Shimmying through life with needles and thread…
This link was sent to me by a friend who thinks it’s a style I’d do well. (I have to agree… I’ve been eying it ever since I took a workshop with Aisha Ali a few years ago… but time hasn’t presented itself to learn!) This is a very pretty and elegant example, and worthy of the classification of “treasure”. 
I make a solid Cinderella, if not a traditional one!
There was a time when our bellydance troupe was just starting in its new incarnation when we just wanted to improve. Perfect what we could do, do more, and do it the best we could. This is still part of our philosophy- we all want to improve. But there came a time when we realized that we weren’t having fun any more. And hey, we started learning this dance form for fun, didn’t we? It was an issue of taking ourselves too seriously.
So we changed. We changed our format to “raks wacky” from traditional raks sharki, and since have done routines like The Disney Princesses Compete on So you Think You Can Dance…. We teamed up with another local troupe and became the bellydancing Elvii to Everyone’s got a little Elvis in Them. (There’s a photo HERE although we haven’t bothered with the blog at all… oops). We’ve done a version of the Evolution of Dance, and yes, even a bellydance strip tease to You can Leave your Hat On from the Full Monty, (down to thermal underwear with pasties!) which prompted a “name” in the industry to tell us “you’ve set bellydance back 20 years. And it was hilarious.” Our goal was to bring the fun back to our performances. Now, I still perform and teach traditional sets – and you have to know the foundations well to do something like this. But I’m seeing yet another crossover with needlework, and I don’t like it.
What I mean is this – I talk to younger people that I see stitching, and ask them why they don’t go into the needlework shops. The answer is quite often the same. not that they don’t carry supplies they could use, or new techniques they’d like to learn. It’s rather because the people who have been stitching for ages all either don’t offer suggestions, OR, and I think this might be an important key – we tend to have definite ideas about how things should be done. There is One right way. um… no. It goes back to my experience as a young stitcher who was exploring medieval techniques back in college. The store – which specialized in cross stitch, wanted me to be stitching on aïda, with no thought that I might be doing a technique that required something else… or that I might be experimenting. Or that experimenting was good. After all, you just followed the chart and it all worked out, right? (Note: People in modern fabric stores don’t like to be told that they didn’t have modern interfacing in the Middle Ages, either…)
SO. How do we move past the “this is serious art and we must be serious” stage and back into the “this is fun and experimentation and shouldn’t be tedious” stage. Yeah, stitching a 22 inch Victorian doily completely in silk shading can get tedious. But what about that ipod cozy? Or the pocket on that denim jacket you’ve had forever? I want to encourage kids and young adults to have fun with this art form. To find their own way, whether it’s learning the techniques of the past or taking it in a direction that it’s never been before. I have a tendency to start big, complicated projects and take years and years to finish them (Part of that is that there are always MULTIPLE big, complicated projects in progress.) This coming year I’m going to try to infuse more fun into my stitching, over the top of the meditative quality I tend to have, and that comes from the big, monotonous complicated projects. The shower curtain is a start to that. It’s hard to be a complete perfectionist when the small stitches are almost a quarter inch long!
Someone said about the troupe’s last performance, “Just what we’ve come to expect from you ladies – clean dancing with a fun and innovative theme. Very entertaining.”
Clean, fun and entertaining. I can’t think of a better compliment to receive. On my dancing, on my stitching, my teaching, on the designs I present for other people to stitch.
Be creative.
I hope that my free 5 part e-course has helped some of you use cross stitch charts in a new and fun way. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you can sign up for the course and my sporadic newsletter here.
Remember to Have Fun.
You really CAN go to Farmville in NC! But I *didn't*.
I spent last weekend at the beach. Well. Sort of. Despite the picture at the beginning I did NOT stop at Farmville… Either the real town (LOL!) OR the computer game. 
I spent last weekend at Beach Blanket Beledi, which is a lovely and FUN (1st rule of BBB – Have Fun!!!) bellydance workshop that takes one day, (well, three if you count travel time from my house!) and features three wonderful teachers every year. This year was Dalia Carella, one of my favorite dancer/teachers of all time. I could watch that woman dance for hours. Class is to die for, sometimes I think literally… keeping up is always hard work. But I wish I could take class from her at least once a week… I know I’d be in better shape at the end of a month! The workshop she taught is available online as a download in two classes. It was the Ghanalli choreography. Also teaching were Riskallah Riyad from Connecticut, and Chelydra, who taught us a “Dash of Debke”. Apparently our troupe choreographies from last year were well received, as they kept being referenced all day by the teachers, much to our embarrassment. I came home with a notebook full of new ways of putting steps together into combinations, ways of integrating my modern and jazz dance background with my raks sharki, and some great ideas for getting my students to be themselves when dancing.
