Sharon Kihara

Hello there, internet. Did you miss me? I was sick in bed for a week. It was wonderful *eye roll*

I got well just in time to head up to Tempe for the Sharon Kihara Spring Intensive at Plaza de Anaya! I had only purchased one workshop this time around, since I decided to spend all my fun money on a tattoo, but I also bought myself a ticket to the show, because really, $15 is a STEAL for the sort of show that Plaza always puts on for the intensives! It felt really strange to be at the show and not have been at workshops earlier in the day, though, and then it felt strange to get up this morning and have a few hours to hang out instead of rushing to the workshop!

The one workshop that I did take was SO MUCH FUN! It was all about creative collaboration in a group setting. We were split up into random groups and we had to come up with a story, and then a choreography to express it. I found it really amazing how much 7 people from varying dance backgrounds could accomplish together in just an hour. All four groups came up with really beautiful choreographies, it was great to just sit and watch them. I had a wonderful time working with my group, I was lucky and ended up in the same group as two of my former Anaya troupe mates and a few other people I knew!

Sharon struck me as a very warm, friendly, and fun person. I didn't get much of a sense of her teaching style, since this particular workshop was more geared towards group interaction with her guidance, but friends who had taken the entire weekend spoke really highly of the more technical ones, so I have a feeling I'd enjoy learning more from her in the future.

Now I'm ready to throw myself back into dancing this coming week. I can't wait to see my Fire & Gold troupe mates tomorrow night!

Teacher Profile: Anaya Tribal

When I decided that I wanted to make the weekly commitment to go to Plaza de Anaya for belly dance classes, I then had to decide who I was going to study with. I knew I wanted to learn tribal, but there were group tribal classes on THREE different nights! Which to choose? I ended up settling on Anaya Tribal over ATS or Domba, because Thursday was a good night for me and I saw that Cari and Tiffany used to dance with Nawari at the Ren Faire, and I LOVED that group!

I'm happy to say that I made the right decision -- although there probably wasn't a wrong decision. Learning from Cari and Tiffany has been a treat! They have a very polished and exact style of tribal, with a lot of the basics that you'll learn in any class but also a lot of unique combos. The vocabulary is staggeringly large and varied, and ever changing, with new moves occasionally added and old moves dropped out when they fall out of favor. This ever-evolving style means that after over 2.5 years with them, I still don't have the entire curriculum committed to memory and there's always more to learn and room to improve.

In addition to teaching beginner, intermediate, and advanced ITS, Cari and Tiffany occasionally offer classes in sword and skirt. They travel to many belly dance festivals and SCA events to teach workshops and vend their costuming wares. Oh, did I not mention the costuming? I did now. They have the best pantaloons and the cutest vests, not to mention gorgeous bras at affordable prices. You can learn more about Anaya and do a little shopping at the Anaya Tribal website.

Cari and Tiffany also direct The Anaya Tribe, a student troupe of various levels of dedicated students. I spent several happy, albeit frenetic, months as a member of Anaya Tribe performing at a variety of shows. The Tribe is a great way to improve your dance, get performance experience, and make friends. I'm sad to be leaving it at the end of this month!

By the way, Anaya member Danna was also helping with the classes for a while but then she had to take some maternity leave. Her daughter Zoey was born yesterday! Congratulations, Danna!

Big Dancing Weekend!

My goodness did I dance a lot this weekend! Hours and hours of dance, in fact!

Last night was a big birthday bash for Kimberly, owner of Plaza de Anaya and all around awesome lady. Not only was there live drumming to dance to, but Spiritchaser (the Dead Can Dance tribute band) played a live set, too! That was SO much fun to dance to. I enjoyed getting my Anaya on with Tiffany and No-El to beautiful live music.

Today I had not one but two troupe practices, each two hours long. First, my last troupe practice with Anaya Tribe, where we did our usual general practice and crazy layering warm-up, and then we worked on our piece for the Unmata show next weekend. Second I came back to Tucson for the Collective's practice, in which we talked about what we were going to do, practiced a bunch of dancing and made a lot of noise with zills.

Now I am ready to relax for a bit before I have to tackle another class-filled week!

Back from Class

Another long Tempe night. I had fun seeing my friends in class and getting my dance on, and meeting a new student or two and buying yet another "Rukie" style overskirt, because 3 is not enough. Got some homework to work on between classes, too!

Back to Anaya!

