Thursday Nights at Windy Hill

Tonight was the last night of our six-week ATS (American Tribal Style) Level I class. It turned out I was the only one who made it to class! Andrea had to teach; it was Kat’s daughter’s birthday; I have no clue where Jeannette was.

Well, when you’re the only one in class, you get challenged. After reviewing and drilling all the moves we’d learned, Lacy threw me in the deep end, so to speak. She put on a couple of songs, a “slow” one and a “fast” one, and we just danced, with me leading much of the time. It’s one thing to just drill moves — it’s quite another to actually dance, especially to unfamiliar music and when you’re just not comfortable yet with the whole concept. It’s the kind of practice that I need, though, because what I have the worst problem with no matter what style I’m dancing is transitioning from one move to the next. Actually, if it’s just hip moves and movement I don’t find it so bad. But those darned arm movements get me every time! So we kept stopping and starting as she had suggestions of what I needed to work on or as I got stuck on figuring out a transition from one move to the next. I also seem to be stuck on this four-count mentality because I tend to get in a rut of doing one thing for four eight-counts, then another, then another, especially with the fast music which is almost always in 4/4 time.

But hey, I enjoy a challenge. Every now and then I’d get just a flash of “YES! THIS IS IT!” before something went haywire or got out of sync and I felt like the world’s biggest klutz once again. I’m sure that not having to share the leading responsibility with my classmates tonight pushed me. I know I am getting better at following, though I still get messed up pretty often.

Now I get a month off from ATS before the next session, so I better get out my DVDs and work on my own. Late June and the ATS General Skills Intensive will be here before I know it!

I’d thought, when I originally set up this site, that this would become a collaborative blog. That really hasn’t happened, for several reasons. Furthermore, things have changed a bit in my dance journey, so the original purpose of Thursday Nights at Windy Hill really doesn’t hold anymore.

So I’m going to reclaim this blog as my own (though I hope there will still be the occasional guest post from a Dance Sister) and use it to continue to tell the story of MY journey through the world of bellydance. Don’t worry, I still spend Thursday nights at Windy Hill, but there’s so much more going on to talk about — it seems a shame to not share that as well!

First things first – YAY Julia for starting this blog!! What a fun idea!

A little bit about me. My posting name is Margali. I dreamed of dancing from a very early age.  But financial issues kept my parents from being able to enroll me in dance classes when I was young.  Later, I felt I was too overweight and too ungraceful to dance.  I cut myself off from this dream for years because of the limitations I set on myself.   2 1/2 years ago, I found my belly dance studio.  I printed out the registration form and it sat on my desk for a month until I got up the nerve to take a walk in workout class.  I went all by myself – striking out on my own in a way I had never done before.  The teacher was wonderful and explained everything we were doing very clearly.  I was so excited when we started.  And I sucked BIG TIME!!!  I was hot, sweaty and sore.  And I fell in love with belly dancing!!!!

My first choreography was Haya gat Alaya – a fun, sassy dance with lots of hip work!   Cut to now – I’m 45 and fabulous!  I’ve lost those negative people and negative attitudes that keep me down; I’ve shed 75 pounds; I’ve become more confident.  And, I’ve learned SO much about dance and about myself. 

Thursday nights at Windy Hill classes are filled with intermediate dancers and beautiful women of all sizes and ages. I hope to join Julia is making regular posts to this new blog to chronicle our journeys and explorations into the larger world of belly dance.

Yesterday I took Mahtaab’s workshop on dancing with fan veils. I’ve done no veil work of any type before — when Irkosily Veil (the studio’s beginner veil choreography) was taught recently, I couldn’t take it because of scheduling. So this was my first experience with any kind of veil/fabric work in bellydance.

If you don’t know what a fan veil is, do you remember those folding “Chinese” fans? They have a bunch of skinny bamboo blades all fastened together, and there’s a wide strip of paper cut in an arc that covers the blade. Open it up, and use it to fan yourself when it’s hot. In the South they are often referred to as “parlor fans.” Imagine that, but instead of paper, there is a layer of thin silk fabric covering each side of the bamboo blades, and one of the two layers extends out as a rectangle beyond the end of the blades. The standard fan veil length is 1.5 meters, apparently, though you can also get 3 meter long ones (which I can’t even imagine maneuvering).

