(no subject)

[galadhir]

Did my dance at the Cambridge School of Bellydance hafla. I belong to the Cambridge School of Bellydance (Louise's group) as well as the group run by Elizabeth in Ely and they hadn't seen it before. So I thought I could trot it out again.

This time I put together an actually decent costume, which I liked to wear and I liked myself when I looked at myself in it - a rare thing!

This was home-sewn, extremely wide leg harem trousers in black cotton, a raspberry pink sleeveless tank top, dangly strips of pink and yellow fabric around the legs, a yellow coin belt and a pink belt on top of that with long fringes of beads that moved nicely with movement.

I also made some sparkly pink sequined arm-bands to wear instead of sleeves.

I put this outfit on, looked at myself in the mirror, went 'oh yes, I like that!' and then took it off and put it in the bag to be taken to the hafla.

Big mistake!! Learning moment!

In future, do the dance in the outfit at least once before you try to perform it in public.

The cuffs of the trousers were not tight enough around the ankles. Over the course of the dance, they worked their way down over my heel and under my feet. I attempted to make pulling my trousers up part of the dance, but it really didn't work and eventually I had to accept that I was dancing on my trousers rather than completely in them.

I was so distracted by this that I hit the sword balanced on my head, causing it to nearly fall off. So I had to adjust it mid dance.

I was so distracted by this that I lost my place in the dance entirely and had to improvise for a section until I came back to a part of the music I recognized.

I then finished the dance aware that my arm bands were slipping down, but deciding it was better to just let them, and drop them onto the floor when I got a chance.

In short, I thought it was a complete disaster.

Surprisingly it did get one of the biggest rounds of applause of the evening. And throughout the evening people stopped by at my table to say how much they'd liked it and how difficult it must be to balance the sword on your head. Really that's the least difficult part. But I was somewhat soothed by all of this. To the point where I decided that it might be a good idea to try to write a new dance for Shimmyfest in June.

Even if I don't get it done to performance standard by then, it will do for next year.

So that was Saturday. On Sunday we went up to Derbyshire because Son's contract was up on the 1st of April and he needed to be out of the marina by then. So Sunday was moving Boat up the river Trent, onto the Trent & Mersey canal, to start the long journey back down again. Two hours away in the car, about two months journey away on the canals. Two weeks according to Canal Planner but they are very optimistic

Comments

[mistressofmuses]

Congrats on the costume that you liked (it sounds really neat!)... but ugh, how frustrating that it didn't quite stand up in the field!

I'm glad the dance seems to have actually gone much better than it felt, though.

[galadhir]

Thank you! It's very rare that I do like myself in anything that I wear, so I will be modelling future costumes after this one, at least :)

It was definitely a good night and has rekindled my enthusiasm to the extent that I had to come back to DW to say something about it before I forgot about everything (which I have a tendency to do.) And to warn everyone that I'm making a new choreography, so there may be a lot of incomprehensible posts about that in the future. I still don't know how to do it, I'm just doing it without knowing exactly what to do.

[mistressofmuses]

I'm glad that it did help rekindle some enthusiasm. Though lol, I know the feeling of "I should post about that..." and then not doing so, ha.

Hey, sometimes doing something without knowing "the right way" gets you really good and interesting results!