Bellydance on the beach and metamorphoses

WIth the wedding in sight I promised E. to not do ALL THE DANCE THINGS during the month of august. However, I have several exciting things to look forward to!

Tomorrow was Bellydance on the Beach, a workshop/dance afternoon with a couple of ladies at the beach. The Dalla Dream Dancers would perform our eskanderani dance, which would have been perfect for obvious reasons. The weather is really bad for this time of the year, much colder and more rain than expected, so it is called off. The organizer suggested moving it to next week but most people including myself are not available next weekend. I am not that sad about it because now I can spend the whole weekend oodling around in our garden with E. The newly wed giddyness is quite pleasant.

I started rehearsing for Metamorphoses, a dance project by modern dancer Karine Guizzo who coached us for the talent show before the summer. She likes our movement quality so she asked us for this project. For the dance fanatics out there, Karine was a dancer in Het Nederlands Dans Theater under choreographer/dancer Kylian. I am thus very impressed that she likes our dancing. The performance is based on Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' which is pretty cool all by itself. We are rehearsing for a month for twice a week and will perform this piece four times. It is very much modern dance, meaning that we have to unlearn a lot of bellydance habits. The application of bellydance vocubulary to odern dance is fascinating though, we spent an hour exploring the options of shimmies while moving around on the floor that gave the impression of mermaids on dry land. Lorenzo, who does modern dance, spend the hour trying to figure out how to shimmy. It is harder than it looks.

With regards to the dance market, I am teaching a one hour bachelorette workshop on september 5th. It is good money though not what I'd want to spend my time on.  Maybe I should raise my prices. Haven't had requests for performances so far and I am looking at the local festivals and events wondering what I want to do. I should get myself out more and maybe organize something by myself but I really don't have the time and the energy to do so. I also have to focus on teaching the Cairo Cabaret performance group and the beginners group this semester so that's what I am going to do.

On a side note, the Dalla Dream Dancers gave us two shamadans as a wedding gift, and E. and I made a selfie wearing them to thank them for the gift. This means that I want to put a zaffa in my production somewhere. Can't let this opportunity pass by!