Tribal Fest Days 2-3

 Henna death's head scarab by Debi the Henna Crone, who rocks hardcore

Sorry about the lack of an update yesterday, the wifi here doesn't work very well at night but it does work well while everyone is actually at the Festival, so here's a quick post!

Rundown of my workshop experiences:

Costuming with Dusty Paik. Not only did I take two pages of notes on costuming, but Dusty is freaking hilarious and I love her.

Slinky with Deb Rubin. One of my all-time favorite teachers, really breaking down how to make your slow just ooooooze with decadence.

Impulse with Donna Meija. First of all? There's something about Donna's voice, it's very lovely and soothing. This is a good thing, because she murdered me with an hour and fifteen minutes of hardcore warmup, so if she didn't sound so nice I might have hated her. Really enjoyed her approach to motivating movement from different parts of the body and playing with momentum.     

And now, per the request of Miz Becka Bomb, more shopping pictures! Here's some of my pretty jewelry. I've received 100 compliments on that beetle ring. Glad there are more people in the world who love beetles! Also glad I found a spiky bracelet that fits PERFECTLY.

 These fabrics are going to be a costume together. I am thinking a bustle skirt with the chevrons running down the center, and maybe I can put some chevrons on a bra too?

These green scarves were stupidly cheap and you can never have too many green scarves.

Tonight is the Meet and Greet Trick or Treat with the teachers, and tomorrow the performances begin! Eeeeee!

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!

Teacher Profile: Fonda Hamilton-Insley

If you're in or around Tucson and you want to learn improvisational group tribal style belly dance, you cannot go wrong with Fonda! With years and years of dance experience under her jingly belt, including ATS certification, sometimes it seems like Fonda knows everything about dance and has taken workshops from every teacher on the planet. She's full of knowledge and funny anecdotes, too! Her classes have a very fun and welcoming atmosphere and are especially good for newbies who might be intimidated by all the crunches and layering of Jolie's class.

I started studying with Fonda at the start of 2011 because she was going to teach some veil moves and I wanted to give veil a try. After that she taught some sword, then some zills, and by then I was hooked! Although we spent some time on props at the start of the year, Fonda's main focus is on group tribal improv, with a very easy-to-understand vocabulary of moves and queues, as well as some time spent on basic belly dance skills like isolations and shimmies and traveling moves.

Currently Fonda teaches at The Dance Loft on Wednesday nights. There's a beginner class and an intermediate class, so newbie students have something to work towards. She's also leading the Tucson Tribal Belly Dance Collective, a newly re-formed troupe that will soon be dancing all over Tucson.

Random cool fact about Fonda: She also does taiko drumming!

Teacher Profile: Jolie Roberson

A few months ago, Jolie Roberson blew into town from Chicago and turned my dance life upside down! There I was, wanting to branch out from ITS and hone my solo skills, and also wishing that I could take a drills class to really perfect some basics. There she was, ready to make me regret my wish by making me layer half-boxes over a tick-tock shimmy.

Jolie's classes are the perfect thing for the dancer who wants to be challenged. They start with a muscle-building warm-up (which usually involves crunches, push-ups, and other forms of torture... I mean exercise) and then move on to the dancing! The focus is on tribal fusion, with elements of ballet and modern dance.

The Choreo class usually focuses on some aspect of dance within the choreography -- whether it's expressing certain emotions, or traveling, or directing movement with your arms, there's almost always some central lesson to take away and apply to other dances.

Bellydance 101 tricks you with its name, making you think it will be easy. It is not. The moves may be basic, but Jolie focuses on training you to do them muscularly, with control, at various speeds, and layered over things that you don't think they should be layered over. Sometimes she comes up with layering ideas that even she struggles with, and we all get to be frustrated together.

Drills and Technique is like a more advanced version of 101, with more layers and doing things for longer. One night we had to spend two entire songs layering belly rolls over vibration shimmies. It's a great class for discovering what your strengths and weaknesses are then working on how to improve them.

Jolie teaches a couple of other classes that I haven't taken yet, and has more classes coming up on her schedule in February. She's also available for private lessons. For more information, you should visit her website Skirt Full of Fire.

9 months!

Day 273 of practice.

9 months of daily practice under my jingly green belt! I bought myself a present yesterday, beautiful teal lace harem pants (swoooooon), and I let myself take it easy today because DANG am I tired! Went to bed at 1:30am and woke up at 4am, 6am, 8am, and 9am. That sort of bad sleep is not acceptable after 3 hours of dance class and three hours of driving to and from dance class.

Anyway, I am SUPER EXCITED about my dance future because starting next week I'll be taking classes with a new teacher! Not that my current teachers aren't awesome, but these classes will be more focused on technique and solo material, which I really want some formal education on. My solo stuff is really a combination of isolations, basic tribal moves, and crap I made up. I get lots of compliments on my solos, but I know it's mostly because of the energy/emotion of my pieces and the fact that people like the veil work I've been doing lately. I want to take it to the next step beyond that!

More later... Now I need to sleep, and I'd better not wake up repeatedly!

Classy class

Day 194 of practice.

Tonight I fought off the remnants of the drowsiness of doom and went to class at The Dance Loft. It was a fun night, we did some drills and then we worked on our student performance. I had some trouble with the balancing props section because my hair was so slippery! But otherwise I had a good time, even though I was still a little out of it.

Fonda even wrote up some homework for us, two sets of things we can practice. I think these will be great to take with me on my upcoming vacation. If I want to get out of a boring conversation, or escape for some quiet me-time, I can wave my print-out and say "Sorry, I have to do my homework!"

Blown away

Day 186 of practice.

Well, I didn't really blow away, but we had some crazy windstorms today. Could it be because my new DVD by Tempest arrived in the mail?!? Who knows! I'm excited to check the DVD out as I really love Tempest's style and it apparently has a warm-up that is good for daily practice. My practice could use some more structure!

