Blue velvet baladi dress

It lives! It is still sadly lacking in fringe, needs the shoulderstraps pinning to the dress, and some serious boob jiggles, but it's finally wearable! Now I need to decide what colour veil I want to go with it. Can't decide whether to go matchy matchy with a turquoise one, or off the wall with lime green, pink or red! All I know is I want a solid colour veil, as the swirly ones will detract from my handiwork.

Also please note brand new hair cut and colour, which is by no means set off to advantage by the 'three hours on a bus trying to get home' expression.

Incidentally I am not naturally shaped like a carrot (more like the Very Hungry Caterpillar post 6th day gorge) I do not pose to advantage when tired, especially when the photographer is audibly groaning at my demands of one more shot (ideally this time without the dog, the bucket of car wash kit or the half eaten rawhide chew)

Craft Crazy

As usual, I am chock-full of costuming ideas, but woefully short of money to buy them or time to work on them.

This is part eased, part compounded by the fact I've booked a stall at the next Sparkle Sale run by local dancers, and as well as offloading some unwanted gear, am hoping to flog some original crochet designs.

I recently moved offices, and now have an hour or so a day on the train, which is prime time for a spot of hooking. So far I've tried my hand at gauntlets, zill bags, the hand flowers seen above, and even a couple of tribal belts!

I've also developed a real passion for cowrie shells. Shame they're so expensive over here!

Belly Dance and Burlesque

It's been a while since I've been out, and even longer since I've seen any burlesque, so you may imagine that I was fairly excited when yesterday evening saw me glamming up in my gladdest rags and heading out to a Bellydance and Burlesque cabaret show.

The audience for these shows  is almost as fabulous as the performers, so troupe mate Ruth and I took the opportunity to break out the red lipstick. I went fifties with a cute heart print dress, which was a whopping £5 in the sale at Tesco (that well-known vintage treasure trove) and a huge petticoat that made sitting down pretty tricky. Hair is in rather wonky victory rolls, one of which got snagged when I put the dress on, and had to be hidden under a black fascinator!

Naturally, we were attended by our respective swains, to reserve our seats, hold our coats and generally attend to our needs, but they weren't dressed up enough to merit a photo!

The show opened with an AmCab solo by Fulya, who is one of my favourite dancers. She has a fabulously flirty, cheeky style, and is a consummate professional, who managed to make the numerous problems with the sound during her set seems like all part of the fun. I was also in love with her costume- a purple bra top and skirt with iridescent sequins. beautiful and unusual, just like the owner!

I have to confess I can't remember the whole running order, but I do know that early on in the first half Ava Bonham-Garter performed an original (and hilarious!) strip-tease based on the Disney villainess Maleficent. We were informed by the compère that this was her first performance, so extra brownie points to her for being so confident and really owning the stage.

Kitty Kohl showed off her fabulously fluid moves in a lovely tribal fusion solo. This was the second time I'd seen her perform, and I was really impressed by how graceful she was.

Then there was a complete change of pace and we were treated to a selection of operatic arias from Sue Hutton. I am not an opera fan in the slightest, so I was not expecting to enjoy this, but I was totally blown away by her voice and stage presence. I am also totally in awe of anyone who can enunciate in three different languages!

The guest of honour for the night, Tjarda van Straten was due on, but more demons in the sound system meant that her track wouldn't play, so after a little twirl to show off her fabulous costuming, she headed off to try and sort out her music, leaving the stage to the tender mercies of my teacher and naughty nurse of the night, Dawn O'Brien.

Dawn's piece, a medical themed strip tease to Bon Jovi's 'Bad Medicine' had the entire audience in stitches, and should earn an award for 'most innovative use of surgical scissors'. I may never look at latex gloves in the same way again.

Musical issues sorted, Tjarda then closed the first half with one of the most exquisite pieces of dance I've ever seen. Her arm movements were just astounding, with the musicality carried through right down to her fingertips. There was a dead hush while she danced, it was that amazing.

There was time for a couple more photos during the interval, then the second half started with a bang as Fulya performed a cute and energetic strip tease, including a glove removal that was completely new to me- one to add to the practice list there!

Kitty Kohl wowed us with another piece of elegant tribal fusion, and then Sue returned for a jazz set. Sadly this bit of the show was somewhat spoiled for us as there was a particularly obnoxious group of females sat behind us who appeared unhappy with the fact that Sue was taking up stage time that could otherwise have been devoted to watching people take off their clothes, and were disruptive and generally vile during her performance. Clearly a little refresher on the meaning of the term cabaret was required, as well as some intensive work on their manners!

