Another Video

I'm heading off to Jewel of Yorkshire tomorrow!!

I'm ridiculously excited about this year's JoY. I've been literally counting down the days for the past two weeks! I'm doing workshops with Razia about American Cabaret bellydance, and one called Flawless Floorwork Fundamentals :) I'm also doing workshops in Tribal/Goth make-up, and gothic style Isis Wings. I'm so exicted!!!

Speaking of Isis Wings, I performed at a hafla last Saturday, and have uploaded the video to YouTube. Here it is:



I was dancing to Aziza by Hossam Ramzy. I love dancing with wings to this song, lots of spinny bits :)

The hafla was raising money for Clic Sargent, which is a totally worthy cause. We raised £302, yay!

I've been getting way back into dancing recently. I've been doing it for the past 6/7 years, and I feel right now like I did when I first started. I've got that excitement and enthusiasm about it back! I'll need to write a blog post about that soon. I'll try write some things while I'm at JoY on bits of paper, then post it properly when I get back!

Phew! It all went well! :D

Thank you for the good luck wishes with my performance! I'm sure it must have worked, because it went quite well, better than I thought it would! :D

I listened to the song all Saturday, and then in the car on my ipod all the way to the venue, and eventually came up with a sort of plan for the song. Not so much a choreography as a sort of outline of what each part sounded like, and then some moves that I could put in. So long as I listened hard to what part of the song I was at, I'd be fine :) So of course, I got carried away dancing, didn't I, and lost where I was in the song during the 3rd minute! Luckily, the song I chose (Aziza by Hossam Ramzy) has very distinct parts to it, so I was soon back at a place I recognised, and could pick it up from there. I suppose it's a good sign that I got carried away, it means that listening to the song all day did something!

The hafla was great! There were a lot of different types of acts on this year. Me and my friend did Bollywood as well, and there were a few other Bollywood and Bollywood inspired acts. There was a tribal fan dance, a sword dance, a hip hop fusion piece, a couple of acts used veils, a dark tribal solo piece and a dance where the person wore a mask (this was their first solo piece, and it was amazing!) All the acts were fantastic, and watching them helped me forget that I was on at the end. In fact, I could have gone on all night watching them! :D It was a really fun night, and it was good to see some people from other classes that I haven't seen in a while.

I've kind of been away from the blog and ravelry for a little while (it's only a few days, but I'm normally so obsessed that it seems like forever!) I have discovered the deeper aspects of Flickr..... Yep, I am fast becoming obsessed with that too! I upgraded my account to pro, and have been uploading and joining groups, and I discovered the explore page as well, which can suck time like nothing else!

I have been knitting and crocheting, a pair of socks and the Icelandic turtleneck pullover from the crochet me book respectively. I finished a couple of scarves, which I will blog about soon, even if I have to block myself from Flickr! And I'll be going round everyone's blog now, cos good though Flickr is, I've missed you all! :D

More Socks, and a Performance

I'm a bad, bad blogger, I know. No cookies for me. I logged in earlier and noticed I haven't blogged since the 21st of February! I've been knitting only socks - I seem to have been going through a bit of a sock phase just now. I finished a pair of 9 to 5 socks, which I thought were going to be a bit plain after the monkeys and pomotamous, but I love them! I love the little cable going down the heel, and overall just think they're really cute. On my first attempt at them, I kept the cables going right down to the toe, cos ordinarily I hate stockinette toes, but they didn't look quite right like that, so on the second sock I did the stockinette toe, figuring I could rip one of them out. I ended up keeping the stockinette toes. This particular pattern just looks better stopping abruptly for some reason.




I'm knitting a pair of brown monkey socks just now. I started them as an easy project to do while babysitting. I pretty much have that pattern memorised now, and can see I'm going to make lots and lots of them.




I tried to knit some drunken bees socks, but that didn't go well. The yarn I was using was a little too thin, and there were gaps everywhere. I frogged them, and I'm going to try again with a different yarn. I think a darker one will work better too, since the red was a bit bright for all the little cables.


I was also practicing for a performance last Saturday. I performed a solo with Isis wings at a hafla (which raised a lot of money for a very good cause), and was totally terrified. I got up to dance (I was midway through the first half, there were a lot of acts), and my legs just turned to jelly. I couldn't stand still and do anything, because my legs wobbled every time I did so, so I had to keep moving and dancing. I forgot my choreography about a minute into the song (which was five miniutes long), and then just had to improvise. I kind of figured that was going to happen though, because my mind was just totally blank from nerves. It went really well though. It was my first performance with Isis wings, and a lot of the audience hadn't seen them before, so they seemed impressed. Phew! The thing about Isis wings is that they do a lot of the work for you, they just look impressive and lovely and shiny all by themselves, so you don't need to do that much with them to do a successful dance. Just as well, really :D

Checking Back In

Erp! I didn't realise it had been so long since I posted! I've been really busy, mostly with dancing, but also with preparations for christmas. Next year, I swear I'm going to start getting presents and stuff in October, just so I'll have enough time toget it all done. I always leave it till the beginning of December, and one month just dosn't seem long enough. It should be, but it's not. I still have a few presents to get - I've given up on the idea of making them.

