Goings on

Launches & fire fun

UrbanQabila — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 01:38:21 GMT

Howdy It's been quite a while. The fest was a blast and so long ago now. To read my blog post please go to; http://people.tribe.net/soulfulsista/blog/ce6de3da-bf1d-484a-97e9-4c6184cdd225 Since then we've had a few really fun gigs. Newtown Fest, Oatley Fest and Ileana's Hafla are regulars for the end of the year. We love getting to perform impro. I'll post a few shots shortly. This year we did a wild Urban Qabila & friends fire show for Australia Day at Carrs Park. Barb (Sparklegirl), Fee (Tribalista) and Tim joined us. We brought out all our fire toys including fans, fingers, poi, lotus', hoops and wait for it....the Ball of Death. Tim flings this huge fire ball around on a metal chain metres and metres long. It's quite medieval looking and makes a great whooshing sound. The weather was wet and windy but that didn't stop us, so sireeeee. Last week we helped Marg out with the launge of Onyx Tribal. They're a new group located in the Castle Hill area. Check out their website; www.onyxtribal.com In January we all had a chat about the direction of the troupe. We each have a lot on with work, study and family and it's been hard getting to rehearsals so we've decided to operate on a more part-time basis. This will give us the chance to work on our technique independently, follow other creative pursuits and come together here & there to practice our impro. At the moment Kim & Dayl are working in a Nia fusion trio called Sukida. They performed at The Chakras red carpet night and did a beauiful job so watch out for them. Dani and I have been working on some Flamenco fusion stuff together. We're performing at the next soiree and then Dani is off to Melbourne boohoo :o( We'll be dancing under the banner of 'Musa' which is 'muse' in Spanish and I'll continue to operate under that banner with my teaching. You can check us out here; www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl-U-HxYw_g Hope to see you at the next soiree. Deb xo

Tribal and Trance Fest 2008

UrbanQabila — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 09:23:27 GMT

The Tribal & Trance Fest brings together two days of Tribal belly dance and world dance and music from all over the globe. Come and attend any one of 18 dance & music workshops, Share your knowledge at our Tribal Trivia Night Treat yourself to ‘The Chakras’ Red Carpet Night or come to browse at our Markets whilst enjoying The All Day Dance Soiree. This year we welcome: Urban Tribal Dance Company of San Diego, California Melusina of Underbelly Melbourne, Devi Mamak of Ghawazi Caravan NSW The Tribal Blossoms Brisbane, The Tribal Jewels of Wollongong, Hilary Cinis Sydney, Gypsy Noir of Canberra and many more. WHEN: 5th - 7th September, 2008 WHERE: Georges River College, Oatley & St George Bank Auditorium Kogarah BOOKINGS: www.tribalandtrancefest.com/workshops.html We look forward to seeing you there!

Festival Taster Concert - Elements: A Tribal Exploration & goings on

UrbanQabila — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:18:52 GMT

Our festival fundraising concert is coming up and I can't wait. Performers include; us (of course), Hilary Cinis, Kellie Harkin, Tribal Jewels, Ghawazi Caravan, Fee McPherson from Gypsy Noir and Emily from the African dance and music group Hands Heart and Feet. The concert will detail a woman's journey of self discovery through the Elements of Air, Fire, Earth and Water. Please come along to support our festival :o) Ticket details following; www.triballine.com/TTF08.htm email festival@triballine.com phone 0412 665 129 In addition to this I am madly planning the Tribal and Trance Fest. Heather Stants and Sara Plaisted of Urban Tribal Dance Company will be coming all the way from San Diego to teach and perform for us. I'm really excited about the venue which will be at Georges River College, Oatley. Oatley is on a peninsula, filled with parks in every direction and there are plenty of cafes to head to in between workshops. It's kind of like a peaceful country town in the middle of Sydney. We've had a few really fun gigs lately. The Pyrmont Uptown Festival will go down as our greatest audience participation event to date. It was a smaller and really welcoming festival which allowed us to chat with many attendees. Last weekend we performed at the Ecoliving and Harmony Day event at Randwick. This one held mainly environmental awareness type stalls. What a welcome change! We learnt all about frogs, what to do with old computers and drank some extra delicious chai. Have included a few photos in our gallery. We had a new member join us recently. Welcome Giselle!! Bubba is going along well too. He's 7 months old now if you can believe it and I love being a mum. Deb x

Dec 07

UrbanQabila — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 03:00:52 GMT

Urban Qabila performed at Animal Logic Xmas Party at the Slip Inn. Great show, great venue and great audience ! Here are some comments: You guys were AMAZING!!! Everyone seemed to just be mesmerized and loving every minute of the performance. It definitely made the party more original, exciting and fun. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You were great. Everyone has had such positive feed back today please tell all the crew thank you very much they were great. Thank you so much for your performance on Friday night at the Party. It was the highlight of the night. Thanks to Annette and Dayl for performing. Cem and Mike for being our fire marshals Merry Christmas and Happy New year everyone :)

Nov 07

UrbanQabila — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:46:32 GMT

Hey peoples. It's been a big second half of the year firstly with the introduction of our little man Tobias to the world. Talk about a life changing event! Don't let anyone tell you labour is beautiful either...if you're looking for blood, gore and excruciating pain then head for your local labour ward. Saying that, it is a totally worthwhile feat and I'm so in awe of any woman who has gone through it. My first gig back with the troupe and student troupe Tribal Spirit was Oatley Fest at the beginning of October. We love this gig as we all get a chance to fully geek out with IMPRO. This was closely followed by one of our yearly favourites, Newtown Fest. Rather than going with our dark, gothic influences we decided to go with loads of colour. You can check out some photos here; http://www.newtowncentre.org/festival_gallery9.html Lastly Barb & I performed at the yearly Bellydance Ileana hafla at Padstow RSL, Barb's last performance with the troupe. Barb has been the acting Director while I've been on a break and only recently decided to pack up and go on a huge trip overseas to Vietnam, India and lots of other funky destinations. Her calm energy, creative & colourful flair, obsession with symmetry, fire influences/instruction & performance presence will be dearly missed. She's going to take classes in Classical Indian dance as well as Tribal in the States so be sure to check out her alter ego Sparklegirl when she returns. Barb spent her last few days in Aus putting together a promo video for us so I'll put that up shortly. Better get back to the boy. Deb x

Newtown Festival 11.11.07

UrbanQabila — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 11:12:34 GMT

Hope you all enjoyed the coulourful women of Urban Qabila who danced at the Local Vocal Village today. Beautiful performance.

