Love Potion #9
I forgot to add “unpack suitcase that has been sitting in my living room since I got back from Mexico almost 3 weeks ago” to that list earlier. Oops.
You know, this is the second weekend in a row I’ve had to both take Saturday off and get up really early!
Last weekend my dance group took a roadtrip to an out of town workshop, which meant getting up at 5am so that I could meet them at the studio at 6:30 (I live about an hour and 15 minutes from where I dance.) There were 8 of us going, and we all ended up piling into one minivan, which made for quite the roadtrip! This is the first time we’ve gotten to take a roadtrip all as one group! We went to the St Louis Ren Faire a few months ago, but two people didn’t make it to that, and we took two cars, so it wasn’t the same.
The workshop was taught by a man named Raffa, who I hadn’t heard of previously, but was a lot of fun! It is really rare to see male bellydancers, and even rarer to have one teach a workshop!
The workshop ran from 10-4 with a break for lunch somewhere in there, which I spent making up a rehearsal I’d missed so that I would be able to perform. That’s a long day of dancing, especially since I was running on 2 hours of sleep and had been sick all week!
My brain hit the saturation point about an hour before the end of the workshop, so I ended up watching the last part from the sidelines. We had been learning choreography, and there’s this point that your brain hits where it just goes zzzzzzt!, and you are incapable of learning anything else.
We had a few hours in between the end of the workshop and the beginning of the show, time that I used to do some shopping (remarkably didn’t buy anything!), finish making up the rehearsal, get a 10 minute lower back massage (SO good! My back was killing me by the end of the workshop, but this totally helped!), and eat some pizza in the hotel room. Over slices dripping with cheese and pepperoni, we marveled at how great it was that we were doing a folkloric dance that night, and would be covered up totally by our costumes, making pizza possible. Sometimes being a bellydancer and not a ballerina is awesome.
The show started at 7, but we weren’t dancing till near the end of the second half, so we got to hang out in the audience and watch for a long time. There was such a great mix of dancers, everything from people performing for the first time to people who had been dancing for 30 years. Every age, every body type, every level of experience. Awesome!
Our dance went by in a blur for me, partly because I just sort of space out on stage, and partly because I have a veil across my face for the first minute, which makes it kinda hard to see. I think I whacked the girl next to me a couple of times when we were spinning, because you have NO peripheral vision in those things. My very favorite part was at the end of the dance when I went to stand up from where I had been kneeling on the ground, and I stepped on the back of my veil, making it pop off my head as I stood up. It took all I had not to crack up, so I just grabbed it and carried it out with me. Can NOT wait for the video to see that!
(photo lovingly stolen from beledi.org, credit to whoever it was who took it.)
The veil is my arch nemesis. You can’t breathe through it, and we don’t unhook it from our faces until halfway through, and do you know how hard it is to dance when you can’t breathe? Maybe that also explains why I’m kind of in a fog when we’re dancing?
Raffa was so nice, he said such great things about our dance, said we were inspiring, wanted a copy of our music. How encouraging is THAT?
I slept most of the roadtrip back. Sorry if I drooled on anyone. We did stop at a gas station for coffee and snacks, and I really wish I had the following conversation on video:
(8 bellydancers wander into a gas station, looking sleepy. They head straig for the coffee.)
Gas Station Guy: So... what kind of group are you guys?
Crystal, so tired: Bellydancers. We're coming from a workshop.
Gas Station Guy: REALLY?
The beautiful part was when we were dancing in the parking lot afterwards, and he came over to the window to watch. We love you, gas station guy. Love ya mean it.
You know, this is the second weekend in a row I’ve had to both take Saturday off and get up really early!
Last weekend my dance group took a roadtrip to an out of town workshop, which meant getting up at 5am so that I could meet them at the studio at 6:30 (I live about an hour and 15 minutes from where I dance.) There were 8 of us going, and we all ended up piling into one minivan, which made for quite the roadtrip! This is the first time we’ve gotten to take a roadtrip all as one group! We went to the St Louis Ren Faire a few months ago, but two people didn’t make it to that, and we took two cars, so it wasn’t the same.
The workshop was taught by a man named Raffa, who I hadn’t heard of previously, but was a lot of fun! It is really rare to see male bellydancers, and even rarer to have one teach a workshop!
The workshop ran from 10-4 with a break for lunch somewhere in there, which I spent making up a rehearsal I’d missed so that I would be able to perform. That’s a long day of dancing, especially since I was running on 2 hours of sleep and had been sick all week!
My brain hit the saturation point about an hour before the end of the workshop, so I ended up watching the last part from the sidelines. We had been learning choreography, and there’s this point that your brain hits where it just goes zzzzzzt!, and you are incapable of learning anything else.
We had a few hours in between the end of the workshop and the beginning of the show, time that I used to do some shopping (remarkably didn’t buy anything!), finish making up the rehearsal, get a 10 minute lower back massage (SO good! My back was killing me by the end of the workshop, but this totally helped!), and eat some pizza in the hotel room. Over slices dripping with cheese and pepperoni, we marveled at how great it was that we were doing a folkloric dance that night, and would be covered up totally by our costumes, making pizza possible. Sometimes being a bellydancer and not a ballerina is awesome.
The show started at 7, but we weren’t dancing till near the end of the second half, so we got to hang out in the audience and watch for a long time. There was such a great mix of dancers, everything from people performing for the first time to people who had been dancing for 30 years. Every age, every body type, every level of experience. Awesome!
Our dance went by in a blur for me, partly because I just sort of space out on stage, and partly because I have a veil across my face for the first minute, which makes it kinda hard to see. I think I whacked the girl next to me a couple of times when we were spinning, because you have NO peripheral vision in those things. My very favorite part was at the end of the dance when I went to stand up from where I had been kneeling on the ground, and I stepped on the back of my veil, making it pop off my head as I stood up. It took all I had not to crack up, so I just grabbed it and carried it out with me. Can NOT wait for the video to see that!
(photo lovingly stolen from beledi.org, credit to whoever it was who took it.)
The veil is my arch nemesis. You can’t breathe through it, and we don’t unhook it from our faces until halfway through, and do you know how hard it is to dance when you can’t breathe? Maybe that also explains why I’m kind of in a fog when we’re dancing?
Raffa was so nice, he said such great things about our dance, said we were inspiring, wanted a copy of our music. How encouraging is THAT?
I slept most of the roadtrip back. Sorry if I drooled on anyone. We did stop at a gas station for coffee and snacks, and I really wish I had the following conversation on video:
(8 bellydancers wander into a gas station, looking sleepy. They head straig for the coffee.)
Gas Station Guy: So... what kind of group are you guys?
Crystal, so tired: Bellydancers. We're coming from a workshop.
Gas Station Guy: REALLY?
The beautiful part was when we were dancing in the parking lot afterwards, and he came over to the window to watch. We love you, gas station guy. Love ya mean it.
posted by Crystal at 11:58 AM
1 Comments:
i took this one. you are welcome to rip off any of the pics i take. unless they make you money. then its a 60/40 split.
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