I am dangerous in a bookstore. Amazon.com isn’t safe either. Among my obsessions in life – dancing and cooking are at the top of my list. The opportunities to indulge in books abound for both of them. My cookbook collection numbered over 250 at last count… and that was a while ago. Curiously enough, I can still locate any specific recipe in less than 3 tries. This is particularly inexplicable when I can barely […]
Last weekend my student troupe and I performed our newest choreography, a multi-part Saidi, at our MECDA chapter’s annual festival. They were very excited about it and deserved to be – they worked on it diligently for months, aligning cane angles and synchronizing their spins. Their post-show glow took a rude hit in the dressing room unfortunately when another dancer approached them and said, “Your piece was…. interesting.” When she told me later my student […]
Early this year I attended an out-of-state weekend workshop to study Turkish Rom dance. After the final class, a group of us went out to restock our many burned calories. Our dinner party included the instructor and the sponsor in addition to a group of us students. Aside from being hungry, I was also there to work – specifically, to interview the instructor for Shimmy Magazine. After the meal and interview were wrapped up, the talk […]
I watch a lot of bellydance. Whether I’m on the hunt for the next clip to include in the Daily Bellydance Quickie, at a live show, supervising rehearsal or just wasting time – uh, I mean doing reasearch – on YouTube, the total adds up to a good chunk of time every week. Of course, I never get tired of it, but I have noticed what captures and keeps my attention and what makes my […]
I started dancing at age 3, doing tap and ballet just like my big sisters. Every May we did the cheesy end-of-year recital in awful sequined satin costumes to even more awful music. They sprayed our ballet and tap shoes with metallic spray paint to complete the tacky look. I have to wonder how much “dancing” they got out of us at that tender age, but they got us up there before we were self-aware […]