Ah, I've got linked!

I attended the Cascade performance in Bergen op Zoom . The beautiful and talented Khalida impressed my with a soulful veildance with a gothic feel to it. While I was working on my website yesterday, checking out traffic, pagehits and whatnot, I found out that she redid her website in three languages and added a blog for her students. And, ofcouse, a link to my Dutch DIY site! It's a small world after all...

I think it's great that there are Dutch dancers who aim higher then their local scene. Living in near a border helps, it also improves the quality of the dancers by attending workshops from lesser known teachers or going to international BD festivals.

I'm going to translate my BD siteinto German and English because those are the countries that I'm most interested in right now. Also because I am capable of making a decent translation in those languages and French scares me.

picture: younger version of me at Wave Gothic Treffen Leipzig 2003. Corset, skirt and top can be made by directions om my site.

One New Years resolution is already done

As an early new years resolution I wanted to redesign my website. I started building my first site in 2002 and looking back now I think it looked awful.it's like going through pictures and wondering how you could ever wear a fannypack combined with leggings.

I wanted something with an Art Nouveau feel to it, but couldn't find all the bits and pieces of free clipart and background tiles that I needed. So I picked one thing I like about Art nouveau: the jewelry! Rhinestones combined with green silk are the main theme and the nifty thing is that I made several lay-outs with different tiles and borders, so I can change my whole site in a minute.

That's one step closer to being bellydance pro. When I find the time I'll also make an English and German version, that would be a lot easier for swapping costumes and such with dancers from another country.


www.buikdansereskyria.com

Dance new years resolutions

Inspired by Antimony's post on bhuz. New Years resolutions are early this year. First of all I want to say that my main goal next year will be to enjoy the process more and focus less on the end results. 2006 was full of new experiences and starting to teach weekly classes makes all the difference to me. I'm a better dancer because I have to prepare two beginners/intermediate classes a week, going over the basic, trying to find new angles to look at a move.

Besides teaching I also promoted myself as a performer and I did some great gigs that rekindled the love of performing. Belly dance is a difficult artform to master, because there are no set goals or facts, or points to score. How do you know that you're doing well if you don't know what your anchorpoint is?

For next year, I want to continue the process to learn more about dance:

1. I want to go to Egypt for classes and performances. I already signed the papers, so that one is going to happen in a month or three

2. I want to become a better performer. Stage fright makes me underperform and I hate it!!! That combined with self fullfilling prophecies (I think I can't do it so I don't try that hard) is holding me back.

3. find a live musician to work with. This one is tricky: I love dancing to live music, but good muscicians are hard to find. I'm not sure wether I want to do this while I still have so many other things to work on.

4. My website and promo material was good enough for last year, but I want something new! Better! improved!!

The in depth bellydance course is coming to an end in june. I'll miss those monthly workshops and want to find another course to improve my dance skills. Maybe in world dance, maybe in belly dance, or in dance in general... it all depends on the tuiton fee and wether I'll change my dayjob next year.

Most of all, I want to enjoy dancing. Without thinking that I ought to better or need to change things, letting go more often and just enjoy the moment. Who knows what may happen in the future? The death of a great dancer over here and the illness of another dancer puts things in perspective. We're not going to live forever and for dance you need a body that can do what you ask from it. I always took my health for granted. One of my classes has students in the age of 60-70 and they love to dance. I have to pace my classes and I can't do athletic stuff like floorwork or high intensity dancing for a long time. Despite their physical limitations, their dancing is so beautiful.

beading to alleviate december stress

It's very hectic over here, but I managed to get a lot of things done anyway. I'm redoing a blue bra/belt set that I bought off ebay. Beading can be very relaxing. It inspires me to have a look at other costuming projects that were abandoned along the way and still glare at me from my costume closet. Maybe I'll have time to work on those in the chirstmas holiday?

I'm raising money to go to Egypt in March, so I'm cleaning up and selling everything that I don't really need costume wise. It's hard, I get really attatched to my costumes! My favorite is still the gold bra/belt set that I bought from my teacher three years ago. That one is definetly staying!

new website!

Not really new, I alredy told you that I redid my dance page. I now got my own domain name and try to figure out how to do a nice picture gallery. The new lay-out is paying off, I get more phone calls and requests.

www.buikdansereskyria.com

Picture is a costume that I recently finished, very 70ies

update to my dance website

I created a dance website as a try-out half a year ago, but since I'm getting more and more request for information, performances and workshops, I decided to change the design and update the website with recent pictures. Comments and advice are very welcome!

The phoneline is my 'bussiness phone' BTW, i bought a prepaid simcard for that purpose.

ww.geocities.com/buikdansereskyria

hm, should I buy my own domain? it would be more professional, but it would also cost me a fair amount each month. I friend of mine got a video from a performance and she's goig to edit it so we can put it online. *excited*

medieval dress

I've been busy with making a medieval dress for the Fantasy fair this weekend. i finished the basic gown this morning, so here's apicture:

another website change

De nederlandse patronen winkel heeft vanaf begin februari zijn eigen url:
www.kyriascloset.com
dus vanaf nu is de website altijd en overal bereikbaar. Ik wil eigenlijk ook het webdesign aanpakken, maar dat komt nog wel. Ik ben al lang blij dat de website in zijn geheel op de nieuwe server staat.

groeten,
kyria

I changed my website

After one and a half year, I got a bit tired of the look of my Dutch bellydance diy page. So I took a close-up of a beaded belt, cut it into a banner and buttons and replaced the old ones.

Because I have a limited bandwith, I can't do anything fancy with the background, so I think it looks poor anyway, but the purpose of the website is offering information, not win a beauty contest.

If you want to visit:
www.kyriascloset.com
I tried to add the banner to this post, but I think it might be too big :(

performance today

I didn't perform in the summertime, but today I performed at an all women hafla in Zeist, a small place next to Utrecht. SInce I don't have a veil to match my new purple costume(s) I went with the silver. Small thing went wrong, like a slippery floor (but no accidents) and an unwilling cd player. I danced through it gracefully an joined the party. The woman who organised it is a bellydance friend, so I had some tea, danced and talked. I now have a second model for the belldyance fashion show in november.

We'll get there, eventually.