Everyone knows it's windy!

Just a quick one today: I did my first veil performance on Sunday and it went really well, so I thought I'd share the video.



It's from a show my teacher Zehara organised called 'Elementals'; all of the performances had to be inspired by one of the four elements, and mine was wind. Considering that I once managed to nearly garotte myself with a veil in the middle of King Street (really), I reckon I've made some good progress. Just for the record, it's an Australian band but Zehara picked the music for me, so the didj is not my fault. :) Also, look how long my hair's getting! I'm quite handy with the flat-iron these days.

While we're at it, here's another piece I did a few months back:



This one's a double-cane piece, which is... well, not many people do them. You have to be a bit ambidextrous, and apparently I am (?). It's a more traditional saidi (Egyptian folk dance with cane) piece, and I'm wearing the proper outfit, by which I mean I'm dressed as Elvis's cabana boy. I did it more recently in a more modern costume and wish I had a video of that show instead, because saidi dresses are not what you'd call flattering, but there you go.


XOXO

P.S. At 0:14 of the first video you get a quick shot of Colleen in the back row - she's all the way at the end, in the white hoodie. None of you will be in the least surprised.

Two things that make me laugh, for very different reasons.

Here's a thing for those of you who want to know a little more about Jamaica Plain* (it's better than any other plain!).

And here's a thing for those of you who want to know a little more about bending in weird directions.

* Jamaica Plain is my spiritual home in Boston, and where I'd definitely live if it weren't next door to the neighbourhood I grew up in. I will almost certainly end up there if I stay in Boston. Somerville is where The Lawyer lives. She does play lots of sports and eat breakfast food. I, however, am not a vegan.

XOXO

Not with a bang, but with a thud.

NYE, Caritas Carney Hospital, Dorchester, MA. Hey 2010, do you really need to get in one last dig before you sweep out the door?

[sigh.] Apparently yes, because if you were listening carefully around 8:00 p.m. local time you might have heard me crashing to the hardwood floor of a Dorchester apartment. I was the victim of an orthostatic syncope, which is I-paid-a-lot-of-money-for-these-letters-after-my-name for 'head rush'. What was tricky was that I was unconscious for... awhile... and then my blood pressure wouldn't stabilise, so the EMTs called by Flattie Karen's overly-cautious nurse girlfriend decided I had to go to the ER. They found nothing wrong with me, of course, because there's nothing actually wrong with me, so they did what they do in hospitals when they can't figure out what else to do: hook you up to a litre of saline and give you a pregnancy test. (Spoiler: I'm not.)

And that's where I stayed, alone, until about 11:30 p.m.; at which point I returned home, babbled inarticulately at a roomful of people I mostly didn't know, wandered into my room, and fell asleep face-down in my clothes. It kind of was the perfect end to that year.

Don't think for a second, though, that I didn't enjoy myself. There are certain bizarre situations in which I excel, and left to my own devices in the ER? That's about six of them. I made friends, you guys. Of course I did. I made friends with the nurse who kept complimenting my hair, and with the registrar who told me I had 'tiny, pretty feet', and with the doctor who conducted my neuro assessment in the following fashion: 'Okay, follow my finger: look up look down look right you have beautiful eyes look left'.

I swear I'm not making this up.

So yes, that was my NYE. A rather different kind of night than I had expected, but equally eventful in its way. I'm happy to say that there have been no lasting ill effects. I personally suspect that I'm fighting off a virus because I've been kind of rundown and also because it's Boston in winter, so everyone's always fighting off something. Nothing to worry about, anyway, just a typical Brain Scan Moment (hi, Marie!).

In other news, I have had a major achievement today: I have suddenly worked out how to do a full kneeling backbend, which is a belly dancing trick I've been trying to get for, seriously, years. I don't know why all of a sudden it worked, but it did. Which is how it seems to go with belly dancing, for me at least: I'll work and work and work and get frustrated and give up and try again and work and work and work and get frustrated and lather rinse repeat, and then one day I'll do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way except this time, I get it right. And then I just keep getting it right.

Let me try to explain what today's trick entails:

1. Kneel down.
2. Lean back.
3. Keep leaning back until your shoulders hit the ground.
4. Get back up.
5. Don't cripple yourself.

That's what I've learned to do. It looks like this and it feels like... well, it feels like awesome, but I don't have a good picture for that. But I'm way past psyched about it. It's really kind of a big deal, definitely not something every dancer can do; it's cool enough that Zehara's going to change the new troupe choreography to incorporate it. I'm... yeah, I'm excited about it.

