princess of cairo

In Amira Jamal's class this semester, we'll be working with the routines on Princess of Cairo, the music composed for Nagwa Fouad.  So yesterday I danced through both routines, just to try them on for size.  Given that I'd only listened to the album once before, I did ok with it, but the biggest block for me really was that I kept thinking about how it was Nagwa's music and how I really am not partial to her dancing.  So today I thought I'd poke around YouTube and see if I could find any footage of her dancing to some of that music so that I could try to see her again with fresh eyes, and also I was curious about how she handled the fast intros to the routine.  I managed to find a better appreciation for her dancing; I'll have to look at some of the footage I've got on DVDs at home as well and see what else I can learn.  I think it did help me understand the music a bit more, since it was written for her style of dancing.  But the most enlightening part was finding out how she handled the fast intros--she spent them being carried onstage in an ornate chair while her attendants showered her with rose petals.  Anyone want to volunteer to come to class with me to be my chair bearers and flower girls? ;-)

Got sucked into watching Subterranean on MTV2 too late last night--but they showed actual music videos from start to finish, videos by bands I'd never heard of, or ones I'd heard of but never heard!  It made M and me nostalgic for the days of yore when one could discover new music on MTV and when new, interesting and quirky music would be all over FNX.  Sure, you can seek all that out on the internet, myspace, youtube now, but it's nice to be handed a smorgasbord of stuff once in a while.  Some songs I liked, some were good but not perfect, others were awful (I'm looking at you, Mars Volta) but at least it was all new.

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I know it's just MySpace so it's pretty meaningless but still, I get a kick out of logging in and seeing "Hossam Ramzy wants to be your friend." :-)