Dream Bootcamp, day 5 (friday)

Nearing the end! Friday was better, I decided that I wanted to drum for our final dance performance instead of dancing. My big revelation this week is that I LOVE drumming. Perfectionist me loves how you can keep on meedling forever with the sounds, tempo and variations. Artistic me loves to feel the drum come alive underneath my hands, being hypnotized by the rhythm and lets not forget the potential for jamming sessions around the campfire. Dancer me tells me to stop swooning over the darbuka and get up and dance to the music.

It also helps that I can do some of the variations with extra teks in it, meaning that the bar was raised. Eep! Issam collected 'his band' from our group and we worked on playing the whole drum solo while the dancers polished the choreography. I can do a Saaidi with extra teks but I have to concentrate and I will fall out of the rhythm every now and then. Basic saaidi is:

Doum Tek -- Doum doum --- Tek

A doum is a low slap with the hand towards the center of the drum, a tek is a higher pitched slap near the rim. The more embellished version is:

Doum tek tek-e-tek doum doum tek-e-tek tek-e

You play 8 extra slaps in the same amount of time. Yes, my hands were sore. The downside is that I didn't get much dancing done in the last couple of days. The upside is that I got to drum some more. :-)

The evening activity was watching Project bellydance, season one with the group. Aziza interviewed me outside about DBC, some footage might appear as an extra on a dvd sometime. You will see me wearing Khalida's scarf and Meri's lipstick, as I was dressed rather conservative that night. We stayed a bit longer when most people left and the bartender pulled out a copy of the 'Just Dance!' game. It shows you a video of dancing figures and you have to copy it. We could not resist the temptation and did some pretty cheesy eighties songs together, much appreciated and enustomers (group of tango dancers who didn't dare to join in) and the crew (Two bartenders, who kept on suggesting new songs).

Dream Bootcamp, day 6: Hafla

It was a rather relaxed day, starting off with Zumba taught by Fatima. I asked Fatima about teaching Zumba and she told me that if I wasn't planning on teaching it right away, doing the teacher training would not make sense. Her class was fun and included more dance combinations then most Zumba classes.

Aziza and Issam ran us through the drum solo chore, that started to sound pretty familiar by now. The clsses ended at 12.30 so we had time to prepare for the hafla. What we actually did was walk to the shops and do some serious shoe shopping at a store called Tamaris. I bought two sets of shoes: black and brown sandalettes* and blue pumps. They are adorable! We went back to the hotel with Sandy and did the make-up routine and try-outs of eighties outfits. The theme of DBC was eighties and I made good use of my panther print leggins, neon leg warmers and sweatbands. I wore a lot of fluorescent colors combined that do nothing for my complexion but it sure was fun!

The hafla was very nice, a mixed program hitting of with our drum solo, several performances of Aziza, Issam, Khalida, Queeny. We had a couple of drum fanatics in the audience who were mesmerized by Issam playing the drums. A good time was had by all, though we noticed that the french speaking participants tended to not interact much with the others on account of only speaking french. Most of us spoke English with a heavy accent from our own language. It was a really good party.

*Sandalettes: sandals, but with heels! Not to be confused with pumps (heels, but less to no straps)