So from a learning standpoint, workshops are great, no matter what your level is. Saqra of Washington state once said to me that if you don’t remember everything in a workshop, it’s all right, because you’ll remember it when you need it — it will bubble up over time, so don’t worry about getting overwhelmed. She’s been right, although I find that writing down combinations as I learn them helps immensely in the remembering arena!
Needlework workshops are the same way… you learn new techniques for things you thought you already knew how to do! And sometimes you can share a tip with an instructor as well.
But the most important thing about workshops to me is that they inevitably remind me that I’m not alone in whatever endeavor I’m doing. Both needlework and dance can be very solitary pursuits, especially if you find yourself dancing in your living room because of a lack of classes at your level that are convenient! Going to a workshop is a way to find new friends that you already have at least one thing in common with – it’s an icebreaker.
I never had good experiences at summer camp growing up. But now, going to Beach Blanket in particular, I start to understand the girls who loved it. Leaving is bittersweet. “Drive home safely. Have a good flight” (people come from everywhere), and most importantly “see you next year!” ring. As we come back year after year, we start to see the same women, and slowly learn names. We start to communicate by email and get invited to their hometowns for workshops. Workshops in the arts are how we build community and learn from each other. It’s neat. (Oh, and there’s usually partying at night, too. )
Where do you start with this genre? “Raqs Gothique” grew out of the Goth movement, which, over the years has embraced dark retro, punk, medieval, Victorian and “Steampunk” attributes. Then add bellydance to any of the facets of Goth culture and you get Gothic Bellydance, or “Raqs Gothique”.
In other words, there are almost as many versions of goth costuming as there are genres of bellydance itself.
Perhaps the best known Gothic style dancer is Tempest. She draws from all of the above styles with a dark and humourous twist — and she teaches a mean workshop on using film noir attitude in your dancing!
I have seen her dance in dark flapper attire with Doc Martin boots, pantaloons and lace in granny boots – and a very spooky Lovecraft inspired outfit.
Other Gothic dancers wear what could be mistaken for just dark colored bedlah of the Egyptian or Turkish varieties. Others use a dark tribal as a base — it’s really the mood of the dancing that makes something Gothic, rather than the costuming. (For example, Tempest’s ode to Theda Bara costume is white, but no les Goth for the color!)
Tempest’s 20s style routine to “Whatever Lola Wants”
Ariellah at Black Heart’s Ball…
For more, just search “Gothic Bellydance” on youtube and marvel at the variety!
And raring to go. The workshop was a glorious success. I learned a lot about sacred dance traditions from Artemis Mourat. Want MOOORE!!! And Donna Mejia is a wonderful teacher that had me feeling like I was back in my old college professional dance classes. Yeouch. Talk about sore! I set off my clicking hip for the rest of the vacation, which wasn’t very fun, though. Chelydra‘s Mood Swings class took one simple combination and demonstrated how to tweak it to perform in different moods – subtly smoldering, smoldering, “perky”, and er… “cute.”
The show was a hit. Beach Blanket Beledi is never an “ordinary” bellydance/raks sharki, orientale dance show. The only rule of the workshop/show is “have fun” and I can verify that everyone I met there was following that rule to the letter. I can’t reveal details yet, as we’re doing the routine again at Blue Moon‘s Haflaween in two weeks. Then I’ll make sure to get pictures and share. At breakfast on Sunday the rest of the troupe apparently were told multiple times that if we put out a dvd they’d buy it. I was VERY glad that I had ordered the dvd of the class and show. Looking forward to getting it now.
Everyone’s performances were beautiful. And so much fun.
And I’m almost done with the model for a new square geometric pillow design for Golden Circle Designs… So look for that being available in the next month or so. I’m trying to remind myself that model stitching counts as work, so even though I didn’t open the computer all weekend, I still accomplished stuff. Much stuff, actually. And I got home to find the fabric for a Winter mat model waiting for me, so I’d better get stitching on that, too!
I promise to sit down and pull together actual stitching or dancing posts tonight or tomorrow. I’ll be back on a regular posting schedule soon!