"who you is?"

this weekend was rakkasah, otherwise known as nine months of rehearsal for seven and a half minutes of stage time. rakkasah is an interesting place full of fascinating and awe inspiring things; a few good, a few bad, and if youre lucky, some spectacularly bad. bellydance is a generic term that encompasses everything from traditional egyptian style, cabaret, and romany to fusion, tribal, and natica's poetic dance theatre. walking around rakkasah you will see goth tribal dancers with piercings, tattoos, and long multicolored fake dreadlock extentions; women old enough to be your grandma dressed in a cabaret costume consisting of nothing more than a belt and bra with a sheer layer of chiffon being all that's protecting your retinas from detaching in a desperate act of self preservation; and new age earth goddesses who wear fairy wings and glitter and refer to their pelvises as "mystic triangles."

on the same stage moments apart from each other you can see: michelle de vine do a turkish drop (dropping from a back bend on to the floor) a la:

while balancing a sword on her head. seriously, people. a SWORD!; watch metal goddess dance to ozzy osbourne; and witness the spectacle that is: WIND MUSIC! wind music is performed by natica's poetic dance theatre, which as far as i can tell is rakkasah's version of "cats." they perform every year with the exact same routine which involves wings of isis (floor length wings that attach to your arms), a new age narrator, and a cast of about 30 geriatric dancers with wind chimes (used, indoors!). i live for WIND MUSIC! heartbreakingly, i missed it this year, (though i did receive the following text message: "get in here right now: WIND MUSIC!" so, i have no one to blame but myself). im checking youtube every hour on the hour hoping some kind soul caught the magic that is WIND MUSIC and wants to share it with the world!

our performances went well, although since i cant actually see whats happening, i have no actual idea how it looked. our first performance was friday night at 10pm consisting of a veil piece, a spanish fusion piece, and the dance i was in "zenia." we hadnt performed zenia for about four months, but, fortunately it went fairly well. its always hard to dance with 4 other girls on a stage youve never been on; we have no rehearsal or tech on the stage so the dimensions are totally unfamiliar which is havoc on spacing. saturday at noon we danced a persian piece, a basket dance, and closed with a tabla. i performed a duet "basket" dance where my partner and i balanced baskets on our head. unfortunately, it went less well than it had in rehearsal -- immediately after the persian piece, the sound tech cut our track and the announcer ushered us off stage in the middle of our set. i was about to walk on stage and instead had to sit in the wings for about 7 nerve wracking minutes while they corrected their error. which is not really the best way to calm yourself before balancing a frickin basket on your head! fortunately, i didnt drop my basket. i also didnt step on my skirt causing my clothes to fall off on stage, or, accidentally spin off the stage. so, all in all, it was a good performance by my measuring stick. unfortunately the woman who performed before us cant say the same thing - her bra top came off mid-performance give the family friendly audience a little taste of showgirls before running off stage.