Thursday, July 03, 2008

The Mira Betz Weekend

After work on Friday I ran home to get all of my costumes & run back to town for the Fairytale performance. Like most bellydance workshops, you have a performance to show the local talent that is taking the classes & the instructor that has flown into teach. This was the first workshop hosted as Cold Fusion.

It came off really well. The first dance was of the entire troupe (except Jennie because she was in Colorado at a funeral) doing Rachael's choreography to Bollywood filmy music. Rachael is a great Indian dance instructor. The rest of the troupe had been working on this dance for three months, I only had one month to catch-up. It was quite a curve since I had never danced filmy before.
Here we are backstage in our new awesome panel skirts & corset tops. Man is my hair lightening up! Also notice all of our Alaskan tans?
There were a bunch of dancers up from the south that had some great routines. They were so good that I was getting nervous that Liz & my's dance wouldn't be any good. Plus we were going on right before the headliner, Mira Betz. But the fear was dismissed the instant Little Red Riding Hood, skipped onto the stage....followed slinkily by yours truely-The Big Bad Woof, dressed in cheetah print & bell bottoms. The crowd started cheering when 1 minute in I grabbed Liz & started to do a tango. By the time I started disco dancing I could barely hear the music. I was amazed! You can usually get the standard calls from the other dancers while you perform, but the whole crowd was into it. Our end pose is all Saturday Night Fever, with Liz crouching at my feet & I'm wide legged with my arm pointing to the sky. The crowd went wild & gave us a standing ovation!!
Doesn't Liz look KAWAII?! You wouldn't know that she was completely stressed about defending her thesis this week. Which I went to. I will say that I understood maybe 45% of her talk on Beringian Polytomy but that's only because she speaking in English..I think.

Back to the workshop, I got to spend some wonderful training time with Mira Betz. She is a fantastic dancer & went really into isolations. Stuff that I have still not mastered since I went to a Bellyqueen's class in the Village last summer. I got to spend four days with her & even got to have to private lessons. Itchy on the other hand got to spend days & nights with Mira. Itchy got evicted from my apartment last week because the management didn't believe that she was a cat. Idiots! So I had to find her a place to stay for ten days until I got a new place or I would have to pay $25/day to have her stay in the apartment. Mary was very kind to let her stay over with her & Mira. Itchy slept with Mira every night & they became great pals. Here's the new friends.
I hate to say it, but I'm a little bit happy that this will be the last CRAZY weekend full of activites for a while. The only thing that I've got going on this weekend is a couple of BBQs...maybe I'll go see Wall-E. So tootles until something interesting happens.

Miss you more than heat pads, V