And speaking of photos, here are a few from the dagger performance. The makeup looks a bit OTT because I'd done it for stage but the camera zoomed, so ignore the warpaint effect and pay attention to the fuck-off chainmail instead. In that last one, that's my final pose and I'm doing the Bruce Lee 'bring it' gesture. I have the best ridiculous hobby, you guys.

XOXO

Enter the Confessional #3: But I've got a really good personality!

Wow. So I'm doing really well with that 'keeping to a weekly schedule' thing, huh?

It would be easy to blame my extended fail on a long list of recent events, so that's exactly what I'm going to do. Some of them are easy to discuss in a public forum: Thanksgiving, moving house, busy time at work, lead-up to Christmas, etc. etc. etc. Others are more complicated and more personal, and have involved an intense mix of joy and pain (and sunshine and rain, sing it all god's children...) and fear and triggering and triggering and triggering. I'm dating a couple of girls, one of whom is awesome and good to me, and the other of whom I actually like - and you all know me well enough to know what that means. I'm settling into a life here that after only a handful of months is already uncomfortably rife with overlaps and I'm making decisions that aren't always good. I'm broke, of course. And I'm going to rot my teeth out with candy canes if I don't slow my roll.

Returning to the topic of moving, it's been... hard. The physical move itself wasn't too bad, but this was the first time in many years that I've packed up my room in my parents' house and not been taking it all to Sydney. I've been dreaming of home a lot lately and I know it's just my brain trying to sort through things and move on, but it's exhausting and it's starting to wear me down. I never thought I'd be living in an apartment in Boston. It's a great apartment, and I have a great new flattie named Karen, and it's in an area that I don't know so it feels new. All good. But I can't help but think back to this time last year, when my life finally felt like it was coming together again after far too long - job I liked, house I liked, friends I loved, new prospects on the horizon - and then how quickly it all got pulled out from under me, and how much I lost in the process. And that's happened too many times in the last few years, that thing of going, '...finally.' right before having my whole life go tits-up, for me to be able to even begin to believe that good things may be on the horizon. Which is all apart from the fact that I still struggle to see Boston itself as a good thing. It was the right thing, I know that, but it doesn't feel like a good thing. So there's that to contend with.

On a less fraught note, my bed is cursed. I'm not sure what the hell is behind this, but it's one damn thing after another: first, the queen-size mattress and boxspring arrived as scheduled, but the boxspring didn't fit up the stairs. They took it back and advised me to order a split queen, which I did... but no one told me I had to order two of them, because for some reason they sell the halves individually at Sears (Flattie Karen said she was going to go by there and ask for one leg of pants), and none of the three people I discussed my order with saw fit to clarify it with me. And so a week later - this past Saturday - the delivery men arrived with one half of a boxspring. And when I called Sears to give them a piece of my mind, they put me on hold for 20 minutes and then asked me to call back later because their systems were down. No, really.

At this point I decided to just get a cheaper set from the furniture place downstairs, and that arrived yesterday without incident. And having the boxspring meant that the bed was high enough off the ground for me to put my brand-new, custom-designed, hand-painted doona cover on without it dangling onto the floor. So I did, only to discover that the lovely cherry-blossom detail that was meant to have bright red flowers instead had anaemic red-pink ones, which is... not what I wanted. And kind of icky. And has prompted Flattie Karen to start calling me 'Salmon'. So now I'm trying to organize a return on a custom item, which is always a joy. I also still have a stray half-boxspring lying around my room because I'm trying to arrange the return of that to Sears, but they seem unwilling to get in touch with me about it. Oh, and my actual bed frame, which I thought was being delivered at the end of this week, won't be here until sometime next week, or possibly after due to the holidays.

[Sigh.]

I mean, all I can do at this point is laugh, but it's beyond ridiculous. The rest of the move has gone pretty smoothly, and I do have furniture (and credit card debt) thanks to the proud Scandinavian meatball merchants at Ikea, but the fact that the main feature of my room is unlikely to be sorted within the first month of my living here is starting to bug me. I will say that the mattress is amazingly comfortable, though, so I'm lucky there. And half expecting it to spontaneously combust in the night, or possibly be harboring Julian Assange without my knowledge.

