hafla here, hafla there....

It seems that there suddenly are plenty of performance opportunities for my students and for me, on student recital/hafla like events. Part of this is because Parnassos, the center where I teach, has to make more money to keep afloat. Throwing bellydance nights draws in extra people who buy drinks. Drinks are ridiculous cheap though, like 1 euro for non alchoholic beverages and 2 euro for wine/beer.

I am getting paid to throw these halfa's, prepare and teach a public workshop for who ever shows up (so... both beginners and advanced should appreciate the workshop). I program a short performance slot (three performances) and I create the playlist for bopping around afterwards. I probably make more money this way compared to throwing a hafla myself. The basic reason being that I don't have to rent a venue, I don't have to promote the event, I don't have to sell tickets (admission is free) and I don't have to dress up the bar.

This leaves me running around the house packing stuff during the day, trying to fit into a costume (My multicolor Bella bra cups are too small now! Noooooo!!!!), creating playlists and doing various other stuff. My students trickled in one by one and we got down to practicing. They did the choreo to Teggi Ezzay, which looks good now on the students that practiced and showed up on time.

The hafla was a success: roughly 40 people showed up for the workshop, everyone participated and had fun. Even the group of young guys who started out giggling. One of the performances was cancelled last minute because Roos has an injury but three was a good number. I faffed around with a veil (seriously, nothing of my prepared chore stuck), Brenda did a fusion piece to Evanescence and my students closed with the group performance.

Dancing afterwards was fun, but around 22.00 people started pouring in from other events, killing the bellydance buzz. Something our event scheduler should have been aware of, but I didn't put the blame on her. She'll probably check twice next time, it's a bit odd to advertise bellydance party and having 'regular' customers coming in half way.