Fan Veil

We first learned how to open and close them effectively. You hold it gently in your hand and SNAP your wrist to get it to open. Closing them is just pushing the sides together. We spent some time just getting used to the movements and learning how to get the air underneath the veil so it would float beautifully. You can make big sweeping arclike moves with your arms that the fan veils will follow, or you can make little short movements that ripple the veils quickly. Part of the trick is to make sure that you are moving them gently but vigorously to get the most “float” out of them.

Once we practiced waves and arcs and ripples and fountains, Mahtaab had put together a little combination for us to practice with. It wasn’t long, just about a minute or so, but you could really get the feel of how the fan veil worked in combination with your dance movement.

This is a prop that I want to play with more. I can see using it in cabaret-style dancing more than I would use a regular veil, perhaps.

We just heard that Sabeeya’s “I Am Woman” by Jordin Sparks is going to be the fusion/alternative dance for the Nazeem Allayl Fall 2011 Studio Show. Yip!!! Here’s a preview:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buuDgofJaD8[/youtube]

I wasn’t totally sure about this class before it started, but it turned out fabulous. Combinations classes aren’t my favorite because you learn something one week and that’s it. Forty seconds of a song just leaves me wanting to continue, but not confident enough of what I did the first forty seconds to build on it.

I can’t decide whether I’m really a fusion kind of dancer or not. It’s fun to explore that side, though. The moves are definitely funkier than I’m used to and yet require more precise control. Being an intermediate class, layering was a HUGE part of this and it’s something I’m still struggling with.

I loved the music choices for this class! I really hated missing week 2, because Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep,” a new favorite of mine, was the chosen song. We had a couple of weeks of Beats Antique, which were fun as well. But the last class was, as you might guess, the pièce de résistance! Sabeeya, after swearing to kick the ass of anyone who dared claim this as their own ever, shared the first part of her incredible “Carol of the Bells” dance which had left my jaw on the floor at the last Hafla. It was way beyond pretty much everyone, of course, thanks to the fast tempo of the moves, the intricate layering, and a couple of funky moves we’d really never seen before, but we had a total blast trying to bring out our inner Fierce Women.

WE’RE IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was the text I received from Mary at 8:40 p.m. Tuesday.

I had been in my regular Tuesday night class, completely on tenterhooks just as we had both been all day. I had tried to relieve the tension during class announcements by a bit of clowning, pretending to bite my nails all the way up to my elbows as Sabeeya once again announced the show, but it really didn’t help.

During class I obsessively checked for a message every time I grabbed a drink of water. Finally, after class I saw that Mary had both called and texted during the last ten minutes of class, so I knew what it had to be. I read the message and started jumping up and down there in the studio in my caftan, holding my cellphone over my head in triumph. Yeah, I was just a little excited. Our three class friends who were still there all yipped and hollered along with me, while Sabeeya and Habiba looked utterly pleased and, in Sabeeya’s case, gratified. We’re just her students, after all!

Since then we have been separately rehearsing continuously in our heads, plus running through the dance countless times in my dining room Wednesday & Friday nights to iron out the spots we weren’t happy with. We’ve planned our entrance and exit as well as we can given that we’ve never actually seen the stage. Then there’s the nightly slatherings-on of good old L’Oreal Sublime Bronze for that fake tanned look — thank goodness we finally found the Deep color! Still need to do the fingernails, though!

Tomorrow night will both not come fast enough, and come far too fast, I suspect.

Every year Nazeem Allayl Dance Studio puts on a show at the Red Light Cafe, a small performing venue in Midtown. Mostly it’s the studio’s professional dancers and amateur troupe members, but student performers are included in the program as well. Unlike our studio shows and haflas, you have to audition if you want to be in the RLC show:

Come in costume and stage makeup, and bring your music. We want to make sure you look appropriate and that you know the choreography. The format is the same as for the amateur night auditions, you simply perform your dance once.

When this year’s show was announced, Mary brought up the subject of us trying out, though I’d already thought about it as well. We had to decide on a choreography to perform, and it had to be one that wasn’t already “taken” by troupe members. That eliminated Haya Gat Alaya, which we had performed together at the last Hafla. We were just finishing learning Hanci, but with it being a candle dance we KNEW it was out of the question! We probably wouldn’t be allowed to perform it at a hafla, never mind in the crowded room at the RLC. So we decided on the other “partner” dance we had worked on together, Yoam Wara Yoam.

