Leith (where I live) is a great place for bellydance. There are lots of dance classes here (including the one I teach!), many dancers, and some smashing teachers. Leith has lots of shimmies per capita. For a while I've wanted to have a bellydance event in Leith, and today it happened - welcome to Shimmy By The Shore.
I wanted this to be a small, relaxed and informal event. Haflas can sometimes be too big to know who’s watching you dance. To me, being able to get a good look at the audience adds to the enjoyment of dancing. When I introduced the afternoon, I asked the audience to remember that they are as much a part of the performance as the dancer. The relationship between the dancer and audience is such an important part of the performance, and I wanted it to be a two-way relationship for as many of the dances as possible.
And as Lorna of Cairo told us last time she was here, Egyptian dancers like to be near their audience - maintaining your distance from the audience is often interpreted as the dancer being aloof and superior. So a living room atmosphere was just what I was aiming for.
The venue was the very lovely Red Room at The Constitution, a new bar on Leith's Constitution Street. It was nicely packed with 37 of us there. I was reminded of Leith's diversity when I was at the bar. A man sitting at the bar asked what we were up to, and when I told him, he took a wee piece of paper out of his wallet with a venue and date on it, and told me about a "wee lassie" he knows who's having an event for charity along the road. "You ladies might be interested in it. She's a lap dancer." When I tried to explain that belly dancing and lap dancing aren't similar (I was being gentle, because he genuinely seemed to think he was being helpful), he said he knew that belly dancing wasn't like lap dancing, but still, I should try to go along. Later on he came over to apologise. "I'm so sorry", he explained, "I goat it wrang. You shoulduh slapped meh, course you're no interestit in lap dancin, ah goat the name wrang. She's no' a lap dancer. She's a *pole* dancer." Which, *of course*, makes it all right... Ah, Leith.
In keeping with the informal nature of the event, anybody could turn up on the day and dance if they felt like it. Dancers turned up with their iPods and we agreed the running order at the start of the afternoon. We had 11 performers, 5 of them were dancing their first solos! I am delighted that the beginners, Kim, Ruth, Jade, Claire and Amanda, made their first performances at Shimmy by the Shore, and from talking to them afterwards, they seemed pretty happy about it too. I will single out Kim for her energetic, well put-together performance - because she comes to my classes at Fisherrow. Well done Kim, you were great!
Among the more experienced dancers who performed were Caroline Rose and Moyra Banks, fresh back from Shafeek's stage school in London, who did their beautiful meleya lef duet, full of charisma, confidence and joy. Moira Berry was also freshly inspired, recently returned from Morrocco, she performed a joyful, exuberant Berber Morroccan dance with, as she put it, "plenty of bum". Eleanor Trueman did a jazzy showstopper from Chicago and got the most awesome audience response of the afternoon! It was wonderful to see my friend and fellow Leither, The Exotic and Soulful Shelley, perform a very beautiful but all too short piece to an Ella Fitzgerald song - she was commanding, sensitive and very lovely indeed.
Overall, it was a lovely afternoon of dancing. I'm so grateful to everyone for coming along to make it successful, and especially to the performers. Thank you all!
I would love to Shimmy By The Shore again, and hope to organise another one early next year. I want to keep up the momentum for a community, friendly, informal event - hope you'll join me then!
