alonewiththemoon | (no subject) (Reply)

It's hard to even know where to begin in describing the weekend... the roller coaster feeling of getting up on Sunday morning and getting ready to go to the workshop space, waiting for people to arrive, seeing that yes, it really was all happening and getting underway and even running smoothly for the most part. I was very happy with the quality of the workshops; Tempest is a born teacher, and communicates both the analytical and the artistic elements of dancing in her lessons. Ariellah provided a lot of valuable information in her drills and showed us some really nice tribal fusion type combinations in her short choreography to a VNV Nation remix. The two made a good combination, one focused slightly more on the cerebral aspect of dance and one slightly more on the physical aspect. The one criticism I would have of the workshops is that I overestimated the room's capacity by a bit and that resulted in some overcrowding. I stayed in the back so that I could tell when people were getting frustrated with being in the back and at that point would ask the instructor to rotate the rows, which I hope kept everybody fairly happy. In the future, though, I would cap registrations in that space at no more than 25, and 20 would be better (we had I think 34). It's hard, because you want to keep the workshop fees reasonable but you also have to cover your costs, and making a little money in return for your efforts is nice too.

We finished late, so the dancers who were in the workshops didn't get to eat before the show, but on the other hand, it was then close enough to the time we were to be allowed into the Regent that I felt it was ok to just head right in. I'll mention here that I owe

rojagato a huge debt of gratitude for acting as floor manager and looking after the vendors so that I could focus on being backstage and answering the dancers' questions and meeting their needs. Somehow all us dancers and our stuff fit relatively comfortably in the dressing rooms. Sabrina helped collect the dancers' cds. At that point we were missing one duet, but since they weren't on until the second act I wasn't going to worry about it until then. Todd the sound and lighting man was very nice to work with--in fact, I can't say enough good things about working with the Regent (there was that contract delay, but everything else went so smoothly). Around 7:20ish I went onstage and stammered my way through an introduction (note to self: next time, write something up before hand and mention details like how long the intermission is and so forth), and we were off! I was only able to see a little of the show--pretty much, I think I just saw most of Tribal Storm, a little of Neylan, all of Ariellah's performance and all but the first few seconds of Tempest's performance. The photos I've seen thus far look wonderful and I'm looking forward to seeing some video... Ariellah and Tempest both were amazing. I was up in the balcony during Ariellah's performance and it was incredible how even that far away, her isolations were so crisp and precise and completely visible. Then I was up close for Tempest's number, and she truly was the silent screen come to life, so sinuously elegant.

My own number went by in a blur; I think I was relatively happy with it. I liked being scary with knives, and I liked being silly to Voltaire. About half an hour before I went on, I did something awful to my left knee in the dressing room. All I did was bend over to pick something up after doing a quick runthrough of my knife routine, and when I straightened, my knee shrieked in pain at me. The ancient instant ice pack in my gear bag of course did not work, so I walked it out and when it seemed ok, I did the knife routine again--and the pain was back as I got up off the floor at the end of the knife song. However, it was less the second time, and since I knew it was coming I could adjust for it. A sensible person would not have gone on stage, but I decided to gamble that I had one more fold and rise left in me--and my gamble was correct, though I know my fold was not as deep as it should have been, and I hope I did not drop the knives with an audible clunk. In retrospect, I think what happened was that when I folded back to the floor, a muscle in the lower back of my calf seized up (it often does if I've been standing a lot, and I'd been standing for a few hours at that point) and when I needed it to flex it couldn't and the stress was felt in my knee (and a little in my foot as well). This is the same knee that I injured years ago in Alaska so it's touchy. According to people in the dressing room with me, the knee looked swollen, but I think I just have pudgy knees, I couldn't really see a difference between my two knees. Anyway it seems to be stable now; I iced both the knee and the calf muscle when I got home (while sipping champagne and basking in the afterglow) and did some careful stretching on Monday. I am taking this as a serious warning from my body about needing to give it some rest or at least not push it. We went out to Ole Mexican Grill for dinner on Monday night--I had salmon (tamarind-glazed, with mole verde, yum yum yum) and I swear I could feel my muscles directly absorbing the protein.

So yeah, apart from injury the whole thing was really wonderful. I don't know yet what our ticket sales were like, but from the balcony I guestimated at least 100 people there, which is very satisfying. Big thanks to everyone who came to the show, and I hope you enjoyed it--even though I couldn't see most of the acts, I could hear the audience response and it sounded like there was some amazing dancing going on up there! It was very wonderful to meet so many dancers who share my interest in gothic belly dance--as I said in the program note, it might be very goth to feel alone and isolated, but in actuality it's nicer to discover you have artistic comrades and a community that spans New England :-) One dancer wrote in a post-show email "I was very grateful to have a venue to express myself so freely and with such an appreciative audience" and that is exactly what I wanted to create with this event--somewhere that people could explore their gothic dancing without worrying about the audience not getting it or being offended or getting all authenticity police. This whole thing was a lot of work, but I feel really good about all of it and yes, I would do it all again! I don't know if I could get Tempest or Ariellah back again next fall--the Durga Tour made instructors from California more affordable than usual--but there are other gothic dancers on the East Coast...

Inevitably, I am sick now--M was sick all last week and I fended off the germs through sheer will power. I knew I'd wake up ill Monday morning, so at least I was prepared for it :-/ Hopefully I can recover by Saturday, when I am dancing in Seyyide's baby shower hafli once with Sarab and once in a solo...

(the cut text is from the Black Tape for a Blue Girl song that I danced to--it became almost a mantra in the days leading up to this!)