quick weekend update
Jun. 4th, 2006 11:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alonewiththemoonSaturday: Dance Complex sux. Sekhmet triumphant nevertheless, dancing in ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 11:32 am (UTC)the "nay shun!" people apparently rented a bus to drive all their goon friends from haverill. of course with a bus to drive them home they could get as drunk as they wanted... it was a bad scene.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 12:10 pm (UTC)My "favorite" was the very scary man who was yelling "Put your F'in hands down." after Captain C******'s set. He was menacing and bizarre.
I'm glad that non of the unsavory characters heard my "They have to spell it that way b/c they can't read!" comment in response to the NAY-SHUN poster.
The audience that night made me very very sad.
I also think the final hand count for SSD was WAY under the real number of hands.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:39 pm (UTC)Like silas7 said, it makes me grateful for my own scene and community!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 01:19 pm (UTC)I had a blast at the show...it was really great to see how many troupes there are out there and what everyone is doing!!! VERY inspirational!
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 01:20 pm (UTC)The crowd was really ugly, but such ugly reminders do serve to help me appreciate the scene that I'm in.
Who did end up winning the night, or was it shutdown after the brawling?
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:03 pm (UTC)wow, i didn't know it devolved into a brawling night. i have to say, the drinks at the bar were actually strong. this was a first for me at the paradise, so i'm not surprised those jerks got so wasted.
i actually asked one guy what they were chanting and the guy said "indignation, the best band ever!" oh, ok. right.
the whole handcount thing seems so lame. i wish it could be done a different way. sorry i missed the dancing yesterday. i was a poor hungover kitty.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 03:24 pm (UTC)Could you pass over the tools to make our videos web-friendly too? I cannot even watch the birthday videos Nep gave me, they won't open on my Mac since they were recorded on a PC, and that's annoying. Most things are cross-compatible now...
no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-05 06:21 pm (UTC)I would like a version I can use on Macs later, for promo & personal purposes, but I might have to ask around on how to make that happen. I also want to grab a copy of the edited cd we sent to artbeat, and I'm sure you'll want that too -- Lena did a lot of work on that set!
Once I have a nice compile of all our shows in the same format, I can burn multiple DVDs at work. But in various formats, and some misplaced in my apt (the oct. show), its no use doing so yet.