaret and tribal. And once again I got snarky remarks from other dancers about how I shouldn't or couldn't wear those looks together. I just thought cabaret was a bit too 'Vegas' and Tribal was a bit too 'Earthy' for the pizza parlor we were dancing in and my look combined both. Down the road someone coined the word "Tribaret" and a whole new look was born. Or was it? I was doing it before it had a name. Not that I got any brownie points for it. Mostly I just got laughed at.

Also in the 80's we were doing fire staff, fire poi spinning, and juggling torches. I was hard pressed to find anyone to practice with. Years later everyone else seems to have jumped on the bandwagon. Of course the IJA conventions always had some fire performer workshops, but you could literally be the only fire performer in your county once you went home again.

So what's my point? We give a lot of lip service to rewarding innovators in the arts, but personally I never felt any accolades for being ahead of my time. In fact most troupes wanted nothing to do with me because I never fit in with their idea of what belly dancing should be. I learned a lot being a soloist though.

If no one wants to party with you, you just have to party alone.

What's up with Tribe?

I have been having the hardest time getting the Tribe website to open. Usually I can find some back door and get in on the third of fourth try but today I literally started at 8 AM to try to read an email on tribe, and didn't successfully log in until 4 PM. So I sent my friend my regular email address so she wouldn't have to log in to tribe to reach me and vice versa.

SCA/Gyldenholt

I went to an SCA fighter practice at Murdy Park last night and met a bunch of new people. I haven't been to anything SCA in years. But I was tired of sitting alone in my apt.

OOohh one more

See more of my parade photos on my Flickr stream here : flickr.com/photos/almos...605507114070/

Belly dancers in the Gay Pride Parade 2008

Love it.