These were initially booked (and paid for) back in January, but frankly horrific weather on the part of the West Midlands meant that they had to be rescheduled. Which was kind of nice actually, because they felt almost like a freebie.
The workshops were organised by Lisa McKain, who has been hosting a series of dancers under the title 'Best of British'. Lisa is an amazing organiser; she even laid on a lunch for us all between the workshops, which was most welcome, although it did make for some queasy faces when we tackled spinning later in the afternoon!
We kicked off with a fun and energetic Saidi Stick piece. I'm not always a fan of choreography based workshop, but this was a great introduction to stick. It's a prop I've avoided in the past due to wrist injuries, but Sayuri was light on the drilling of individual moves, and heavy on the different ways of stringing them together, so I got to enjoy the feel of Saidi without ending up disabled by too much stick twirling. We also had a quick breakdown of different Arabic rhythms, which was very enlightening,
The veil workshop in the afternoon focused more on differing techniques and tricks than on a pure choreography. I've done a fair bit of veil work, but there were some new ideas here that I liked trying out. Only downside was that we were dancing to Yearning, which I do not love.
