quick weekend update

Saturday:  Dance Complex sux.  Sekhmet triumphant nevertheless, dancing in spitcurl 's kitchen by halves.  Seven Sunless Days rocks, one of their best performances ever.  They didn't win the night, but didn't expect to, and I could see more hands up than tickets sold, so hopefully they gained some new fans.  Apparently the night degenerated into honest to goodnes brawls amongst fans of stupid aggro pseudo-punk meathead bands, and the rest of Emergenza may be cancelled as a result, so really not winning may not have mattered anyway.  I learned later from M that those same audience meatheads who were chanting stuff during SSD's set (the names of the bands they supported, "they suck" generically directed at all other bands, I suspect a spinoff of the classic Boston cry of "yankees suck") also yelled racist slurs against the Indian fusion jam band with several Indian members, so if their behavior was responsible for the band they support losing its chance of winning, then that's karma for you.

Sunday:  you Sekhmet women, you were all beautiful.  Little things happen on stage, they always do, but what matters more is dancing through those things and maintaining/recovering your poise and keeping the dancing going, and as far as i could see everybody did that.  The things that some of you have noted weren't at all obvious, at least not from my side of the stage.  You are much tougher critic of yourself than anybody watching is, and the things you think were glaring faults probably were not noticed much if at all by anyone else.  I can definitely tell you all that I was impressed with how well we stayed in our formations, regardless of what was going on with your veils, feet, fringe, nerves, whathaveyou.  M also thought we did a very good job, very smooth, and the poor man gets to go to a great many performances so he is an educated viewer.  I can't wait to see the video--nepenthe01 , I have the tools to make your video webfriendly, if that would be the easiest way to distribute it to everyone.

And to you LJfriends who were performing as well--I loved all of your performances, those that I could see.  I really hope that all of you would consider putting something together for the gothic hafli in October.

It was distinctly odd to be pulled up by Za-Beth to be part of the troupe directors Q&A when first of all nobody had seen our troupe dance yet, and thus would not have questions, and secondly when I'm not exactly director, nor am I a teacher per se.  That's what I get for being friendly with the big promoter lady.  But hey, I did win a white trucker hat that says "DIVA--with an attitude" hat later in the evening.

Seeing Sarab dancing to a song that I used to do (that in fact I recorded the choreography for)--at first I was just happy hearing the music and seeing the movements, then I started getting misty-eyed remembering how that used to be me, and missing the old days, then realized how few of the new faces were familiar to me, and thinking of a conversation with another old member who may be looking to move on--and I came full circle to just being happy watching them again.  There's no question that I do miss it, and I miss learning from Seyyide's troupe direction.  But on the other hand, I need to be in a position where I'm in charge of myself now, and challenged by what I'm doing.  One-off things like Najmat's class choreo or the occasional Jewels of Jamal* thing are fine, but if I were to seriously do an Egyptian-style troupe again, I'd want it to be a meeting of equals, both input-wise and experience-wise.

*wrt Jewels of Jamal, that's all the moreso fine because Amira Jamal values our solo contributions to shows just as much as our group choreos.  Only once in my 4-5 years of dancing with her did Seyyide ever have a show with student solos (that one at the Zeitgeist Gallery).  I should probably tell Seyyide my feelings about this at some point, because it will probably continue to lose her students as they reach the point I reached.

Speaking of Najmat's class choreo, another fun spot of the night was at the very end when the floor was opened up for general dancing, Giselle and I managed to remember the entire Habibi ya Aini choreo and dance it.  M said it was a very random MTV kind of moment, where all of a sudden people start dancing in unison.  It was fun though, and we were psyched that we remembered it all.

That was supposed to be quick.  Ah well.  The day stirred up a lot of things for me, lots to think about.