So we began preparing. We didn’t want to just use our coordinating costumes from last spring’s Studio Show (don’t really fit the mood), nor did we really want to use the gypsy skirts (too big & bulky for this dance). I ran across a skirt at Holy Clothing that I thought would work. Mary’s top and harem pants from the fall Studio Show went with it, so I asked Cindy if I could borrow hers. We thought of using our matching ShimmyMob hip scarves but they turned out to be too pink to go with the red skirt, so we chose gold beaded fringe belts, and black ballet slippers of course. As the finishing touch, Mary found the perfect pair of earrings for each of us at Target, of all places!

We started practicing the choreography, both in our heads and for real. Practice was complicated by me going out of town for Memorial Day weekend, and Mary being at the beach with her daughters the entire following week. Luckily we did have Sunday before Memorial Day weekend to practice together and see where we were having trouble, which let us straighten things out before our final practice together on Sunday before Monday’s audition.

Thank goodness for Sabeeya! When we realized that the available choreography notes were outdated, and neither of us remembered exactly how a couple of sections went, we worked out what we THOUGHT was right. Then we sent the revised notes to her, and she clarified a few points and filled in the one big gap in our memories. Whew!

We spent all day Monday Facebooking back & forth, anxiously awaiting the actual audition…at 9:15 p.m. Talk about a long day! I also had to deal with getting a spray tan, teaching class, having office hours, and filling in for evening meds at Good Mews. I wouldn’t be able to leave the shelter until at least 8 p.m. (because of the insulin injections), so I figured I was just going to have to dress and makeup at the shelter in the bathroom.  I also realized late that we needed to burn a CD, so I ran home to do it quickly, only to find my computer not cooperating at all. At 8:40 p.m. I dashed past all the Good Mews cats and out to my car, costumed and mostly made-up (still needed more mascara).

I was at the studio in plenty of time, just after 9 p.m., only to realize that I’d left my bag containing my shoes & belt in the bathroom at the shelter! Then I dropped my glasses (and the damn mascara) beside the car & had to find them in the dusk. So by this time I am just about a nervous wreck, and I think Mary was little better. But we just reminded each other once again that we were at least TRYING OUT, and whether we made it or not we are truly fabulous women.

Oy.

There were only four acts auditioning — us, another duo, and two soloists. All four acts were very different from one another. Ours was rather classical cabaret style, a sort of “love lost, love found” story. One of the solos was one of the cute, sassy intermediate choreographies, the other an original gypsy-ish dance. Then there were B.J. and Olivia reprising their performance to the Commodores’ Brick House from the Hafla, complete with their “white Afro” wigs and tie-dyed bell-bottoms.

So we all four ran through our dances, with Schadia taking notes. After each act, she made comments and suggestions on what each of us needed to do to make our performance better. For us she started with the tans — well, we knew that was coming. Mary & I are a couple of pale-skinned Northern-European-heritage gals who just don’t really tan to speak of no matter what we do, but we try! Then for me it was my facial expression (no “angry lips”), the front hip drop, & the “clap-for-me” hands; for Mary it was staying on tippy-toes & not hypnotizing me to sleep when I backbend!

We were told we’d get an email within 24 hours or so. We put the caftans back on, heading home to begin waiting…

Tuesday night in class Sabeeya was starting to teach us hip circles, so of course she had the class bend their knees, lean back pushing the pelvic area forward, and hold our arms so that our hands were face-up framing our hips. As we held that pose, before she could tell the newcomers what to say, in our most high-pitched annoying girly voices, it slipped right out of my mouth:

“LOOOKIT MAH HEEEEEE-IIPPS!!!!!”

She straightened up, whirled around, and yelled (as if she had to) “WHO SAID THAT???”

Ooopsie!

Andrea promptly threw me under the bus by saying “It wasn’t me, not THIS time!” I had the grace to look abashed.

After class I told her that I had been so well trained in past classes that it had become a reflex, then gave her a wedge of dark chocolate as a peace offering.

Moral: when you repeat a class you may know what to expect, but it can get you in trouble as well!