The New Year Session at Plaza de Anaya finally started this week, so it was time for fresh Anaya classes. Had a good time, enjoyed seeing my Phoenix friends, swapped out some of my retail items and collected my earnings... But dang am I tired out from the drive and the dancing!

Have to say I did feel good in class... I "got" some things that I've had trouble with in the past. Studying with other teachers and practicing more has done well for me.

See me dance this weekend!

I have two performances this coming weekend, so I hope I'll see at least some of you there!

On Saturday I will be performing at the Plaza de Anaya student recital in Tempe. From 5:30 to 6:30 there will be an open drum and dance, then at 7pm the students will take the stage! This event is free, and you can bring a dish if you want to participate in the potluck meal. I will be performing with the Anaya Tribal students. Click here for the Facebook event page, which has more details.

Then on Sunday I will be performing at the Belly Dance Holiday Show at Fluxx Productions here in Tucson! This hafla will feature visiting dancer Raven Ebner as well as many talented local Tucson dancers. I will be performing with my Wednesday night classmates and debuting my Lovely Creature solo. The event costs $5 and we will also be collecting non-perishables for the food bank. Doors open at 6pm. Click here for the Facebook event page.

Holy crap, it's December

Day 335 of practice.

There's just one month left of my year of practice! Can't believe 2011 is almost over.

Tonight's practice was 2 hours of Anaya Tribal classes. I'm happy that they've been adding more challenges for the level 3-4 students in the level 1-2 class. Tonight we had to play 3-3-7 on our zills while the newbies learned 3s, and we had to layer shimmies over our Turkish and Arabic. I am slowly getting better at that. Turns out that most of my problems with dance all stem from just being too tight, so as I relax more and stretch all my tight places more, these problems will go away. Also I have to keep practicing, of course.

I also added some items to my Plaza de Anaya gift registry! Yes, that's right, Plaza has a registry this year, so that your friends, family, and significant others can make sure to buy you the right dance pants. Wait... there are no pants on my registry! What is wrong with me?

Busy, busy weekend

Days 322, 323 and 324 of practice.

Whew! My last super-jam-packed-travel-weekend is behind me! I can spend some weekends at home. Hooray!

Friday, day 322. Practiced in my car. But really, honestly practiced. Tried Fonda's advice of practicing chest lifts while singing to make sure I'm not using my breath. This is basically the perfect thing to do while driving alone down the highway after dark, because there's no one to see you looking silly and singing horribly. Also listened to the song for my next solo and got some epic inspiration. I need to learn how to do the Berber walk.

Saturday, day 323. Last Anaya Tribe performance at the year! Headed up to Faerie Fest early with Jen, so we could spend a few hours getting our faerie on. Got a scarab henna tattoo with green glitter on it. Danced on the scariest stage ever, switching off with the lovely ladies of Divine Chaos and their skirt troupe. Had a good time despite scary stage. Later, we went to Aura, the black light party hosted at Plaza de Anaya, and I got to play with my sweet new glow fans and practice some Anaya style with Jen.

Sunday, day 324. Troupe practice! Since we don't have any upcoming performances to drill for, we focused on honing our zill skills and developing a new formation. Pretty exciting.

Now I have to get ready for a meeting with my local Tucson dancers. Like I said, it's a busy weekend!

Coughing my brains out

Days 307-310 of practice, sorta.

Well, my year of dance kind of fell apart with this sickness. I flat out did not practice on Thursday and Friday. I was so sick, and in such a bad mood from being sick, that it just didn't happen. But you know what, I'm okay with that. I've been doing this for over 300 days and I only missed one before, also when I was sick. So I think I've proven that I can practice every day. I'm going to continue onward, having acknowledged the fact that sometimes I am physically and/or mentally incapable of doing anything that truly resembles dancing. From now on, sick days will be for non-physical dance journey enrichment -- maybe I'll spend the day watching videos on YouTube, or sorting through new music, or reading a belly dance magazine or on-line articles.

Anyway, the weekend was full of dance. I went to the Plaza de Anaya Intensive, featuring Elizabeth Strong and Silvia Salamanca. I couldn't fully participate, due to low energy and coughing fits, but even sitting on the sidelines and taking notes when I got too tired was fun and inspiring. Plus the show pretty much knocked my socks off! Other fun parts of the weekend were carpooling with Jolie and getting to know her better, spending the weekend with my great friend Jen, and being paired up with awesome fellow Tucsonan Gina and my beading belly dance friend SaraBeth for an exercise in upper Egyptian group dancing :) All that and I got a badass femme fatale hairclip from local vendor extraordinaire Kyla, as well as DVDs from both instructors so I can pick up more of their style when my health improves.

