Season's Greetings

I've had a great end to the term.

My weekend in Orkney was lovely. I met some great ladies and we had a lovely workshop. Laura, Ruth and I also had a great weekend, despite some truly terrible weather and a rather noisy night.

Ruth and I at Kirkwall Airport

Laura and Ruth outside St Magnus's Cathedral. Sorry it's sideways.

The final week of classes were focussed on fun! We did some bellydance style ceilidh dancing and had a festive playlist, with customary trips to the pub after each of the Dancebase classes. At Fisherrow there was the usual party night with drinks and nibbles. Some of the Helwa Hurdies shared the choreographies they'd been working on this term, which were very good and lovely to watch - well done and thank you Cheryl, Carol and Margaret!

The final gig of the term was the Dancebase Christmas Show on Sunday 4th December at The Queen's Hall. A big professional venue with a ticket-buying audience of non-bellydancers, and a big, slick, show featuring Dancebase's classes. The Bellydance Improvers were performing, and a group of 7 of us took to the stage for veils, sticks and a drum solo. It was a great afternoon and marvellous to get to dance with these ladies - my first time performing with them.
 

So that's the end of the dancing term. I'm looking forward to getting my Christmas cards written and having five - yes, five, wow! - weeks off! before the spring term. During which, I will, of course, be working on my playlist for the new term, seeking out new students and working on improving my dancing!! I'm also coming up to a bit of a crossroads in my life - my youngest child is starting school in 2012, so I am weighing up my working/retraining/"proper job" options. So this holiday will be time for a bit of research and heaving duty thinking.

I am sad to say that Dancebase's bellydance class at the Thomas Morton Halls in my home turf of Leith will not be running next term. Dancebase are scaling back their classes in Leith to just two evenings plus Saturday mornings. I'm really sad that this is happening - not least because I've really enjoyed teaching there, and have had a lovely group of ladies dancing in that great venue. But also because it would be great to see Leith dancing more. I would have loved to have seen all the Leith schools and community groups getting the chance to dance in the Thomas Morton Halls, or classes from the Halls getting involved in the local community. Sadly it's not to be, which is very disappointing.

Have a lovely festive season!

Back in the swing of things.

Well, teaching term is back in full swing and I'm really pleased about it! Dancebase have found another group of beginners for me to teach, the majority of whom have not bellydanced before - my favourite! - so it's my mission to make as many of them as I can fall in love with the dance! And it helps when there are so many good events to tell them about - this was a busy weekend!

Saturday night was a hafla organised by my friend Moyra Banks. Moyra is one of my favourite Edinburgh dancers, with musical interpretation I adore and a real passion for Egyptian-ness. Her hafla was wonderfully well organised - a real cut above many haflas with care and attention to details. She was hosting Washington D.C.-based teacher Artemis, who taught workshops over the weekend and performed at the hafla.

Moyra asked me to compere the hafla - a job which I enjoy [and people tell me that I do it well - blush - in a past life I did a lot of public speaking to audiences who were much less friendly than bellydancers!] It was great to get to introduce such a great line-up, not only the star guest Artemis, but 11 other performances, including Zafirah, who had come from London to close the show; the ever-gorgeous Sarasvati Tribal from Glasgow; Caroline Rose performing a spangly-gorgeous Randa Kamel choreography; and Moyra herself doing an amazingly beautiful baladi piece. It was a smashing night with a lovely, warm, friendly atmosphere, and Moyra deserves much credit for putting such a good event together.

Sunday was East Lothian Council's MultiCultural Day at Prestongrange Museum, and my Fisherrow dancers, the Helwa Hurdies, were peforming. It is an annual event, and this was the third time we have danced there. Last year the atmosphere was, well, somewhat lacking, and I had a bit of trepidation about it. The class had spent all of last term preparing a dance for the wedding of one of the Hurdies, and we'd put together a not-terribly-Middle Eastern piece for that occasion! I didn't want to dance to Akon at a Multi-Cultural event! So in the first three weeks of this term we worked on a khaleegy routine, to “Ahla Nazra” by The Miami Band.

In bellydance terms the word “khaleegy (khaliji, khallejy etc) refers to a style of dance and music from the Persian Gulf or Arabian Gulf region, including Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Real women dance this style in pairs or groups of for their own entertainment at celebrations like weddings.The dancers wear bright, oversized overdresses called the thobe or thobe nasha’ar, worn without a hip belt. The dress is used as a prop, as is a headful of long, glossy hair! 

