dance stuff, By Dancers for Dancers review

My name is now in the list of performers for the Faten Salama workshop show.  I am starting to become very nervous about it, given all the fabulous awe-inspiring people who will be in attendance.  Eep!  Trying to decide what to wear--if I'm doing the Diva Pageant, I'll want to save the snake costume for that.  Then again, that's like three months away.  Hm.  No, I think I should save it.

Back when I took Sardis' skirt-swishing workshop in I think it was March, I had a sudden inspiration about a Nick Cave song as I saw myself flourishing and flouncing away in my big black skirt.  Typically, I do not think Nick Cave songs are at all good for belly dancing.  Too much testosterone or something, it just doesn't quite feel right even though it's some of the music I love the best in all the world.  But this is a song about a passionate and powerful woman who spreads chaos and destruction all about her by means of her sexuality, so I thought, hm, maybe...  Yesterday I put on my big skirt and gave it a run-through, and as soon as I finished it once I knew I had a keeper.  I'm pretty excited about this and will be performing it at Shimmy in the Shadows.  I will have a crimson carnation between my teeth, there's your hint as to what song.

I watched the By Dancers for Dancers DVD last night and was very impressed.  Maybe it's just the hype, but I thought you could really see the difference in the dancers' liveliness compared to the usual Hollywood/Peko, etc DVDs.  For those who don't know, this was a DVD produced by (largely raqs sharqi with some AmCab) dancers from Northern California as a collaborative effort.  They had control over the song choices, the editing, etc and all share in the residuals, unlike most other DVD productions where the dancers do not get anything once they are done dancing.  One of the dancers, Zari, has been writing about the production of the DVD over at Gilded Serpent.  And the "for dancers" part means there's no crazy camera angles or "artistic" shots that obscure what the dancer is actually doing.  There's some variation in the background too, which is nice.  All of the dancers were high quality, but I especially liked Mira Betz, and Zari totally knocked my socks off.  She dances like the real deal, I wouldn't think she was out of place if the clip was in the middle of an Egyptian compilation.  She comes to Boston every now and then and offers private lessons while she is here, and the next time she's in town I should set something up with her, though she intimidates me no end.  Anyway, I really recommend this DVD--not only is it a very worthy project, but it is also an exciting and dynamic performance video.  My only criticisms are that I wish it were longer (it's about 40 minutes) and that in the outtakes at the end (great idea!), there is some footage of Zari with a cane in her Ghawazee outfit but the DVD does not contain that performance--I want to see it!  I think it's on YouTube though.

I was a little mollified to see in the outtakes one dancer, Mira if I recall correctly, gets her veil all caught up in her headband while flipping the veil over her head--it's nice to know that these things happen to everybody.  I should let up on myself about Saturday :-)

My office is freezing today.  I think my brain is numb.

to gardeners

BTW, if any of you with gardens would like any day lilies, I have an overabundance of them and would be more than happy to dig some up for you.  They are very nice orange lilies, they are just encroaching too far on the rest of my small yard.