Now I'm left with a horrendous cough but a strong desire to dance (especially since my husband found more awesome music tonight), so I'm facing a week of going to my dance classes but dancing at partial capacity -- Jolie has already given me permission to skip the torturous crunches, push-ups and hip bridges during her warm-ups, probably because she's had to listen to me cough all weekend :)

I'm a water faerie!

Days 260 and 261 of practice.

Here's a picture of my costume from yesterday's performance! I danced to "Ocean" by Collide, and my character for the piece was an amoral water faerie... Shy, seductive, alien, and graceful. Also she wears tiny winged bird skulls over her ears, because I've been waiting for the perfect excuse to wear them. I got a lot of compliments on the costume and the dancing, so I'm floating on Cloud 9.

Over all, the Healing Through Dance benefit was a success! All of the performances were great, we had an enthusiastic crowd, and we raised a nice amount of money for the Sessoms family! Speaking of raising money, we ended up with a lot more rummage sale donations than we expected, and Plaza de Anaya has kindly allowed us to leave a rack of items in the store, so if you were unable to make it to the benefit but would still like to shop, head over to the studio this week! There are some really nice items! I personally came home with a new tie top, gahwazee coat and panel skirt all in beautiful Autumn-appropriate colors. There are things for tribal, fusion, and cabaret dancers, and some clothes that can be worn for day-to-day stuff, too!

Today was troupe practice, where I got my brain broken by more zill patterns! I really need to work harder, and also get myself a private zill lesson with Mahin, because she is awesome and I need help. We also talked about upcoming gigs, costumes, and our dance levels. I am pleased to announce that I am now a Level 2 Anaya Tribe Dancer and I only need 1,000 more EXP before I level up (a little joke for my gamers there).

We have a troupe gig next weekend but it's for a charity event and I don't think it's open to the public, so if you want to see me get my group tribal improv on, you need to come to the Desert Shakedown on October 8th!

Healing Through Dance for PJ Sessoms

I am pleased to announce that my next performance will be at the Healing Through Dance benefit for PJ Sessoms, who is the other of my classmate Jacque. Mrs. Sessoms is battling cancer, so we're putting on a benefit to raise some money to help the family with the costs. See the flier for all of the details you need!

I'm part of the "...and more!" performing, and I am also donating two pieces of my unique handmade jewelry to the raffle. There will also be a rummage sale of gently used costume items, so if you're looking to work on your costume closet, you can't go wrong there. All in all, I think it's going to be a pretty awesome event and I'm looking forward to it.

By the way, there is no set admission but they will be requesting donations at the door. Plaza de Anaya is donating the use of the studio for the night, so all of the money will be going to the Sessoms family. Please come as you can and donate as much as you can, whether is by paying at the door, buying raffle tickets, or participating in the rummage sale. I hope I'll see you there :)

Student Recital This Weekend!

The picture above is from my first student recital! Aw, I was so excited.

This weekend is my third student recital and I'm still pretty excited! It's held on Saturday at Plaza de Anaya and if you'd like more information, you can check out the Facebook event page.

I'm at the workshops!

Day 134 of practice.

This is a pre-scheduled post to let you know that today's practice is presumably 4 hours of workshops with Deb Rubin at Plaza de Anaya! Even if I had my laptop with me in Tempe, I'd probably be too busy having an awesome time to actually update this blog. I will be back tomorrow night!

Skirts and friends

Day 125 of practice.

Tonight was a fun evening of Anaya Tribal classes, made extra fun by the fact that my friend Dawn is now carpooling with me to take classes at Plaza! That long drive sure went a lot faster with someone to chat with :)

We learned this weird half-turn double choo-choo move in skirt class and it was just so counter-intuitive, a lot of us were struggling with it. I know what I'll be practicing all week.

Also, in performance prep we learned a BRAND NEW slow move! So exciting! I'll have to also practice that, since it's new and all :)

Now, hydration followed by sleep.

Class, class, and more class

Day 104 of practice.

Ahhh, Thursday. Three hours of dance class at Plaza de Anaya. I had fun. I tried to put a lot of the basic technique stuff that I learned from Mira's workshops into play. I watched a couple of my classmates perform solos. I learned drum rhythms. And then I drove home.

