alonewiththemoon | (no subject)

I posted a video of my May Meleya Leff performance on YouTube, should anyone care to see it. A meleya leff is a character dance depicting a good Egyptian girl on her way to the market or wherever, wrapped up in her meleya (the big black veil thing), but along the way she flirts and dances, because she's just so full of the joy of life. There are two different styles of meleya leff; the one I'm doing is Cairo style, a little more classy and grounded than the sort of saucier and jaunty Alexandrian style. The costuming for the two styles is different too; in the Alexandrian style, the dancer usually wears a gaudy short dress, while the Cairo style dancer usually wears more traditional dress (though it's still stagewear, of course--a real meleya wouldn't be sheer and have silver pailettes on it, for example). I'm still working on developing this as a stage piece, but I'm pretty happy with how it's going. You all might not be stunned to hear that the reserved yet flirty classy character seems to suit me well ;-)