[Billion Belly March info]
[Belly Dance Convergence Week] [Calendar-at-a-Glance]
[registration form]
I watched a few parts of the Garden of Allah DVD that Laura Rose is presently editing . Wow ! Alot of creative spirits on the DVD. Itıs very hart warming to watch. While of course I enjoy and am proud of each and every dancer. It struck me that it was young Nicole’s first performance. She is only 16 and is totally obsessed with belly dance. I bet some day she will be a super star (If she wants to be, that is). Everyone in the classes are her mentors and she is a shinning light. We will look back at this video and remember these days with such pride. Thanks for her family being so supportive!
While I’m at it...
Heather Michaud is from Canada and has been stationed here in Seattle
with her job. She walks by the studio each day and decided to finally
come inside and see what was cooking. To her surprise she became enamored
with belly dance and has been a deadicated student ever since. Itıs been
fun watching her grow. She is going to be leaving Seattle shortly for a
long stay in India. She’s even taking her cats with her! We will miss her
Wednesday class practiced in the rain! What troupers. Dahlias cane dancers have been working hard. Most of them have never done it before and it’s a lot to learn and handle a stick too. They came in for an extra class last night.
We worked on the Ayoob Chaos transition a bit both nights. The drummers can’t play well in the rain . It’s cold on the hands. I pray it doesnıt rain on our parade. The drummers are sounding loud and awesome. The saidi is truly snapping! Doum TAT! Doum Doum Tat!
I work on e mail and the Belly Con schedules and promo. Heather and I prep the space for Magi. Magi paints Laura K and Janette and Lisa help. Shannon comes in to send PR and letters out to important community leaders.
Saturday night we go to the Buenos Aries Grill to watch parade participant,Tina Ferrari do her fabulous tango dance. The food and dancing was fabulous but the restaurant sure had an attitude toward customers who only wanted to order desert. So be warned before you go.
We were a party of seven people at 8:00. Three in our party only wanted desert and coffee. The rest of us ordered lots of food, drinks and they first to show up bought two bottles of wine for the table . This well surpassed the $25 per person minimum but the waiter thought it was his duty to high pressure the 3 people into paying a $25 minimum. The one gal had to leave. Poor thing (essentially she was kicked out) and not very great for the morale of our dinner party. I can tell you they most likely will not be back and the word of mouth advertising will not be good. Erik and I stayed the food and dancing was great and the service sure beats Hales Ales which has the slowest service we have ever experienced, (while the beer is watery, we love their chicken caesar with jerk sauce there. We go for the food).
The food at the Buenos Aries I will say was absolutely out of this world! I even want to take my daughters to the Buenos Aries for their Birthday coming up in July.
I understand the minimum attitude because they cannot run a restaurant on dessert sales alone but I think they missed the point that we already had 2 bottles of wine sitting on the table and the combined bill was well over $200 for the remaining 6 people.
The Tango Dancers were divine!
Sunday I went to Folk Life. Erik taught a drum workshop in the Rhythm tent and the Classical Middle Eastern band he is a member of called Ahlam (the name means dreams) Salah Ali on violin, Steven Elaimy on oud, David Mc Graph on ney, Jane Hall on Riq and Erik Brown on darbooka. They played at the Bagley Write Theater. Fabulous concert! The concert was absolutely dreamy.
It was followed by a a beautiful Belly Dance Trio (Penny Butler , Mahira and Iım sorry but I didnıt get the name ?). Great choreography. Then a fabulous singer of Lebanese heritage named May Nasr sang like an angel with a guitar. The children’s Depka group was precious!
Helene Eriksen did her beautiful Sheikhat dance. Very beautiful and full of personality. She is teaching a 3 hour workshop on this dance as part of belly Con on June 10th!
Tina Sargent performed a knock out cane dance. Tina is teaching at Belly Con on Sunday June 11th. Both Tina and Helene rarely teach in Seattle these days and this is an excellent opportunity!
Erik and I walked around in the rain for a few minutes. People recognized him from the concert and congratulated him. They were very pleased to know a classical Middle Eastern ensemble exists in Seattle. The classical music is hard to come by in the states. Amazing musicians come to America, find no venue and open a grocery store and never play again. Kids of middle easterner play the pop music and trade the oud for the electric guitar or computers. The classics are rare. These are the songs, style and instrumentation that I cut my belly dance teeth on every night when I first started belly dancing. Songs like Gameel Gamal, Samai Bayati, Ya Shadil el han, oud and ney takseems and then they played a Simone Shaheen song called Olive Garden.
Later that night we went to see The Devinchi Code and X Men 3. I looked down at my shirt in the bath room miror and realized I wore the appropriate clothes to the Devinchi Code. Power Belly with the uterus and ovaries logo! I fell asleep in X man. Not because it lacked action but because I was totally tiered!
