Kyria's journal

With all the serious stuff going on like burials and talks about taxes, prenupts and testaments, I haven't written about the vellydance events in the past couple if weeks.

June 5th: annual student recital at the cultural center. We presented our performances in the theater room, which added a lot to the overall atmosphere and intensity of the performance. Super proud that my internediates pulled off a classic ATS improvisation after ten classes of ATS technique. The beginners were adorable with a short veil performance and our group dance blew people away. Next semester I want to do a group dance together as well: having many people on the stage looks good and really brings out the formation changes. I was inspired this semester and four of the beginners are now hooked. Weehee! I also noticed how I am teaching differently towards beginners compared to the intermediates. It might be beneficial if I treated my intermediates like I treat my beginners on account of keeping a fresh perspective.

On June 11th, Gerie threw a bellydance party at the cultural center where she teaches. It was so nice, lovely line up and my students did well with the group performance. It was a very intense day, with me running from a bachelorette party of a friend to the hafla and then back home. All by train and bus, while holding a whipped cream pie in one hand and lugging my suitcase with me, and pumping milk during the day.

Last weekend was our annual hafla in Zeist, also known as the coziest ('meest gezellige') bellydance party in the Netherlands. Two years ago the theme was 'red', last year the theme was 'blue', so what would this year's theme be? Well, 'Rainbow', ofcourse! Because we all enjoy dressing up and this allowed us to get everything out of the closet and swap and switch between us. We all got to wear something that felt new to us without breaking the bank.

The first part of the show was a series of performances that showed the different phases in the life of a woman. I was 'birth', to the music of celtic harpplayer Marieke Lesparre.


I'm not sure if I classify this as fusion wankery or heartfelt oriental improv. I feel good about the first half of the performance, then I lost it for a bit. I got some really nice feedback on this piece so the audience overall liked it.

Our group, Sense of Bellydance, did 'Habibi I love you' together. They performed this song at our wedding in 2014 and have since improved and build on the first version. I like how this performance evolved and Germaine's daughter Veerle is super cute. Veerle danced the song about childhood, with wings, to a Tinkerbell song. It doesn't get much cuter and I am pretty sure that all moms were silently crying while watching her.


Overall the first part went well and I am proud that we got this far in the past six years. I am still a little bit frustrated that the only way to get decent video footage of our events is for me to bring a camera, position it correctly, make sure someone checks in every now and then to see if it's still pointed in the right direction, and then I have to edit the video and send it to everyone. So I just edited out the songs I wanted to show and sent the raw footage to Marjan, who promised to make a promo video this weekend.

The second half was separate performances of student groups and a couple of solo performances. I loved Gerie's performance and Nansi's performance, they've gotten more emotional and earthy. Last year they followed the 'Tarab' course from dancer Sena in Rotterdam, which worked with getting more in touch with their emotions and how to translate those emotions on stage. Good for them! My students and I did our pop song choreography that we started this semester. I a pretty pleased with it overall.


Some messing up here and there, but that's okay. We all picked it up rather quickly after screwing up and that's what matters! That, and we kept on smiling. Yay! I missed part of the event because I needed to pump (three times, so that's 1,5 hours) plus I had to attend our table where we were selling second hand stuff. Despite our best efforts, not much sold. The bellydance market is really saturated right now and flooded by cheap Chinese import, making it impossible to sell the more expensive older stuff like Egyptian hipscarves bought for 25-50 usd and oldskool bedlah and skirts. Even so, the stuff from Dunya's inheritance and from Laudie's closet sold, so I have money to give to Dunya's children and to Laudie. Every item that sells is an item that doesn't have to go back home.

I think I'll host a bellydance swap at my place in the summer, so we can all have some new stuff and move items we no longer like or use. After the Zeist hafla, we're now counting down towards Roos's student recital, plus I have a small hafla on May 18th and a student recital on June 5th. During the summer we're hoping for a second edition of Bellydance on the Beach in Wijk aan Zee, with excellent weather and a sleepover of Sense of Bellydance in the cottage at the coast. Lot's of fun things to look forward to!

1. My left foot had an unfortunatel meeting with the side of the door. My ringtoe looks like a huge purple blueberry and I am sort of hopping instead of walking/dancing. I made it through yesterday's dance rehearsal and will adjust my lesson plan tonight to upper body movement.

2. We had a meeting for the laundry project (the belly dance theater project) on Saturday which we spent telling eachother personal stories. Tears were shed, bonds were made. We'll see where we go from here, next rehearsal is next saurday. Also, we decided to not share any full length clips on youtube because laudie is afraid someone might steal our choreography and Y. and J. are still afraid of having a video out there. Nobody else offered to do the video taping or editing and I am not planning on doing any more editing for FaKyMa for the next year or so. Screw them. Maybe I won't do any video taping either, what's the use of gathering material if everyone else doesn't want to use it?

3. We went to a 60th birthday with a 'Dutch' theme. It was okay, according to my standards of hiding out with the people I like until we left. Big parties are so not my thing. I feel like a mature, smart woman with a good sense of humor when I am in a small company, and an awkward teenager with no stories to tell when I am in a bigger company.

4. Dance rehearsal on Sunday was good, our group number for the hafla on the 12th of april is coming together nicely, within the boundaries of our group. By that I mean that we ain't no BDSS but it's a good hafla performance. Our costuming is consistent and looks good on stage, which also adds up. I just realized that I have not golden era costume for my golden era performance. Cue frantic costuming frenzy in the next ten days.

5. We got our dance agenda's out and June is going to be full.
June 1th: fakyma performs in hellevoetsluis (hafla)
June 2th-14th: E. and I are on holiday!
June 15th: student recital at parnassos
June 22th: Asli Sharqi dans dag, Fakyma performes the first try outs of the laundry project
June 29th: student recital of Roos, I  am invited to perform a solo
I discussed it with E. and since I am taking days off in april to work on the garden, he is okay with me running off every weekend in June. We will have July and August as two months without extra rehearsals, or as E. pointedly remarked:'getting married in august is a very good reason to no plan any rehearsals'.

6. I am very excited that swas, her husband and their adorable son are coming over to our place on Thursday night. She is a dear friend and I miss her. She lives in Germany and we talk through gmail, Telegram and such, but it is not the same as real life catching up.

The hafla in Bussum wan;t a hafla, but a student showcase in a real theatre. Pictures/video will follow when I receive them!

It was a lot of fun to be part of a belly dance performance, to be around anxious housewifes who will be on stage for the first time. I enjoyed watching all the performances, beginners and professionals alike. Maybe I even liked the students better, because the professionals are my friends and I'm biased towards them. My own performance started as a good baladi, then somewhere I went all classic Egyptian. I felt it happen, but couldn't stop because it felt so good to be performing on stage! Have to work on that, later.

The blue dress rocked.

I'm uploading three cd's into iTunes before returning them to the public library. I'm going Balkan-y, with the gypsyfestival in a couple of weeks I can do with a bit of balkan music! Got Balkan beats vol 3 (how did I ever live without Opa Cupa?!) and Orkestina (Transilvanian Express. I like to be suprised :) As for suprises, I also borrowed Värtinnä 25 because it caught my fancy, though I have no clue what kind of music they make. Packing my suitcase for our groupperformance in Amersfoort this night, a shorter version of our groupdances that we preformed during the hafla. Fun!!!

edited to ad: Värtinä makes folk music from Helsinki. Nice music, interesting arrangements.