In better news, the dancing's going well. It's been a busy few weeks, but now I've got two shows down and only one more to go - but the remaining one is the biggest and scariest one. I'm doing a fusion number with a dagger; it's to a song called 'Dr Sin' by Chasing Shadows (highly recommended), and my character is an assassin. It's a bit martial-artsy and a bit tribal and entirely fueled by my latent rage issues, but it seems to be going over pretty well so far, apart from how I almost took out an audience member a couple of weeks ago when my dagger slipped from my hand and went shooting out into the audience. First time I've ever dropped it, let alone flung it, and of course it happened at a show. Luckily no one was hurt, but the event has already passed into legend and my teacher is never ever going to let me live it down, not that I can blame her for that.

So that's me. For now. I won't do anything so stupid as to promise another post between now and February, but I'll see what I can do.

XOXO

Happy birthday, Trace!

You asked for it, and I couldn't but oblige the birthday girl. Let me just say, though, that this shot turned out to be WAY harder to get than I'd expected, and I now have a new respect for foot fetishists.

(Which is not why she wanted this photo, by the way. Come on people, she's a respectable woman. She just wanted to know what your toes look like when you let a Dominican beauty salon loose on them in preparation for back-to-back belly dancing gigs. That is, after all, much more likely.)

XOXO

Aw.

Good to know my sword gets along with someone.

AUGH.

I am *cranky*. I just had 3 1/2 hours of belly dancing, in which I was spectacularly useless and injured myself besides. The first 90 minutes was rehearsing my new sword piece, which is both my first solo and my first sword anything, and &?@*%#!!!. Last week we did the first half of the choreo, and my sword work was fine but the rest of my body was having the day off (to the point that my very, very supportive teacher could muster little more than, 'um... I'm sure you'll be fine'). This week we finished the choreo, and my body was more or less behaving but the sword didn't want a fucking bar of it. It would not stay anywhere I put it, and I ended up dancing the entire second half with my hand on the hilt EVERY TIME I RAN IT THROUGH. FOR 90 EFFING MINUTES. Oh, and it went crashing to the floor at one point - which it has never done before - and caught me hard on the wrist, right on a nerve, so I had some really fun tingling all through my thumb and will have a whacking great bruise there tomorrow.

And then, as if that wasn't enough, I had another rehearsal right after with the troupe, wherein we were learning a new drum solo. Except it wasn't new to me, as I did it for six weeks in Zehara's class (which is separate from the troupe) a few months ago. But do you think I could get a fucking step right? No. No I could not. By the end, Zehara was openly laughing at me and telling the rest of the girls about how I'd cussed my way through my first lesson with her. Which, I had to laugh too - it was pretty funny - but it was dead clear that she'd just given up on me tonight. I was not to be helped, so she'd written me a pass. But honestly, I was just... I don't even know how to spell the sound, you guys. And I'm performing both of these songs A WEEK FROM SUNDAY.

I need to lie down.

XOXO

Thanks, Internet!

With respect to Mary from Junee (R.I.P.), it's been a bit of a sea hunt of a week. I have a couple of things I'm keen to write about but I haven't had the energy and tomorrow I'm off to Provincetown, gay capital of the Atlantic coast, for what is unlikely to be an at-all-wild weekend. But I wanted to leave you with something I've been promising you for a while, so....

Go here. And no one gets to make fun of my getting the giggles.

XOXO

And this is how I ended up spending $128 on a pair of pants.

(That one's for you, Trace.)

I've been looking at other costumes, and the thing I was most worried about has happened: I've fallen in love with a costume that's just outside my price range.

Wanna see? Have a look.

Beautiful, right? I just... I want it. So much. SO. MUCH.

And the thing that's killing me is, I could get it. I have that much money, and it's still a good price for what I'd be getting. Problem is, I shouldn't spend that much of my meagre funds on something as frivolous as a BD costume. Because yes, I have the money, and yes, I am working. But I'm working 30 hours/week for $10/hour, so with shipping that costume would run me most of a week's wages. And I'm going to finish at this job in a couple of weeks and still don't have anything lined up for after [shudder], so it's not like I have that kind of money to spare.

So clearly, I understand the need to curb my impulses. But here's the logic on the other side: if I'm going to drop some cash on something as frivolous as a BD costume, it should be one that I really like and will be able to maintain for a long time. This new costume falls more into that category than the other two do, for reasons of fabric and style. Furthermore...

OK. Get comfortable.

There is a black-and-gold version of the new costume (slightly different belt, but otherwise the same), which I also very much like, and which is $30 cheaper than the red. And it's only $30 more than the Shiny costume from my original post, so for only $30 more I could get something really awesome, rather than just so-so. And that seems kind of sensible, to me: $30 isn't going to make a difference to me in the long run, so I might as well drop $30 more and get what I really want.