Magi worked for two days on the Main panel. We came home at mid night and saw the finished piece in the studio.
Monday I worked all day and taught a small beginners class. I had planned to go to a family party but collapsed. Woke up early with details on my mind. I mean early. For two days I got 3 hours of sleep so on Tuesday after class I crashed big time.
Tuesday I sent back some of the sandals and will see what each dancer wants to do about her pair. I had been working on a souvenir Mug project. Itıs the same photo of me from last years parade that is also on the DVD holding the Parade boat horn in my hand and a logo on my belly smiling . Itrsquo;s fun, so I thought of a caption 'Delilah toots her own horn'. or 'Delilah mug on a mug'. Looks like they will not be ready until after the parade but we should have a sample before long and people can order them if they want. I want the group to choose a photo to go on this years mug! So we can start with a pair. Just something fun to do.
Laura Rose is working on a project to have Power Belly patches made. They will not have words just the logo and can be put on jeans, purses, cholis, weight belts what ever. . . cool.
People are a buz with the Belly Con classes and they are starting to fill up. Tickets are available for the show too. It will sell out I think. There are over 100 dancers involved in this project and there are only 130 seats.
Photo collage by Jerry will be featured before the band starts. Advanced ticket purchases qualify for door prizes.
Dan called and asks if we have insurance for a bunch of Millions of dollars. Ahh, no. No problem the Fremont Arts Council can most likely umbrella you all. Far Out. So we call them and no problem. We get the space. All we need it a permit fee. Terrific!
The band rehearsals are a plesure to host in my studio. So beautiful to see and hear them hard at work. Salah Ali on violin, Steven Elaimy on oud, David Mc Graph on ney, Jane Hall on Riq and Erik Brown on darbooka.They were getting set for folk life. First David and Sabura arrived to rehearse Saburaıs ney solo dance. Spell binding! I was doing e mail and listening when Brigette stoped by. We went across the street for a beer and conversation and came back to listen until very late. The next morning they would rehearse more and play and play at folk life and on Sunday the same thing!
Laura Rose and I scout locations for the massive rehearsal. It’s raining miserably. We drove around the base of Fremont to the quadrant complexes but the new Fremont Bridge project is pretty messy. W visit red square at the UW but itıs really slippery and not much bigger than BF Day school yard. We drive around and look at parking lots. Finally we go to Sand Points Magnuson Park and scoop out the Motor Cycle school lot. Hmmm? We find a few streets we might be able to commander with a city permit. We go into the Seattle parks building and talk to a nice woman named Isabel(?). She saw us in the parade last year. She suggested hanger 27. We check it out. It’s perfect and we donıt need to worry about rain.
Dan Iverson is not in but we need to talk to him on Friday. Ok keep out fingers crossed!
Thursday class we work on the new Saidi section. Laura Rose and I are Pow wowing about order of dances in the parade.
Magi calls and needs to do the Murals for the float in my studio during Memorial Day week end. Tayissa’s mate Harvey built the stretcher bars for the three panels. The sandals came in today and Angela and I organized them. Some of the Eye of Horus engravings are too faint so after the weekend I realize I have to send 20 pairs back! Oh my God what a mess. The manufacturer got them to us in record time but they weren’t done right. He was very sorry he didnıt catch the employees mistakes. Heıs working his best to get them back to us ASAP.
Tuesday Morning between 5:00- 6:00 am Iım in the studio office hard away doing e mail when a helicopter starts buzzing the building. Itıs pretty early in the morning to fly so low and for so long, and in one place. There is alot more to this story and many of my students have heard the details but my daughter says I shouldn’t put it on my blog. She thinks people will think I’m crazy so if you read this and are curious e mail me and I’ll send you the rest of this story.
I put the DVD on the Studio TV as dancers come in for practice and wow! I can even teach class with the sound track. The in town want copies so we sold a bunch which is good cause the entire Parade DVD project has taken about 65 hours of editing. 3 nights of rehearsing and filming and then the cost of a small run and all. You can imagine the bill.
This week Wednesdays nights class seems to have most of the moves down.
It’s as if they were at last nights class. I ask how many were here last
night? Hardly anybody raised their hand. Are they learning the dances
psychically.We work on the masmoudi part. Why swivels are hard has
always been a mystery to me but they are. Dancers arenıt used to keeping
up on the balls of their feet and staying up right. It takes a bit of
balance but once mastered alot of other steps will seem easier and
effortless. Every time you have to re balance your self you spend
needless energy that could be used for the next step. That energy should
be used for projecting to the audience instead of re setting balance and
mind. I am very impressed at every ones weekly accomplishments some of
these dancers are absolute beginners and they are being challenged and
they are doing it!