Today's unstructured practice included hand drills, shimmies while I washed the dishes, glute squeezes while reading, and some practice of various versions of Arabic. On Fonda's advice, I've been working to smooth out the chest lift and drop on my Arabic. I do it well enough when I'm dancing slow to medium, but apparently I get very choppy when I get fast. It's so good to have specific things to work on!

Good Wednesday

Day 159 of practice.

Today was a pretty good day. During the afternoon I ran a quick dress rehearsal for my solo, to make sure I could do floorwork in what I wanted to wear. I also discovered that I should wear my hair up, because if I wear it down it gets tangled in my crazy hair clip.

Speaking of hairclips, I got some in the mail which I will review next week!

Tonight I went to Fonda's class, where we did some fun drills and went back over a couple moves and then practiced dancing in formations. It was a good time.

New class format!

Day 152 of practice.

I'm really excited because Fonda changed the format of her Wednesday night class at The Dance Loft. It used to be totally drop-in friendly and we'd learn the same moves over and over again. But because there was a good core of returning students, she decided to start adding more advanced material, have us spend more time practicing dancing as if we were performing, and throw in some drills, too! The funny thing is that after she made this decision, only I and one other regular student showed up, plus one student who has been there 3-4 times, and then a bunch of newbies! But the new students kept up pretty well and I think everyone had a good time. I sure did.

Please break my brain

Day 146 of practice.

Still in that bad mood, but at least class was a lot of fun tonight. My awesome carpool buddy Dawn couldn't come with me, so I decided to skip beginner class, mainly so that I could actually eat a real dinner before leaving. Usually I have a PB&J sandwich and maybe some chips or apple sauce, so it's really no wonder that I can't focus by the time skirt class comes around!

All of our Anaya teachers were out of town, so Shannon from Divine Chaos was our substitute teacher for the night. She went over a couple of moves then gave us some really fun formations and exercises to play with for the rest of the class. This was just what I needed! I think my brain is bored of just hanging out while my body repeats the same moves over and over to put them in my muscle memory. I know that practice and repetition are important, but I also need mental stimulation! Tonight gave me some of that.

Then Shannon taught skirt class, and we learned SO MANY Divine Chaos combos! I'll have to practice hard all week if I intend to keep them in my head.

Substitute Teacher

Day 139 of practice.

A lot of people are away for Tribal Fest right now (lucky people!). This includes our usual Thursday night teachers Cari and Tiffany, so Danna (who is also part of Anaya Tribal) was our substitute teacher. Class was also smaller than usual. We went over a lot of level 2/3 moves which was nice, I really needed refreshers on those.

I'm finding skirt class hard, by the time I get to it I'm all tired out from two hours of tribal and I have a hard time focusing, and my arms want to be lazy and not hold my skirt up.

Belly flutters!

Day 131 of practice.

I've been thinking for a while that I'd like to start trying to do flutters, but I was too lazy to ever go do some actual research on how to do it, since I didn't lack for things to work on already. But tonight at The Dance Loft we had a substitute teacher, and one of the things she went over is how to work your way towards doing a flutter. Hooray! Something new to practice! Thank you, Brandye!

I got an "A"!

Day 117 of practice.

Taking classes from Fonda at the Dance Loft is a lot of fun, because she always says the silliest things, like "No one died!" and "Ok, you pass the class." Today I kept getting "A"s for doing things right, along with a couple of other students. I smile and laugh a lot in her class. We worked on slow moves and balancing props and leadership transitions and such. All good.

Today I also cut up an old too-tight t-shirt and turned it into a top to wear for classes. American Apparel has this silly idea that women shouldn't have muscles, so all of my "girl cut" t-shirts that used to fit before I started working out are now really uncomfortable. But I really like the designs on them, so I modify them into cute tops to liven up my practice clothes.

Pretty thrift store find

Day 113 of practice.

Today was a very social day for me! A friend and I were in the mood for some retail therapy, so we took off to Savers. Check out my neat find! It's a lace poncho, but the neck-hole is just the right size to rest at my hips. I thought I was going to have to modify it to have a cute overskirt, but it's already the perfect fit. Yay! I'm super in love with it because it's such a nice shade of green.

Then in the evening, I went to my teacher and friend Fonda's birthday party! There were a lot of other dancers there, but also non-dancers, so I got to meet a lot of new-to-me people and be social and have fun.

Oh yes, and there was practice, too! More shimmy drills. I am determined to get a good glute shimmy, to go with my knee shimmy and washing machine shimmy and oblique shimmy. Moooooore shimmmmiiiiieeees! By the way, I had a HUGE slice of cake. This is how I blog when I'm hyper. I think I should probably shimmy a bit more to burn this off before bed.

Successful Solo!

Day 111 of practice.

Whew! What a night! I performed my solo... you know, the one I've only been practicing for a week. I was unexpectedly super crazy nervous while I performed it... so nervous that I felt like I was visibly shaking and I was sure that everyone could see it. But they thought I looked happy and beautiful. The fact that I loved the song really shone through and overpowered the fact that I was suffering from an unusual bout of nerves. The song was a big hit. Hooray for having a husband who finds obscure songs for me :)

This was the last night of the session. We had a review and quiz for the Rhythm class, which was a lot of fun. I'm going to miss that class! Elissa Nova and Amanda Rose are both great teachers, and I enjoyed the fact that they gave us tests to keep us on our toes. And there were cupcakes! Hooray, cupcakes!

Also... daaaaaaaaance paaaaaaaaants! Next session I'm taking a skirt class, so I got some poofy green pantaloons to wear under my skirt. They're nice lightweight cotton so hopefully I won't feel too hot with two layers of clothes.