Along the way, I contemplated doing a completely different song for my solo, which would require a switch to slow moves instead of medium/fast. The truth is that after two friggin' months of practicing to it, I am kind of tired of Turbo Tabla 4, and I have a new song I absolutely love. I'll practice both this week, and if I feel comfortable with the new song by next Thursday, I'll use it instead.

Mira Betz and The Big 100!

Day 100 of practice. Woohoo! *throws confetti* (^^^^ Look, it's me with Mira Betz!)

Doesn't the title of this blog post make it sound like some sort of children's novel? But no, this is the story of how Mira Betz and Plaza de Anaya and my wonderful Tempe dance friends made days 99 and 100 of my daily dance goal really awesome!

First of all, I want to say that Kimberly of Plaza de Anaya is one of the best people in the world. She's so sweet, and she works so hard to not just provide dancers in the Valley and beyond with a great place to dance, but to bring us the best workshop teachers. So I want to publicly thank her for all that she does to make my dance life, and that of so many of my friends, so much better! Luv ya, Kim!

And my friends and classmates bring a lot to my dance and social life, too! Usually when I go up for workshops, I stay at Casa de Meghan, but this weekend Meghan had a lot going on, so Rosie and Nahks offered to let me crash with them, just hours before I was due in town. Not only did they give me a place to sleep, they even cooked me a super-yummy lunch before I headed home, and talked nerdy with me! I love that I've found people who love dance AND gaming AND SF/F novels as much as I do! Also, I need to mention that Rosie and Meghan performed beautifully at Saturday night's show, a wonderfully choreographed dark, dramatic, feathery fusion number that made me so proud of them! And I helped -- in the tiniest way, by stitching down some lace on Meghan's bustle. LOL.

But now, MIRA BETZ!!!! Wow. I have taken a decent amount of workshops in the slightly-less-than-two-years that I've been formally taking belly dance classes. Usually I learn some things, take away a few good tidbits, but whatever combos and choreos we learn get forgotten, because I take insufficient notes and have no one to practice with. I was really excited when I saw that Mira's workshops were going to be all technique instead of specific moves, because that's really what I want more of, ways to refine the moves I know and develop more of my own. I knew this weekend was going to be good, and a lot of fun, but I had no idea that it would be amazing.

Seriously, every time I take a workshop with a dancer that I really admire, I jokingly think to myself "Maybe some of her talent will rub off on me!" This is the first time that I've felt like it actually might. Well, not so much HER talent, but she gave all of us the tools to hone our own talent, to each be the best dancer we can, whether we dance Egyptian or American Cabaret or ITS or Gothic Tribal Fusion. She imparted so much wisdom and advice that I literally feel like this weekend changed my life -- it's shown me the path to be the dancer that I want to be, how to get myself out of the rut of ho-hum daily practice and work hard to perfect even the most boring beginner moves.

If you have a chance to take workshops with Mira, I totally recommend it. In fact, not just recommend it, I say DO IT NO MATTER WHAT! If you have to sell plasma and live off of ramen for a month just to afford the workshop, it will totally be worth it. I've never had an instructor inspire me so much, or make me work so hard! And on top of that, she's just plain funny, so even when we were working really hard, she kept the mood light and I never felt stressed, even when I was struggling to layer a rib circle over a vine step (yes, for some reason I am vine step impaired). It helps that she encourages failure as a way of learning, so I felt like even if I messed up, I was trying, and I was learning, and I got pretty much every exercise right at least once, through sheer persistence.

Although my muscles hurt, I am so energized from this amazing weekend. I feel like I could gush on and on in this blog post, or I could clean my entire house, or make a necklace, or go dance for half an hour, or work on one of my novels, or tackle any of a number of other projects. This is so what I needed, and I hope I can find a way to make this feeling last.

(Oh yeah, I'll post about my Day 100 reward tomorrow!)

Knee shimmy complication

Day 93 of practice.

A while back, Cari showed us an exercise to improve our knee shimmies: sit on the floor and rapidly try to slam the backs of your knees into the ground. Now, I'm pretty happy with my knee shimmy, but there's always room for improvement and it seemed like a fun thing to do while watching DVDs. The only problem was that my corgi Daisy was very excited about me sitting on the floor, and decided she had to help... by flopping across my knees! My legs are pretty strong, but not strong enough to shimmy with 23 lbs of dog muscle draped across them :)

I did manage to chase Daisy off of my lap, but afterwards she sat right next to me and stared deeply into my eyes, as if trying to fathom why belly dance is more important than puppy snuggles. Poor dog, she just doesn't understand my art!