Cronulla Festival - Sept 8th 2007

UrbanQabila — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 07:32:13 GMT

Urban Qabila performed twice this year at the Cronulla Festival. It was a great day and sunny too :) Many thanks to Kellie and Jaqui from Tribal Jewels for joining us. It was wonderful dancing with you. Photo courtesy of Tomasz Zajac

Little Tobias is here !!!

UrbanQabila — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 11:54:21 GMT

Sept. 5th 2007 Deb gave birth to little Tobias today Sept 5th 2007 at 5pm. He is in special care nursery but doing well. Congratulations to both Deb and Chris ! PS: Thank you Barb for passing this along :)

23/7/08 - Soiree & other stuff

UrbanQabila — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 01:50:41 GMT

Hi all* Thought it was about time I filled everyone in on our upcoming Soiree. It's on 4th August, 2 - 4:30pm at the Mater Dei church hall, King Georges Rd Blakehurst. Performers are coming from the Blue Mountains, Gosford, Wollongong and all over Sydney so will be a great sample of the tribal vibe. The performances will be followed by an all in tribal jam so please bring a cushion, your drum or zills. We seem to be hitting quite a busy patch at the moment which is fab. Saturday night we danced at the Abercrombie Hotel which was a fundraiser for 2 schools in Morocco & India. It was an all female lineup which was great to support and the crowd were lovely and got right into the fire and zilling. Saturday Annette & I will be heading to Brissie to dance with Kim at the Tribal Blossoms Feast of the Senses. Someone will be dancing with a snake so can't wait to check that out. Then there's Hellfire with the theme of Hot Hot Hot. Just love that place. For more info about what's coming up check out the section titled 'Upcoming gigs'. This little bubba is making his/her presence felt at just over 29 weeks and I'm told is the size of a football! Can you believe it? I have like a moving football inside me! Magali was doing some henna on my tummy on Friday night and it was kicking right near her as if to say 'hey that's cold, would you mind doing that somewhere else please?' My energy seems to be a bit zapped at the moment which has gotta be expected but I'm going to persevere for as long as I can. We even have a gig booked for when I hit 36 weeks so I'm crossing my fingers that I don't go early. Better get back to work. Deb x

18th May 07

UrbanQabila — Fri, 18 May 2007 09:26:45 GMT

Hello peops* At the moment I'm home after a few days off with some sort of tummy bug which I'm told has been hitting the Southern Suburbs. Today I hit the half way mark of 20 weeks! In case you're unaware I'm preggers and have only 20 weeks or maybe less to go till the little one enters the world. Apart from a bit of morning sickness and a few muscle twinges due to some hormonal relaxant in my system, all is going well. I'm hoping to dance till the very end, then try and get back into it as soon as I possibly can. Damo took some fabbo shots of us recently which you can find in our gallery. Our vivaciousness must make us a bit of a challenge to photograph but Damo's eye is spot on and he waits patiently to capture each specific shot. As a few of us were missing at our last shoot and the lighting was really tricky, we have another one booked for Sunday. We're working on the most funky, speedy choreo at the moment called Pistolero. It has a western theme which we are thorougly enjoying hamming up & I'm loving it. To date most of our choreos have been quite intense so it's great to playfully bring out the themes of the music. We're working on having it ready for the SOS gig Saturday week. That's it for the mo. Heading off for some dinner. Deb xo

Farewell to 'the comando'

UrbanQabila — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 11:09:16 GMT

Yes that's right, our resident 'plank' and 'push ups' obsessive is off to Brissie for work for the next 4 months. Kim's energy is amazing and will be missed in a HUGE way. She's hoping to hook up with some northern dancers so watch out for a whirl wind coming your way. A few weeks ago Desert Flame held a Tribal Soiree in Gosford RSL. It was a truly lovely and comfy day with lots of beautiful and truly unique sets especially GypsyNoir's funky Fee & Rita. My all time fave part of Soiree's is seeing how far all the students have come and then getting to jam with them. This weekend is looking to be a big one. Friday night begins with a pirate themed private do on Friday night in Manly, a set at the Abercrombie on Saturday then the Hippy Hippy Shake Halfa in Glen Alpine on Sunday. Going to heaps of fun! Deb x

New directions

UrbanQabila — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 03:19:38 GMT

Hi all* Here we are at the beginning of a new and exciting year. Over the last few months we have been having a really good collective look at the direction we've been headed in and we're proud to announce our new name; URBAN QABILA Woohoo! Qabila is 'tribe' in arabic and as we are an urban tribe, thought the handle quite fitting. We are continuing on with our funky fire inclusion and hope to bring lots of creative stuff your way through the year. Our first performance as Urban Qabila will be at the Gosford RSL on the 18th March where we'll be doing a flamenco fusion set. Our most recent performance was in Fire In The Belly at the Penrith Regatta Centre. Barb directed this fire show and with 5 - 8000 in attendance was an absolute buzz. Please drop by and say hi. Cheers, Deb Director Urban Qabila