Busy Season!

Dancing at Sky Bar, one of the many places you'll see me performing this Spring

 

We have two busy seasons here in Arizona: Spring and Fall. Bookending our harsh Summer, each of these seasons is about a month and a half to two months long, and organizers cram in as many events as possible to take advantage of the beautiful days when people actually want to be outside. This leads to a lot of schedule juggling for belly dancers and other entertainers, as we try to balance the events that we're scheduled to perform at and the events we'd like to attend as spectators.

I've just updated my upcoming performances side bar, and you can see that in addition to our regular appearances at Sky Bar, Fire & Gold Belly Dance will be dancing at the Festival of Books and the Pima County Fair. That's awesome! But what you don't see is the list of events that I'll be attending as an audience member... I've got Wild Wild West Con this weekend, a couple of trips out to Ren Faire with different people, The Body Love Conference, maybe a little get-away with my husband, and a whole stack of events that I've had to turn down due to scheduling conflicts. Seriously, I've turned down 4 events in Tucson this weekend due to already having tickets for WWWC.

All of this AND I'm waiting to hear back about my Tribal Fest performance application! In fact, I should probably be practicing for all of these gigs instead of blogging about them.

Open Stage!

I've been really bad and I haven't blogged the new flier for Open Stage. Isn't it pretty?

Anyway, I LOVE the Open Stages at Sky Bar. We get such a great crowd... Dancers and their friends and families, bachelor/ette parties, trivia teams, sports fans, and so much more. To me, the best thing is when someone is there and they realize that they know one of the dancers from a different area of life! Ha ha! It's always such a surprise.

I am especially excited for this Open Stage because I will be doing something really fun -- Doing improv to a song I have (probably) never heard before. I had Chris pick a song for me and send it to Jolie, so I won't even know what I'm dancing to until it starts!

That's another thing I love about Open Stage... it's a chance to really experiment, to play with something that I wouldn't normally do at a regular gig. A lot of dancers also use it to test new material out, to get their fellow dancers' opinions, or just to step out of their box a bit. It's a really great community event and I hope to see a lot of you there. Here's the event page!

Open Stage Tonight!

Tonight is our monthly Open Stage at Sky Bar! It's going to be a good night. I'll be performing a couple of numbers with my troupe and a fan veil solo. Plus there will be a number of other local Tucson bellydancers performing in a variety of styles. All this and you can have a pizza and a beer, soda, coffee, tea, cocktail, wine, juice, whatever floats your boat. Please remember that because it is held in a bar this is a 21+ event. However, there is no cover charge! Really, where else are you going to get that much free entertainment on a Thursday night?

(Photo by Liora K Photography. Learn more about our troupes at Skirt Full Of Fire)

So much dancing!

I have been so busy that I forgot to tell you to come out and see Skirt Full of Fire and Fire & Gold perform today! We were part of the BreakOut holiday show, which always coincides with the street fair. Although this will be the last one in this location, I suppose, because BreakOut is moving! I'm very excited because the new studio is not only bigger, it has central heating and cooling! But the Fourth Ave location was not without its charm, and I will miss it (and not only because it gave me a convenient place to park on Fourth).

The show itself was great, I feel like we danced really well. Sadly, this is Kamrah's last performance with us, as she is moving away to Chicago! I will miss her greatly because she is such an incredible dancer and a very nice person to work with, and her husband is one of the most supportive guys in the community (you can see his elbow in this pic as he is filming us). They're a great couple and Chicago is lucky to get them!

Thursday's Open Stage was also AWESOME! What a great crowd! People really got into it, even though a lot of them were originally just there to watch football on the big TVs at Sky Bar. It turns out that when given the choice between sports, and beautiful women dancing, a lot of people will choose the dancers. Sky Bar gave us a nice big space to dance in, which was great, and the drink prices were awesome! I look forward to performing again next month.

I have two more gigs next week and then I think I am done for December, unless any last-minute holiday parties crop up. Whew!

Come to the Open Stage!

Here is the official FB event page for the first ever Sky Bar open stage! I know it's kind of short notice, but I am hoping to see a lot of people there, both to dance and to watch. We want Sky Bar to be happy to have us, after all! Plus I have really missed the social aspects of the open stage scene -- hanging out before and after, sharing tables with friends, seeing dancers from across town, etc etc. Please come out if you can!