The penultimate performance saw Dawn returning to remind the audience of what she does best; a gorgeously technical cyber fusion piece to Korn's 'Get Up'. This had Ruth giggling- apparently some of the floorwork Dawn was demonstrating so flawlessly has had our tribal class in knots for weeks. Kind of glad I missed those classes!

The show closed with the return of Tjarda and dance partner Nadija Broekhart, performing as 'HipSick Theatre'. Their burlesque piece was ...disturbing. The costumes, a cross between Victorian children's underwear and fifties girdles and pantyhose, were brilliant, and the premise of dolls coming to life is something I've seen done before, but not with such precision and such an aura of creepy. An excellent reminder that burlesque is not just about the strip tease, but also about subversion of cultural norms.

I wasn't sure whether photography would be allowed, and in any case I would be reluctant to plaster artistes' pictures all over the net without their express permission, so there are no photos of the performers. However I do want to share this art work from Kookie Kaftan; the brainchild of Lynne and Julie Chapman, who host Bellydance and Burlesque. I was particularly taken by the way it expresses the ethos of the event- open to all styles and genres, but uniformly gorgeous!

  

Lazy Lent

I have the L in a big way at the moment. I don't like exercise at the best of times, and having been unwell means I pretty much have a carte blanche to coddle myself without anyone pointing out that I've been sat on my arse solidly for three weeks...

Such sedentism is good for neither my waistline nor my dance ability, so I've decided to give up chocolate for Lent, and take up three lots of exercise a week. This is slightly weird, since I am a dyed in the wool pagan, but I figure since I was too sick at New Year, this as close to a resolution as I'm going to get!

Class last night saw me discovering just how pathetically noodle-like my arms have become, so this evening I hit the swimming baths after work, and felt duly virtuous. The new public baths have only just opened, and they're pretty nice, so it was less of a chore than slogging up and down the old pool. They're also rather controversial, being heated by the crematorium next door. You can decide for yourselves whether this is recycling taken to its logical extreme, or pearl-clutchingly offensive!

You Might Need Some Body

I still haven't summoned up the balls to tackle the horrific mess that is my sewing room, but I did brave the carnage for long enough to rescue my latest project, the blue baladi dress.

I'd been pondering for a while how I was going to decorate this, as I had a load of turqupise blue satin to play with, and didn't fancy making appliques or cut-outs. Then I was inspired by Shira's glorious burgundy/rose dress, but was a bit stymied by the prospect of trying to sew non-stretch satin onto very, very stretchy velvet.

Clearly the solution was to buy a dress mannequin off eBay for a cost considerably higher than all the costumes I've made so far put together (which admittedly says more about my penchent for recycling and cheapness than the cost of the dummy). I set it up in the living room when it arrived, much to the horror of the dog, who first growled at it, then barked, then tried to pee up it and was summarily ejected into the garden.

I've redraped and ruched the satin since this shot, but it gives some idea of how I wanted to arrange the swirl of fabric. It's actually quite a flattering design for an apple shape like me, as it makes me look like I have a waist (if you look closely you can see how I had to pad the mannequin with a white towel to get it to match my waist measurements!).

The satin is the bottom six inches of a cocktail frock that didn;t fit, and as it was already beaded, has saved me hours of time and effort. I've gathered it up about every seven inches or so, and I'll add some accents of fringe under each gather. The bra is still in progress- I have some of the beaded material left over so I'll gather it in the same way across the top of the cups. I'm not going to go over board with the deco on this outfit as I don't want to swamp it in sparkle. I feel like the material should be the main feature, and any embellishment should just help show it off.

New Year, New Start

Classes start tomorrow, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone and beginning the arduous process of getting fit and flexible again. I did little or no dancing over the Christmas period, and lost a lot of weight, so I'm weak as a kitten. We're doing veil work this year, so I fully expect to have aching arms and shoulder for a few weeks until I adjust.

I'm dropping my Thursday classes (cabaret and advanced tribal) this term. It's a 70 mile round trip, and I get home well after 10pm, and that's really not conducive to my recovery. I'll miss dancing with the tribal girls, but hopefully come summer term I'll be back with them.

Sewing projects are currently on hold because my beloved husband had a massive clearout over New Year while I was away. The corner of the living room where I kept my 'TV sewing' now looks like this, with a couple of forlorn sequins stuck in the carpet.