But clearly, it's not that simple. Because what I really want is the red one, and the red one is $30 more again. And it's very easy to apply that same logic and talk myself into spending almost twice as much as my best-price option (the Amreekiya) on a costume that I'm not sure I'll even have cause to wear all that often: we only wear the pro costumes for paid gigs, I think, and most of our gigs won't be paid. And it's not like paid gigs are going to rake in the cash: for the one in August we'll be getting $60 each plus tips. Unless I get the Amreekiya I have no chance of making the cost back. It really doesn't make sense to spend any more than I absolutely have to.

Then again, the new costume would be a good investment in the long run because the pieces are interchangeable: the plain gold bra and belt can be matched with other skirts and veils, and that site sells all of the pieces separately as well. This means that I could get the black and gold costume, then go back later and get the red and gold veil and skirt set for $80. I'd therefore have two full, excellent costumes (that look surprisingly different from each other, as you'd see in the photos) for just over $200, which is quite good. I couldn't do that with the Amreekiya because the bra and belt both have coloured fabric behind them; I could match the Shiny top with any gold-and-colour belt, but as has been previously noted, the Shiny top is... fine, but hardly awesome. No match for the new costume's pieces, for sure. And I'd need additional belts as well as skirts and veils.

But I could save myself $50-80 and a lot of debating by just going with the Amreekiya, and that's not nothing.

What do you think? Hit me in the comments.

XOXO

Baby's First Blog Poll!

This belly dancing thing is getting serious.

I had my first troupe rehearsal last week, at which - because of a couple of recent dropouts - I was 'asked' to perform at three shows in the next few months. The first is Sunday week. Doing a choreo I started learning *last week* and have *one* more rehearsal on before we perform.

So. Yes. I am slightly terrified and overwhelmed, while also trying to feel all good about trying new things etc. But shelving the self-helpetry for the moment, I need input on an important decision: one of the shows, in August, will be a paid gig for which I will need a 'professional' costume (e.g., shiny and spangled). These can be quite pricey, but there's a website that has some decent, affordable options.

And here's the poll: I want to know what you-all think would suit me best. There are two styles I'm looking at (translation: that I could afford): the Amreekiya and... well, it has no name, so I'll call it the Shiny. It's a bit tricky because I prefer the top on the Shiny but the skirt on the Amreekiya. (Check the close-up photo of the top of the Amreekiya... it's kind of creepy in a way I can't quantify.)

The troupe colours are black and red, and I prefer gold accents (coins, etc.) to silver on BD costumes. So on the Amreekiya, it'd be either red or black where it's navy in the photo, and on the Shiny it'd be either black as in the photo or red where the black is. My teacher has okayed all of these, so it's just down to my preference.

I'll set up the poll to the right of the post. I'd really appreciate your input on this, so please vote - and additional info is always welcome in the comments section!


XOXO

Stray Thoughts Strut

1) Hockey Talky: The Bruins won the first game of their Division Semi-final against the Philadelphia Flyers. We were playing the Flyers and not the scarier Pittsburgh Steelers because the Montreal Canadiens - the Bruins' sworn enemies, also known as Les Habitants for Frenchy reasons - won their last series, which means that they have to play the Steelers. The nervousness around playing the Steelers led to what Caitlin described as 'all of Boston cheering awkwardly for the Habs'. Very smooth. We're currently up 2-1 in the second game of the series. I'm thinking of you, Tim.

2) Paging Dr Kat!: Hey Massachusetts, how's your awesome infrastructure? And of course it happened on the first truly hot weekend we've had this year. Who needs drinking water in 90˚ weather, right? It looks like we'll be sorted by the middle of the week, but for now we're still boiling water for drinking, hand-washing, and cooking. I feel so old-school.

3) Shake, rattle, and roll: As of Thursday, I'll be joining my belly dancing teacher's troupe! For an idea of what I'll be getting up to, watch this. (You'll also get to see my teacher, Zehara, snake dancing. She is that cool.) The plan is for me to perform for the first time with them in June at a fundraiser Zehara's put together. Guys, I am stupidly excited about this. Belly dancing makes me happier than anything else in my life right now, and the idea that she reckons I'm good enough to perform is startling and touching. I promise to provide photos/links, as long as I don't do anything really stupid.

Link du jour: Bassingthwaighte's looking amazingly lifelike these days!

XOXO

A whole class on stockings? Bien sûr!

