Kyria's journal

Roos Belinfante posted the pictures and video's of the studentrecital from two weeks ago. It was a SUnday afternoon well-spent, with gorgeous performances and a good atmosphere. If you want to experience some of that good atmosphere yourself, check out Roos's website for her mini summer workshops. If you want to make some good memroies, go to 'Bellydance on the Beach', an event on august 24th in Utrecht with an outdoor  workshop and performances.

For the  student recital I did a spanish-arabic skirt dance to Ya Ghanilek from the cd ' A rough guide to Spanish-Arabic Music'. IT's a really nice song with some intersting variations in the music. I made a choreo for my students during the last semester of classes that I decided to use as a skeleton choreography for my own performance. Mostly improv, with some nice poses thrown in all over the place. Maybe I should make a full blown choreography out of this one and add it to my permanent repertoire.

The costume is my gold/multicolor bella, with an extra double layer pink chiffon skirt on top. I pulled the specially requested streamers with multicolor leafs over the outer skirt for an extra color accent. The layers work well well on stage, the bella skirt is also two layers so there is this big fluffy bunch of chiffon moving around with every spin.


Drama, I HAZ IT!!:

Some of you might remember that I custom ordered a Bella while I was in istanbul in August. I just received word that the costume is coming my way, shipped from their store in Gent!

Short story: Ozma and I went to see madame Bella, who decided having her 20+ cats in her costume shop was too much. We didn't see the famous cats: instead we went int the appartment and turned right to the show room. Ozma was lucky and found a gorgeous lace costume in moss green and champagne. It only needed shortening of the skirt and she looked like a moss covered goddess rising from the depths of the ocean. Totally hot, awesome costume, as you have seen on her lj/fb. I turned out to be too tall and too big in te hips to fit into off the rack but it didn't stop me from trying all the costumes 

*insert hyperbole and a half reference:*


OMFG it was amazing to be there and try stuff on.

I spotted an amazing costume, mainly warm gold beading and multi color sequins. The bra was a perfect fit, but the skirt with attached belt didn't work for me. I ordered a matching seperate belt, skirt and accesoiries. It has a ton of cut-outs, mesh netting and swarovski crystals. It's also over the top Turkish in the sense that it's one big cut-out. I plan on wearing it for my performance on the 14th of December, maybe also with the live band on October 21th.

Just to share you what type of communication Bella uses in her email, I will copy/paste her full email to me:

subject: re

 I've been offline yesterday because I went on an a road trip with Isandria and Hadyr to Bella. And I know you guys are dying to know what the Bella store looks like and if we bought something once you'd know about the road trip, so I've been keeping it quiet. I've only been to Bella once, with RakkasahBarbara, three or four years ago and have never bought a new Bella. Click on the link for the really long story! 

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 In my last costume update, you've seen the bra base. In order to make those funky shaped cut-outs keep their shape, I needed to add metal wire to the bra cups. I prefer to cover the bra base first, and stitch the metal wire on later.
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That's all for today, tomorrow I'll post the pictures on the beading and adding the  paisley appliqué's (the same one as the center medallion on the bra).

 My hands have not been idle in the past weeks. I spent 20 hours on making the beaded fringe for the belt and after that I needed a couple of days to put the belt in my living room so I could stare at it in awe. It's so pretty and sparkly!  It also helps me to keep me motivated, as it will take a lot of hours to make/finish the matching bra. That's what I'm going to work on the next couple of days, stay tuned for more costuming posts. 

( you know the drill, here be pictures )

 No pictures today, but a bit of contemplating about yesterdays poll about chosing colors. And for me a chance to take three of my favorite things and mix them together, the three things being chocolate, glitters and costumes :)

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That's all folks, regular costume posts will continue soon.

 I promised to give you guys a peek of the belt with the rhinestones, and here we go.
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An update on the resources: the sequins arrived in Tuesday and the beads arrived today. Those hot pink beads? They are not matching the sequins and fabric. Lucky for me, the supposedly purple beads are a perfect match, so I'm going to use those. I also realized that I needed more gold bugle beads and purple bugle beads then I expected, if I want to make the fringe too. I ordered those today but expect that it will take another 5 days before they arrive. 

Tomorrows post is all about the paisley front closure that isn't pictured in the above update.  

I made a sketch for the belt, and turned it into four pattern pieces. Do not imagine anything fancy going on here, I used my basic belt pattern, modeled one after a Bella belt that I liked and used a pen to fill in the curls and stuff. The catch is that I wanted the belt to have a lot of cut-outs, creating peek a boo holes to the skirt worn underneath. This will allow the costume to be very versatile, depending on the skirt worn with the bra/belt.

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The photoshoot yesterday was okay, though I don't expect the pictures to make it to my website, save for a couple of veil pics. Will post more later!

When I got home yestarday around 17.00 I had 60 minutes before going out to catch the train to Ermelo and I was still wearing my make-up. I did a short livingroom shoot with two costumes that I worked on but that we didn't shoot with the photographer. This post is brought to you from the land of dangerously high splitted skirts.
( behind the cut for costume-goodness )