My sewing table in my craft room, however, looks like this:



The blue fabric in the middle of the pile is my velvet baladi dress, still with the pins and a needle in it, and screwed up with two delicate lace hipscarves. The yellow bit at the top is the handle of a bag containing 100000000 scraps of fabric for a rags and tatters skirt, but sadly Captain Clever turned the bag upside down so the scraps are everywhere. Underneath all that is two teatowels, a selection of books from the downstairs bookcase, three foil platters, a large box for carrying cupcakes, the dog's old collar, the manual for the food mixer and a bottle of men's aftershave. Somewhere behind all this crap you can just see my poor, put-upon sewing machine Fritz, looking distinctly unimpressed by the mess!

I Ate'nt Dead

Holy Smoke, has it really been going on for a month since I last posted? It doesn't seem that long, but I guess a lot of things have happened since then.

Namely, I got sick. In the head. I've suffered depression before (and it was one of the things that led me to belly dance as a way of making myself feel good), but this latest crisis has been a particularly bad one, and my recovery is going to be a slow one. For a week or two, dance fell off my radar, but it's something that brings me a lot of joy, so I've been working hard to stay connected.

That paid off last night, when I got back onstage. I danced a lovely veil piece with my teacher's student troupe, and it felt great to be up there and dancing again. I was wondering if stage fright was going to be an issue, but all I felt was joy and excitement at performing!

I think that will be the last outing for this costume in its current form though- straight, skinny belts are just not a good look on apple-bodied chicks, and the bra is now a good two sizes too big and I've lost my chicken fillets!

Anyway, that was the last hafla before Christmas, so now it's back to present wrapping, packing to visit family, and deciding which abandoned sewing project needs reviving.

I hope everyone out there in the blogosphere has a very merry festivity of choice!

Ulp

So you know how I was being all self-congratulatory and shit in my last post about finally being up on stage with my teacher's tribal (my brain insists on typing that as tribble, btw) troupe?

Well, this weekend, the Tribble Dictator wants us to repeat this piece. With zills.

Yeah. About that.

I have chronic RSI in both wrists, a sense of rhythm comparable to that of an epileptic one-legged wombat, and a lack of coordination that makes said wombat look like a prima ballerina. This is not going to go well.

Of course, I could always say no, but where would be the fun in that? Besides, this performance is by way of being a spot of one-upmanship, as another local tribal group (with whom I used to study) recently performed with zills but didn't actually play them. If I don't join in and pull it off, we don't get the sense of smug holier than thou-ness which is an integral part of the sisterhood of dance :)

So this last week I have been drilling the ever-loving shit out of my zills, at home with mufflers on, on the wasteland outside the office without mufflers (and scaring every pigeon in South Birmingham) and driving my husband mad in bed (not in a good way) by singing baladi rhythm whilst mentally rehearsing the piece.

Tribal Debut

I think I've mentioned before my difficulties in memorising tribal combos, and this difficulty became considerably more pressing when my teacher asked if I wanted to join her troupe on stage for Infusion Emporium last weekend.

To help you put this in perspective, four years ago I remember sitting in the audience at my first ever hafla, watching Khalgani dancing, and thinking how much I wanted to dance like them. To end up performing with them and their sister troupe, Prana, was literally a dream come true... or a nightmare, if I couldn't get my brain and my hips in the same gear.

I also needed a costume in a hurry. My first attempt at a tribal bra ended in ignominious disaster and a lot of safety pins, so I was determined to do better this time!

As you would expect for an inveterate hoarder, I had a whole world of fun collecting bits and bobs to sew onto it, including keys from an old necklace, a pentacle, a little silver spider (to ward off stage fright), and about 50 old coins, which an obliging colleague identified as a mix of Pakistani, Indian, Irani and Afghan, and the oldest being from 1948. Probably my favourite pieces though are the turquoise roundels, which started life as earrings from Primark (50p a pair!)

Spiders or no, I had epic stage fright on the night; fortunately we were on int he first half, so I didn't get to brick it for too long before we were up. As far as i can recall, I didn't balls up too much, although there are a few embarrassing photos of me with my arms in completely different positions to the rest of the troupe!

As you see, my arms definitely need some work, and I'm wearing far too few clothes to be able to pass as a proper tribal dancer, but I'm definitely on my way! 

Happy Halloween!

Teacher is on holiday this week, so my dancing has been pretty much limited to a few glute drills and this 'work of art' created during my Girl Guide group's annual pumpkin carving and chocolate fest.

I kind of wish I'd left out the eyes, as 'ninja belly dance mexican wrestler assassins' was NOT the look I was aiming for, but I had fun carving it, and I liked it enough that I signed the back!

Happy Halloween, Samhain, All Hallows Eve, and Sweetie Fest to all those that celebrate it, and my most profound sympathies on those who don't and are missing out on my favourite time of year!