I have perfect faith we will look good by parade date.
Strange. Monday, between the hours of 8:15 and 10:30 all the power went off for a couple blocks including my studio. I have so much to do and canıt touch anything . I unplugged all the computers. The utilities fixed something on a line right next to our building. No wind or falling branches. Odd. So power is restored.
The DVDs are done! They look fantastic. I showed them to the Monday night beginner class and they were amazed. Then Denise came for a private class session and bought one to learn the dances. The DVD is a hybrid. It’s a DVD to learn the dances but also a great CD that all the Rhythm tracks are looped on for rehearing too! Nice job Erik!
The menu is simple clear to follow with the Phonetic words of all the drum rhythms spelled out! Very cool. This marks the first production we have filmed edited and produced in my new studio since I took over the company after my divorce. It feels like a rites of passage!
We are sending out copies to the out of-town-dancers as fast as we can as well as sending a few promo copies to a big handful of people. Other dancers will love this DVD . There is alot to learn on it regardless if you want to be in a parade. Consequentially we had extra copies made and will make them available for sale. It cost alot to produce so it would be nice to recoup the expenses.
Next I realized we were out of fancy hip scarves so I added on to an order I already had placed. They should be arriving next week. I got part of the order but the box only had one red one in it. Darn!
This week went very well the days were sunny. Each class got alot accomplished. They look good and getting better with every step! Some of the dancers are worrying itıs too much to memorize and are anxious for written dance notes. Laura Rose and I have been busy with last minute details for the DVD so we are a little behind on that part. They will get it. I have total faith. And they will feel great after the parade for taking on the challenge. Brigette Samson did the DVD cover .. Hooray!
This took a big load off my shoulders
The DVD is finished being edited! Itıs being dubbed!
Now we are putting up the new Parade Dancer Web club with all our in house dance details. Registered dancers can get to all our private dance notes and game plans with a simple password. We’ve been working on finishing up all these extensive notes yesterday and today and hopefully they will be on line during the week end or by Monday.
Today I got us early and have also been trying to re arrange web page content. Then Mark Dalton came over and we worked on a form letter that dancers can send to family, friends legislators bosses, fathers, Moms and who ever to increase their awareness about belly dance. It has a wonderful positive spin . This will enable each dancer to individually reach out and share a bit of the bigger picture of what are involved in with whom ever they choose. This is a demonstration of empowerment. We will place it in the web club so dancers can access it.
As soon as the DVD’s are done being dubbed I intend to ship them out PDQ!
Saturday meeting. Laura Rose and I worked all weekend straightening dance notes out for the web club.
We worked out the bugs for the float.
The costume workshop is Sunday/eek! Tomorrow ! I have party to go to tonight and a lot to do to get ready. I’ll spend most of Sunday morning getting ready for that. EeeK! I canıt believe how fast time is flying. Literally every minute is booked. I still have not unpacked my bags from Hawaii.
I sent the dancers down to put up a poster at the Fremont Power House Arts Council building just a block from my house last week. They came back smiling having connected nicely with the Arts Council a bit. Today I went down to see if I could find any able body friendly carpenters to assist us with our float making.
A couple folks were there and complimented the poster. I asked if anyone knew what happen to Tim Greyhaven? All his fabulous photos were gone from the web. They didnıt know.I put up a notice for the carpenter on their bulletin board. The parade director seemed surprised we were having a float this year. I don’t know why. We actually have had some sort of connection with floats in previous years. We have a lot of banners thatıs for sure. Then I remembered everyone in the parade doesn’t really get to see the parts of the parade unless they watch a video.
Our Belly Con flyer was up on the board but at too high a level for anyone to read, so itıs not of much use but at least it informs the arts council to our activities. Maybe I should take a stack down there?
Good news! The Sandals for the parade will be finished this weekend and be sent ASAP.
I am exhausted and frankly it will be good to get of this soap box of always taking about belly dance in such intense terms. It is the job of a promoter however. I know a lot of people think I’m a bit crazy. They may wonder what my real intentions are. People are suspicious sometimes. I think it’s pretty obvious if one looks at my record and my body of work. It’s true, I am a bit crazy.
About 25 dancers showed up. I think many forgot it was being offered as a free class to participants. We went over time. I hope it was inspiring.
Thursday night class
Janette and I work on a new Saidi section for the advance class to add to
the sections. Itıs cool. Laura Rose isnıt hear to see it but we are
excited to show her next week.
[Billion Belly March info]
[Belly Dance Convergence Week] [Calendar-at-a-Glance]
[registration form]
Visionary Dance Productions 4128 Fremont Ave. North Seattle, WA 98103
(206) 632-2353