Skirt Work

Fire & Gold Belly Dance is hoping to add a skirt choreography to our repertoire soon, so I felt like it was time to dust off my skills. As such, I took a solo I'd done in the past and added some skirt work to it. It's fun, it's sassy, and it makes for such pretty pictures!

I think 25 yard skirts are one of the most fun "props" out there. There's something about spinning around and swishing your skirt that brings back memories of being a little girl, playing dress up, and dancing around in floofy dresses. This is the grown-up version of that. I'm really looking forward to seeing what my troupe does with them!

In Defense of the Selfie

I posted this "selfie" on Thursday night as I was about to head out the door to Open Stage. Why? Well, I was feeling pretty happy about my freshly-hennaed hair and how I was wearing it down, and how cute my magenta glitter lipstick looked, and I wanted to share it with the world. I think it's fun when dancers post a little "On my way to the show" picture too, as it builds the excitement.

Then today, I read this article titled "The Age of the Selfie" which suggested that I should not, in fact, be inflicting pictures of my face upon my friends. How dare I be so vain as to suggest that I might be a little pretty and that maybe people would like to see me? Well obviously I have a couple of problems with the anti-selfie sentiments that float around on the internet!

My first problem is the suggestion that there's something wrong with feeling that you are pretty or cute or that your new haircut is awesome. I don't have the best self-esteem but there are still days when I look in the mirror and think to myself "Self, you're so darned cute today, look at that outfit and that makeup, you're rockin' it!" And while I don't share all of those moments with the internet, sometimes I feel so good about myself that I do want to share, and then yes, I definitely enjoy the validating comments that I get from my friends.

It's no secret that girls and women suffer from a lot of image-based insecurity. Whether it comes from what we see in the media, or how we were treated when we were kids, or rude comments in the street, or a complicated combination of all that and more, it's a hard problem to combat. But it seems like there are segments of the population who feel like we're supposed to feel bad about ourselves, and that feeling good about how we look is horrible vanity. Oh, we should care about how we look, we should primp and preen and dress to impress, but as soon as we acknowledge that we did a good job making ourselves presentable, we're being narcissistic.

My second problem is that I think a lot of people who are against selfies have a deep misunderstanding of the nature of internet friendships. Sure, I have friends on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram that I see in person regularly, but I also have friends who I rarely if ever see face-to-face. Some of them are friends who I've only known on-line, others are people who I met in person but they've since moved away. I LIKE seeing selfies of my long-distance friends. I like knowing what they've done with their hair, what kind of clothes they're wearing these days, what they're out doing in the city they live in now. And a lot of my friends LIKE seeing selfies of me. Especially now that I bellydance, they always want to see pictures of my new costumes, what sort of makeup looks I'm experimenting with, and of course, videos of me dancing.

My third and final problem with all this anti-selfie raging is that it is the smallest, stupidest of problems to worry about. Sick of seeing a friend's selfies? Just scroll past them. No big deal. If they post them constantly, you can even adjust your newsfeed on Facebook to not show their pictures. Honestly, what is it harming anybody if people like to post lots of pictures of themselves having fun, looking pretty, being bored, soliciting opinions on their new hair color, or anything like that? They're not spreading hateful opinions or damaging misinformation or overplayed memes. They're saying "Here's what I'd look like if you were here with me right now" and there's nothing wrong with that.

All Souls Procession

Tucson may be a small city, and it may lack the excitement of places like NYC and San Francisco, but there are some things we do right and one of them is the All Souls Procession. This local event takes the traditions of Dia de Los Muertos and gives them a distinctly Tucsonan flavor. Where else will you see bagpipers in skull-face makeup, bicycle-powered parade floats, and of course, a horde of well-costumed belly dancers with their own contingent of drummers?

(Above, me before the show. I did not whiten my face. I don't get a lot of sun, OK?)

I missed the Procession last year, which made me sad because I didn't get to wear my light-up bustle. Here I am shaking it and playing my zills.

One of the great things about this event is that it really brings people together. Whatever your walk of life, it's hard to not be moved by the idea of a parade that honors our dead and celebrates our living, vibrant, multi-cultural city. I think I saw dancers from almost every troupe in Tucson, we had drummers from the SCA, and I saw people of all ages and walks of life in the crowd along the streets.

I'm not sure how long the parade was this year, but it was definitely a long time to be dancing and playing zills! I am pretty sore and tired today! There's nothing like a parade to help you build stamina as a dancer.

Old Pictures

I realized today that I'd been pretty bad about uploading pictures to my fan page on Facebook, so I went through my personal profile and downloaded a bunch of photos that I liked. It was an interesting process. It reminded me of the fun I'd had at different shows. It was also a little sad, seeing pictures of me with friends who have moved away, or friends who no longer like each other, so we can't hang out together.

Of course, another thing I like about looking through old pictures is seeing how much I've changed! Going WAY back to before I was a dancer, you see me without any makeup, in pseudo-gypsy costumes for Ren Faire. At the start of my dance career, you can find me proudly smiling after my first dance solo, complete with red lipstick. Then there are the recent changes... Red hair, my slowly growing tattoo, glitter lips, false eyelashes. And in the photos taken mid-performance, you can see stronger arms and more confidence in my smile.

I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to delve into my old VIDEOS though. Oof!