This past weekend my troupe had the honor of dancing at our friend Chris's wedding. Chris is Flissy's dance partner in Verve tribal, and they danced too (so Flissy had double performance time and handled it like a pro). This was all at the reception which luckily was indoors, and I say luckily because the weather was in the low 40s and raining all day long. The happy couple had wanted to rent a park pavilion and have an outdoor event, but it was too hard to get alcohol and loud music permits. We did get a chance to "enjoy" the weather for a bit because their wedding ceremony was at the Maryland Renaissance Festival (the original intent was for everyone spending a few hours enjoying the Faire after the ceremony before heading to the reception). It was a bit of wet chaos but right at the crucial moment it all pulled together and they had a lovely, heartfelt ceremony. My SO and I stayed on at the Faire for another 4 hours, hanging out, watching shows and generally feeling like "It's raining? Well we'll still have fun!" before heading to the reception. And dry clothes. A sense of humor, a resignation to getting wet, and a warm dry cloak (for me) make all the difference.
For the wedding I had proposed the idea of writing a choreography to one of our selected songs (Tim Rayborn, Zaman). It has very quick changes and some tricky bits, so I felt it might be nice to make something definite to the music instead of winging it with improv. I wrote the preliminary choreo, then Flissy and I got together and worked out the tricky or vague bits, then it went to the whole troupe and we polished the whole piece. We'd planned bits of other songs before, and learned a short choreo from Ali of n.o.madic tribal, but this was out first total almost six minute piece.
It wasn't perfect, we all had bits of "WTF am I doing right now?", but we felt good about the piece and our performance and most of all the Chris and Jason were happy with it and that is what really matters. The hours of troupe rehearsal (five in the 5 days before the wedding) paid off. It was awesome to look over during the intro (we led in with the FCBD dance meditation/prayer) and see Chris's huge smile. We segued from the choreo to improv, first with a slow piece doing dueling duets, and the last was lead out with a very upbeat song by Turku. My SO remarked at one point all four of us let our arm posture give a bit, and I told him I think the long day hit us all right at the same time, but we all perked up and rallied to the end of the set. Then we relaxed with cupcakes and open-dance-floor, no pressure, get your groove on dancing with the guests.
A video! This is from May, when we danced as the headliners at Charm City Tribal's quarterly event, which is a ton of fun and you will want to attend if you're in the area when one is happening, like in early November.
This is the first time we performed with the dueling duets and it was Flissy's first performance with the troupe; we asked her to join right after this. She did a beautiful job.
One funny thing you can't see from the angle is that when I'm behind Nora at one point we spin around and our skirts hook together. I had to do a quick reverse spin to unhook us. Note to self: only one person at a time gets to wear an Indian embroidered skirts with sequins, and also never wear them around someone with a lot of long chainette fringe or yarn belts.
This past Saturday my SO and I made the very, very, VERY smart decision to attend Balktoberfest in Silver Spring, MD. Oh, it was awesome. It was held at a Ukrainian church, the first part outside and the evening show inside. The location made me think of church events I went to as a kid, though this was a LOT more fun than anything I attended at St Mary of the Mills Catholic Church.
Halfway through the evening, hanging out with J and some of our marching band mates, I made the comment that I really, really wish I saw more belly dancers there. In particular, I'd love to see some tribal/fusion dancers, particularly with the recent Balkan music craze going on in the scene. I didn't want to see them there belly dancing, I wanted to see them there absorbing the music and dancing in a back-to-the-roots way. Get at least a little closer to the source, then work from there.
Highlights of the evening, for me, were seeing a number of women rocking out on the tapan, whipping my head around towards the stage at the first amazing sounds of Elitsa Stoyneva, everyone crazy jumping up and down dancing to "Kalashnikov", and finally catching on to the patterns of the group line dances. On that last note, I managed to pull the muscles in both my calves while doing those dances. Next time I'm warming up first.
Today I used my 50% off Joann's coupon to buy 3.5 yards of gold dupioni silk. Gold pantaloons, the ones I have been dreaming of, here I come!
Yes, I could use the gold for something more glamorous, but I have been wanting gold 'loons for over a year, a good neutral for stage wear that's a little glam but not too much so.