Dancing-wise, it's been all go until now, and now there's nothing till after xmas! Boo! I performed at a hafla a couple of weeks ago, which was fun, then last week I performed at a charity event. It was a supposed to be a duet, but my friend had to pull out at the last minute, and I ended up performing in front of a group of strangers all on my ownsome! The weird thing is, that wasn't the scary part for me, the scary part was having to go in and introduce myself and talk to everyone. The dancing was the easy part - just listening to the music and making sure to keep my smiley face on. Most people would say it's the other way round, but I have to be different! I suppose when I'm dancing I have something to concentrate on, but when I'm not my social anxiety goes into overdrive.

The main dancing thing I'm working on now is an Isis wings routine for a hafla in March. I even dreamed about it last night, that's how much I've been working on this, and thinking about it, and listening to the music, and imagining bits of dancing that might go with it. All while I'm supposed to be Xmas shopping, aarg! Still, I'm planning to have it all done by Thursday. Let's just hope that goes to plan.

Jewel of Yorkshire Part Two

The hafla on Saturday night was really good. Somebody said there were too many acts, but I kind of liked that. It was more of a 'watching' hafla though, it was in the main hall with the chair laid out in rows, and one act was on straight after another, with a couple of breaks. There was a dancing room upstair with a DJ but not many people went up there, even on the breaks. I think it was a little too spread out for that. The people dancing were really good though, especially Seetha (wow! I could go on about her for ever), Djamila and Khaled. Asmahan was dancing as well, as the 'star' of the show - she was very good, definitely more cairo style than the rest. I'd better explain why I liked Seetha so much - she did an AMAZING dance with Isis wings - my new prop of choice, my jaw was just on the floor, and I wanted so much to grab her and get her to tell me all she knows about dancing. She also did a cheeky dance with two giant burlesque type fans which everyone I spoke to loved. That dance had finished and all I could think was 'who on earth is going to follow that?!' And the answer - probably the only person who possibly could - Khaled. He came on from the back, totally unexpected, and proceeded to dance among the seated audience, on chairs, getting someone else to dance from the audience as well - he's definitely the best audience-worker I've seen in the world of belly dance. Fantastic! Oh, there was another dancer I'd never seen before too - Artemisia - she was also fantastic, and great - she did a veil dance that was very atmospheric and floaty and made me wish I could do more than swish a veil from side to side. :)

My Sunday classes included Romany Gypsy with Raheesha - I learned a lot about putting emotion into the dance, and storytelling, and I was very inspired with the moves she taught us too.

The I had a class with Djamila - Surprising Effects and Movements, which was hard, but also inspiring and informative. There were a couple of moves I just could not get into my head for a while, but she taught us a lot of interesting combinations, and they're definitely worth practicing.

Then I had a class with Seetha - 1001 steps and drops. I'd been looking forward to this all day after seeing her at the hafla the day before, and she didn't disappoint. She taught us hip drop and step combinations, and we drilled them. Some of them were really hard, but she was very good at getting us to go over them and telling us if we were doing something wrong. She was very good at looking through the whole class, and showing us all the moves from different positions so we could all see.

I came away from the weekend totally inspired - and with a new costume and Isis wings! I learned so much from all the teachers I had, and I'm definitely going back next year. In fact I'm saving now so I can buy even more costumes and stuff.

Next - a post with pics and links, since I don't have time to get them all looked up and uploaded just now. And then I'll get back to knitting, I promise! :)

Jewel of Yorkshire - part 1

Wow! I had a great weekend! I learnt so much, my head is just buzzing with dance inspiration.

We headed off on the Friday night - it took about 8 hours to get there. That was including stopping off for a meal, and getting lost in Bradford. Apparantly the people I was going with get lost every year, and I can see why. It's really easy to turn off into the city centre, and once you do, it's really hard to get back out again.

On the Saturday, I had 3 classes. One 2 hour class on Pharonic dancing (it was supposed to be taken by Seetha, but she got held up in Amsterdam, so Djamila took the class. We did a short routine, with lots of pharonic type moves in it, and I'd definitely be interested in doing this type of dance again. During the class, I was thinking the routine would look nice with candles. Djamila said she normally performs it with a candle tray balanced on her head, but I think it would look nice with tea lights held in the hands as well, because the hands are very straight in pharonic dance (think Walk Like An Egyptian).

Then I did a class in hip movements to drum solos. To be honest, I think this one was a bit basic for me as regards the moves, but the teacher did give me some advice that my hip movements are too soft for drum solos, and I should sharpen them a bit. I hadn't really even thought of that before, so I'll have to get to work sharpening my hip movements. I get a bit scared that if I try to sharpen them, then the technique will just disappear, and it'll just be me throwing my hips about all over the place! But thinking about it, I can see she was right. It's fine when I'm doing a softer, slower dance, but I definitely need to work on those hips for faster dances!

Then I did a class on Isis wings. I'd been looking forward to this for ages! I can't really describe Isis wings that well - they tie round your neck, and there's the two wingy parts that hang down, with a stick in each end to hold onto and manipulate them. You'd probably be better lookng them up on google if you want to know what they're like. Anyway, this class was just a basic introduction to Isis wings, and I was really doing it to see if I liked them before I bought a set. And I did like them (and bought some)! I've got a song planned already, I just need to book time in the local hall to practice cos my ceilings are too low!

So I was finished my classes by about 2 o'clock. I did some shopping at the souk in the main hall. When I went I honestly didn't mean to spend much money. I'd saved up just in case though, and of course I ended up spending most of it. I bought a new costume, Isis wings, some DVDs and some CDs. I'll try put pics up later. I just want to get this up first since it has been nearly a week since I went.

Next post - the hafla at night, and my Sunday classes.