In addition to shimmies, floreos, and belly rolls while watching DVDs, I did a quick run-through of my solo, which is getting better and better. Practicing it would be even nicer if I didn't have to stick to a tiny part of the living room floor so as to avoid the Ceiling Fan of DOOM!

Anyway, since it's only 1:15am instead of 2am, and I've had a mostly relaxing day (other than a short moment of panic when our dogs escaped, luckily unlike cats, they come when they're called), I can tell you all about my fun and exciting trip to Phoenix yesterday!

A while back Mahin announced that she was putting together a Belly Laughs show! Belly dance comedy, something that I've seen videos of on-line and kept wishing someone would do here. It turns out that my friend Dawn also wanted to go, so we agreed to carpool! Then we found out that Aura (a black light party at Plaza de Anaya) was planned for later in the evening, so that was an added bonus -- comedy + party + dance + friends = perfect Saturday night!

Despite getting a late start, we had a smooth drive up to Phoenix and found the Rhythm Room, a blues club that was hosting Belly Laughs. We were even early, so we were able to grab seats right next to the stage, and order some pizza to be delivered during the show, because we were starving! The show was reasonably crowded but not sold out, and sadly I didn't see any of my Phoenix dance friends there -- well, they missed out!

Belly Laughs was hilarious! Lots of talented dancers performing skits about all aspects of belly dance, from crazy customers to over-eager students to ridiculous props. I laughed so hard! In addition to the dancers, there was an all-female improv comedy troupe that did some skits between the dance performances and shared the emcee duties. They were quite funny and had clearly taken the time to learn some of the in-jokes of the belly dance community. Mahin really put together a great show, and if she does it again, I might just have to come up with a funny number to perform, too!

The show ended earlier than we expected and we had an hour and a half to kill before Aura, so we had a pleasant chat over coffee. It was a lovely night up in Phoenix, so it was nice to just sit and talk outside, and get to know Dawn better.

We got over to Plaza just as Aura started, and it's one of those events that starts off slow then gets more crowded as the night owls come out. I was able to introduce Dawn to some of the Plaza crew, and we checked out the retail floor lit only by dim blacklight, which was an adventure of "Is this brown or purple?" And since the dance floor was almost empty, I got to twirl around with my silk veil. Weee!

After a bit, more people showed up and they brought their props, so we alternated our time between dancing, and just sitting back to enjoy the glow poi and LED hoops and staffs. The hooping community is especially always well-represented at Aura and it's so fun to see the amazing moves they can do, and admire the different patterns of LEDs.

All too soon it was time to head home, and it was so nice to have a friend along to chat and keep me company for the long, boring drive through the dark. All in all, our road trip adventure was a blast and I look forward to doing it again... maybe someday soon!

Practice yes, zills no

Day 92 of practice.

Today's practice consisted of dancing at the Aura party at Plaza de Anaya. However, I did not do my 5 minutes of zills, because it is still ridiculously hot in this house, so it's hard to muster enthusiasm to move around at all. I feel bad about failing the 7 day challenge, but at least I'm still on top of my daily practice goal. I think I'll try the 7 day challenge again after our cooler is actually up and running and the house is hospitable.

I had a fun time today going up to Phoenix with my friend Dawn, but since it's almost 2am, I'll wait and talk more about the trip tomorrow.

Threeeeee moooooonths!

Day 90 of practice!

Virtual confetti for everyone! Today marks 90 days/three months of daily (except that one day that I was sick) practice! Hurrah! And this was a milestone that I rung in with style -- three hours of awesome classes at Plaza de Anaya! Dancing with friends, and working hard on my zills, and learning drum rhythms. Good times, good times indeed!

I thought about buying myself something special to celebrate today, but I decided to wait for day 100, since it will coincide with the Mira Betz workshops and I'm hoping maybe she will bring some nice merchandise, as most of the traveling teachers do seem to bring costume goodies along. And if she doesn't, well, I'll still be at the studio and I can buy myself something special!

I did order a veil tonight, but only because the Ren Faire veil lady didn't work out. She had 1/2 circle veils when I went this past weekend, but not a GREEN one! She said she might have it this weekend, but I'm not going back out and when I tried to go to her website to contact her about maybe having it shipped, my browser got hijacked due to that injection thing that was going around the 'net. WAY too much hassle! I should have ordered from the lady who sells through Plaza to start with.