I'm sorry it's been so long: I didn't realise how much time had passed since my last post. I'm trying to keep to two a week, but it's harder to fit that in that it seems like it should be.

Specifically, I owe you guys a wrap-up of the Burlesque Expo.

It was... an adventure. I had a great time, and a lot of the people I met were really nice. The classes were fascinating: in addition to the aforementioned stockings and heels workshop (focused on how to take them off, of course), I studied how to eye-flirt with the audience and how to do perfect pin-up make-up. I also sat in on a panel discussion of race in burlesque, which was awesome right up until an older man who was attending the workshop (for reasons that eluded us all) started sharing his opinions, and... well. His heart was in the right place, but his vocabulary hadn't quite caught up.

Apart from that, though, it was a riot. Most of the women there were a fucking riot, and it was great to be a part of that energy. Of course, there were a few That Girls getting underfoot, but that's only to be expected. Some cruel people will tell you that burlesque is stripping for ugly girls; I disagree with that on a variety of levels (those bitches were HOT, just for a start), but there's no denying that burlesque has become an outlet for the sort of oversexed girl who back in our day simply would have been BISEXUAL!!! until she found a boy patient enough not to care about her daddy issues. So, you know, there was a bit of that. What was sad was how blatantly - and unflatteringly - they stuck out against the girls who were legitimately confident in and comfortable with their sex appeal, and how utterly they seemed to fail to recognise this.

I haven't decided yet if I'll pursue burlesque myself, but it was great fun to dip a (stockinged) toe in. For now I'm enjoying belly dancing way too much to think about doing anything else, apart from maybe some hula-hooping classes - those will at least compliment each other.

I have to pull myself together for work now, yuck. Still temping. The second interview for the other job seemed to go well, but again, it's very hard to know. We'll see what happens.

XOXO

Link du jour: All about That Guy.

Some shimmies are bigger than others.

So I had my second belly dancing class this week. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant… except for how I was having a particularly clumsy day, so I could do pretty much nothing right. Until, that is, the end of class, when we did the usual shimmy circle. Every teacher I’ve ever had has done a variant on this, and it’s always my favourite part of class: throw on whatever song (usually a drum solo) and shimmy. Nothing else. Just shimmy.

Shimmying is exactly like what it sounds like, but it’s not done at all like how you think. Here’s what you do: stand up (go on, no one’s watching!), bend and straighten one knee, then bend and straighten the other. Did you notice how your hips dropped and raised as you did that? [sigh] No, I didn’t think so. Okay, try it again, but this time pay attention. I’m not doing this for my health.

Got it? Good. Now keep doing it, and congratulations: you’re shimmying!

Shimmying is very important to most belly dancing styles, and it’s just the most fun. (It’s also a great way to keep warm at bus stops, if you don’t mind the odd stare.) But like most things worth doing, it’s much harder than it seems at first. My particular weakness is slipping from a standard shimmy into a full-body shimmy when I speed up. I can’t really explain that without going into detail that would be boring and mostly useless without illustrations, but suffice it to say that it is, like almost everything in my life, a control issue. Except that this week, for some reason, I got it exactly right and entirely without trying. I can’t imagine why, especially as I’d been so useless at everything else (don’t even say the words ‘chest circle’ to me), but it felt SO. GOOD. There’s something about the rhythm of a good shimmy that feels like nothing else, and the best ones clear my head in way that few things do. I cannot tell you how happy I am to be doing this again.

This week I also had my first Zumba class. I switched into this when my intermediate belly dancing class got canceled; I figured it would at least keep me moving, and if I hated it, well, I’d only have to do it for six weeks.

I didn’t hate it; I didn’t love it; I was just terribly amused by it. Forget alcohol: Zumba is the great equalizer. Just ask the basketball butches - definitely a subspecies, easily recognized by their two-tone, mulletted plumage and wife-beaters - who were mamboing around with the rest of us: you can’t make Zumba cool, you can’t make Zumba tough. You can’t be too cool for school when you’re doing the Macarena (and no, I’m not making that up).

In other dancetastic news, I will be spending my weekend here. My belly dancing teacher is teaching a couple of classes, and I've wanted to check out burlesque for ages, so while many of my farthest-and-dearest are camping and fishing and otherwise being tormented by the 'Great' Outdoors (yeah, I have my sources!), I will be sauntering around in fishnets and heels. So... pretty much business as usual, there. I promise a full report after!

XOXO

Link du jour: This is what I want played every time I enter a room.

Confidential to the Ginja Ninja: Be careful at work, the temptation may overwhelm you. :)