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alonewiththemoonCalled in sick yesterday due to tummy distress. I felt better as the day went on and even went to dance class, and felt ok when I got up this morning, but now I'm not sure if I want to throw up or eat all the food I have in my desk. Or possibly both by turns. The headache I've had since Sunday afternoon is sticking with me as well. I really, really don't want to be ill right now.
Monday night's class with Amira Jamal was pretty good. We danced to the Nebtibti routine from Stars of the Casino Opera--I'd never danced to it before, but that was the first belly dance CD I ever bought, so I know the music pretty well. AJ stopped us after the intro to point out a few things, and said clearly I had danced to this before and had a choreography--nope! All improv and knowing the music! Made me feel pretty good. But then I had my ass handed to me with a George Abdo routine that ended with a karshlima, my brain seriously stopped functioning. Plus my veil seriously glued itself to the velvet choli I was wearing during the unwrapping bit. As AJ said to me, it can't always be easy. But that's good, it's why one goes to class. Petty annoyance in both routines was that she wanted us to play our zills during the drum solos, which meant that all one could hear were random zill patterns, no audible drums at all. I get that she wants us to be able to zill during a drum solo, but it seems counterproductive to have everybody drowning out the music. Ah well.
In Najmat's class, we worked on this insane pelvic shimmy, a quick rocking or twitching back and forth of the pelvis using mostly the lowest abs and a little glutes--like something you might see in African dance, but much smaller and more contained. I had read about this shimmy on Bhuz and thought it sounded so impossible to sustain that I must have been misunderstanding the poster who wrote about it, but no, it's for real. I can do it as a quick accent (in fact I did on Sunday while Najmat was at the Middle East, which makes me wonder if that's why we worked on it last night, which makes me appreciate her all the more as a teacher) but not in any sustained kind of way. Definitely something to work on though, it is a real show stopper! We'll be working on something for Green Street's annual open house again, a choreography to Hakim. I'm really looking forward to getting insight into how she puts moves together for the song.
My foot was sore on Monday night but pretty good on Tuesday night. Gradually that horrid fireball feeling in the top of my foot is fading, when it flares it's more like dull embers rather than leaping flames. Maybe the henna helps draw the heat off :-)
Can't decide what to dance to this Sunday. I want to do more veilwork on Sundays, but in thinking about it yesterday I realized that I don't really know what my kind of veil music is, apart from gothic music that I would use for veil. The slow AmCab stuff doesn't appeal to me, and I'm not into the whole unwrapping thing that goes with it. But then I know classical Arabic music too well to feel right using much veil to that, and the setup at the ME doesn't lend itself well to the Arabic grand sweeping intros anyway, you can only malfouf your way around a small space so many times before people wonder when you are actually going to start dancing. Time to listen to some music and think. I did have this somewhat crazy idea of doing veil to a Rachid Taha song. The thought of practicing veil right now though is not helping my general queasiness.
Monday night's class with Amira Jamal was pretty good. We danced to the Nebtibti routine from Stars of the Casino Opera--I'd never danced to it before, but that was the first belly dance CD I ever bought, so I know the music pretty well. AJ stopped us after the intro to point out a few things, and said clearly I had danced to this before and had a choreography--nope! All improv and knowing the music! Made me feel pretty good. But then I had my ass handed to me with a George Abdo routine that ended with a karshlima, my brain seriously stopped functioning. Plus my veil seriously glued itself to the velvet choli I was wearing during the unwrapping bit. As AJ said to me, it can't always be easy. But that's good, it's why one goes to class. Petty annoyance in both routines was that she wanted us to play our zills during the drum solos, which meant that all one could hear were random zill patterns, no audible drums at all. I get that she wants us to be able to zill during a drum solo, but it seems counterproductive to have everybody drowning out the music. Ah well.
In Najmat's class, we worked on this insane pelvic shimmy, a quick rocking or twitching back and forth of the pelvis using mostly the lowest abs and a little glutes--like something you might see in African dance, but much smaller and more contained. I had read about this shimmy on Bhuz and thought it sounded so impossible to sustain that I must have been misunderstanding the poster who wrote about it, but no, it's for real. I can do it as a quick accent (in fact I did on Sunday while Najmat was at the Middle East, which makes me wonder if that's why we worked on it last night, which makes me appreciate her all the more as a teacher) but not in any sustained kind of way. Definitely something to work on though, it is a real show stopper! We'll be working on something for Green Street's annual open house again, a choreography to Hakim. I'm really looking forward to getting insight into how she puts moves together for the song.
My foot was sore on Monday night but pretty good on Tuesday night. Gradually that horrid fireball feeling in the top of my foot is fading, when it flares it's more like dull embers rather than leaping flames. Maybe the henna helps draw the heat off :-)
Can't decide what to dance to this Sunday. I want to do more veilwork on Sundays, but in thinking about it yesterday I realized that I don't really know what my kind of veil music is, apart from gothic music that I would use for veil. The slow AmCab stuff doesn't appeal to me, and I'm not into the whole unwrapping thing that goes with it. But then I know classical Arabic music too well to feel right using much veil to that, and the setup at the ME doesn't lend itself well to the Arabic grand sweeping intros anyway, you can only malfouf your way around a small space so many times before people wonder when you are actually going to start dancing. Time to listen to some music and think. I did have this somewhat crazy idea of doing veil to a Rachid Taha song. The thought of practicing veil right now though is not helping my general queasiness.
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Date: 2007-03-01 02:50 am (UTC)I don't know what kind of veil music I like either, but stuff like Jemileh and Miserlou are growing on me. Ask Jacqui how she picks veil songs - she usually doesn't do traditional veil music but she always does veil.