Yesterday was our 3rd Annual Kallisti Tribal Inappropriate Hafla. Third! Three years! It amazes me sometimes that our little troupe has been truckin' along since the beginning of 2006. The hafla was born out of the serendipitous meeting of our troupe with our Southern Maryland counterparts Troupe 'Hip'notic at the 2006 Tribal Pura show in DC. While backstage we bonded over our nervousness at dancing at the show, which lead talk of what we worked on in practices, and what other things we did in practices. The silly things. The inappropriate things. The dance things that, if done at a regular performance, would "get us kicked out of the local belly dance scene." And thus the Inappropriate Hafla was born.
This year's hafla ended up being wet; it started out with no rain, went to a misty rain thing, and then moved into a steady drizzle as the second act started. We did not despair, though! All the performers sat tight (under their umbrellas), waiting to dance and cheering each other on, and our non dancers stuck it out too. I told one performer, for whom this was her first time dancing outside of performances with her teacher, that after dancing in someone's back yard in the rain she could dance ANYWHERE.
We got to see dance offs, an amazingly silly cane dance, cheerleaders, a water gun fight, a burlesque fan dance, improv dance to a song picked by the dancer's Facebook friends, a slinky flapper-esque piece, and we had Troupe 'Hip'notic round things out with a hilarious "vicars and tarts" piece. We danced to Mika's "Lollipop", incorporating kids dances with some of our group improv and it was a LOT of fun. Not as epic as our multi-song mash up spoof of last year, but this one had some choreographed parts! I love the bio Lyra wrote for us:
Kallisti Tribal is a bellydance collective focused on pushing the boundaries of dance. Although originally brought together by a love of improv tribal bellydance, Amy, Brooke, Flissy and Nora are passionate about evolving their dance vocabulary and challenging the norms to achieve a new level of expression.
For this, their premiere Inappropriate Hafla dancing as a quartet, they sought out, searching far and wide for the biggest of all envelopes to push. They would not be satisfied with a mere A4 invitation sized dance envelope - no. They scoured their hearts and souls for, like, the biggest envelope you can imagine, ever. And lo, when they found it, they all got together and pushed as hard as they could.
By finding The Mighty Envelope and pushing it, they emerged with a regressive fusion that calls on their most innocent, most pure tribal roots. They're not just going to kick it old school, they went Older School, like pre school. No. Pre-pre school.
Kallisti Tribal......invites you to join..... ........ our TRIBAL.............. PLAYGROUND
If pictures pop up on Flickr I'll link to them.
ETA: Here is a video of about 1/2 of our performance. Flissy had to resync the music to the video, which is why the sound is not in "real time".
This weekend I'm going to mix it up a bit. Friday J and I plan on hitting Blob's Park Bavarian Bier Garten with friends, where we'll see Die Schlauberger on their Alpine Thunder tour. I'm not quite sure what to expect but I'm sure it'll involve beer and maybe polka.
Saturday Lisa Zahiya is in town and I'm taking two workshops with her, one on fusion drum solos and one on hip hop fusion. The hip hop is waaaay out of my normal range. I'll be beating a drum with Barrage Band at the Charm City Tribal Show Lisa's headlining, Sat night at Joe Squared (9:30 start time). Sunday evening Kallisti is dancing at the Bark's Animal Benefit in DC. It's going to be hot, in more way than one. Monday? Someone I have to crawl into work!
Well thank goodness I have some talented ladies in my troupe, one of whom is a pro graphic designer, because I? Just spent 90 minutes resizing an image and figuring out how to paste it into a blank document in order to fit 4 small flyers per page. I'll try printing it with some left over card stock and linen resume paper (it's time for a new batch) tomorrow so I have them to pass out at the All Seasons Hafla.
On that note, the Third Annual Kallisti Tribal Inappropriate Hafla will be Saturday September 12th! (dancers can contact me about performing)
It's all fun and games until someone loses a bindi.
Early-thirty-something newish bellydancer, interested mostly in American Tribal Style. Trying to juggle time to dance and time to knit, while wondering when I can add all the other hobbies in which I'm interested.
Credits: The blog header background is from an graphic created by Brooke Summers and my profile photo is by Shannon Strong.
9/28/09: Cooking for the week means less impulse food purchases! Sunday night's plan: shredded chicken prepped for home made nachos of awesomeness, potato leek soup for many lunches, salad fixings prepped, eggs hard boiled for sandwiches.