While not all of us are blessed with long glossy hair, we know that when we need dresses, the woman to see is Celia Buchan, bellydance costumier to the finely attired East of Scotland bellydance community! Celia helped us with our costumes for the wedding, and was on hand to run up some thobes for the Hurdies too. Lovely!

Well, the atmosphere was much, much better this year. The tent filled up as we began our slot (and the rain helped us make sure people stayed till the end!) and we got a lovely reception. I danced the Hurdies duet to Aayshalak with Laura

and then filled some more of our 15-minute slot with an improvised baladi piece, using music from my favourite baladi album, Baladi W'Bas! by Yasmina of Cairo. I recommend the album for anyone looking to get their baladi groove on, it's great.

I haven't danced in this old beady dress for a long time. Back when I started bellydance, in 1997, the beady dress was a staple of the dancer's wardrobe. It weighs a tonne and stretches to fit just about anybody.  But I was looking for something appropriate for a multi-cultural event - less showy, more folky. And I feel great dancing baladi in this dress - it makes me feel modest, grounded and slinky!

We saved the best for last though - nine of us took to the stage for our khaleegy fabulousness. It went really well, even if the stage was a bit too wee for us all. Nobody lost any hair, nobody was injured by anyone else's hair, and nobody fell over their thobe. For three weeks practice, that's a result! I'm looking forward to seeing some footage.

It was a great event, with a nice audience and lot of other great performances. The group of Maasai tribesmen who took the stage shortly after us were amazing! How great to share a bill with them!

I'm looking forward to dancing with the Hurdies again soon.

The dances of Egypt - in a cold, cold climate!

Today I danced, along with the gorgeous Helwa Hurdies, at the Seafood Festival in Prestonpans. It's an annual event which is part of the Three Harbours festival, which has, as its tagline, "art in unusual places". Which I suppose is why we were bellydancing in a field in the shadow of Cockenzie Power Station, between a real ale tent and purveyors of prawns.

The massive sky was grey and cloudy. Wonderful kites were continuously fluttering high in the sky - the wind didn't drop for a minute. And it was utterly, phenomenally, unbelievably COLD.

We had a very nice tent to change in. Sadly we didn't have a nice tent to perform in. We had thought our venue was the music tent. However, the music tent was very small, set up with amps and a drumkit for the bands who were also performing, open on one side to the rows of plastic chairs to seat the audience, who, on a finer day (like the previous day had been!) would be muncking paella and supping their microbrewery 80/-. No room for bellydancers in the tent - we were to dance on the grass. Fully exposed to the elements.

Now, I can easily find something cosy to dance in. I have a bacofoil style skirt. I have a veil which is reminiscent of a blanket runners get when they've finished a marathon. But I thought I was dancing in a tent and I was not prepared for how cold I would be!

We had to hang around for a long time before we performed. Some of us had dragged our families and children along, who were losing patience in the cold conditions. Bless the hardy souls who had the stamina to sit and watch us, and to clap - they deserve medals! It is hard to dance when you're freezing. It's also hard to dance on the grass - it is uneven, it makes it hard to balance for even the simplest moves. It was a really challenging performance and I'm not sure any of us would call it our finest hour.

Of course, as soon as I strode onto the 'stage' the wind whipped my veil out of my hand. I worked hard to make sure the wind didn't wrap it round my face!

I was dancing to "Nagwa", which is quite a big, oriental "magency" (opening number) usually with lots of travelling - but I wobbled with every step on the uneven ground! And my 'arm warmers' kept falling down because my skin was so cold and contracted - usually I have a nice layer of sweat that keeps them up!

There was a lot of lovely dancing in the set. Angie Morton did a gorgeous dance and her class did a really lovely group routine. The wonderful Helwa Hurdies performed their Spanish style routine to Elissas' Low Nerjaa Sawa and altho the cold had made them fairly miserable, they did very well.

Ruthie, Victoria, Margaret, Carol and Laura were troopers! Well done wonderful Hurdies.

Then I performed a stick dance. In my new mega-sparkly galabeya from the brilliant Farida Dance. I could do this with a lot less travelling, and felt much better about it. Despite my hands feeling like ice, I even managed to hold onto the stick - but balancing it on my head was out of the question!!

It was really, really good to get dressed again and finally have some hot food. My long-suffering husband and frozen children were also happy that it was over!

All in all, it was not the best gig ever. But it's all good experience - I won't be volunteering for grassy performances again any time soon!