Princess Awesome

Hello world, it's February already! Been a couple of months since I last updated...

Right, well.. had a busy christmas period, some dance related stuff going on including a lovely cabaret night we were invited to by Dance With Attitude studios down by the Clyde in November.
The DWA dancers performed a variety of dances from the musical Cabaret which were all awesome but my favourite was 2 Ladies featuring Alexis and two of the girls. Laura, Ali and myself performed to Slavic Soul Party's Technochek Collision and Beat's Antique - Waisted, which remains one of my favourite routines with the troupe!

December saw us travel down to the wilds of Peebles through the snow for the Xmas Hafla! We performed Beats Antique - Vardo and I did a solo to Pink Floyd - The Great Big Gig In The Sky which was completely improvised and pretty darn interpretive. Costume-wise I went for black velvet with rhinestones, it was all a bit cabaret actually :P Anyway if you're at all interested in seeing my terrible dancing just search for 'stef scott tribal' on you tube.

Xmas was great and busy as mentioned, spent up in Oban at my boyfriend Richard's parents. To summarise there was a lot of food, wine and snow!

January was kicked off with a Bellyjam night at Dance With Attitude Studios again, inspired by the brief return of Deirdre MacDonald - who taught me all there is to know about Gypsy Caravan style tribal bellydance! There were many performances and this evening was extra special as it marked the first outing of the new class troupe - Lakshmi (who is Sarasvati's sister in Hinduism) :D
Ali and I danced with them to Galactic Caravan - Lirili. Laura got a chance to watch in the wings and was dead proud of them!

At the end of the month we travelled over to Edinburgh for the University's African & Arabic Dance Society's hafla in the Pleasance. The programme included around 25 performers (!) including a fantastically enagaging percussion group who had us singing and bobbing about before the main dancing had even started. The Arabic dance class came out halfway through this set and I have to give props to Moyra - she completely lets herself go with the music but at the same time is so controlled and precise with beautiful lines, similar to her egyptian style bellydancing.
Anyway we were on 2nd last i think (about 3 long G&Ts in - i don't condone drinking and dancing by the way folks), and performed to Vardo again. Looking back at the video we were nicely in-sync with the turns!

In craft news i've got my eye on several lovely sparkly pieces on eBay and fingers crossed hope to incorporate them into a new bra and belt. I'm also slowly gathering components for a bra based on my trip to Costa Rica last year. Richard very kindly drilled holes in Colones coins that we had left and also bought me little turtle charms for xmas! I've yet to find the right fabric for the base so a trip to Mandor's is in order this weekend.

What's coming up in the future you ask? Well at the end of March we will be at the lovely Pheonyx Hafla in aid of Walk the Walk (breast cancer charity). Hopefully we will have something a little bit special to show you ;)

I’ve had a lot of people recently ask me if I get nervous before a performance. Well, let me
tell you something.
One of our work’s big offices is closing (the one I work in), and so they organised a ‘closing
bash’ type thing on the 1st October, they sent email asking for people with talents if they
wanted to join in. My boss has a Ceildih band and my boss’ boss’ boss is in a rock covers
band called the Dangleberries (yeah, I know). So I volunteered the troupe to perform.
However due to logistics involved in getting Laura and Ali and Amanda over to Livingston
on a Thursday afternoon it wasn’t possible to have the troupe and not wanting to let the
side down I agreed to still do it, albeit on my tod. My 2nd removed boss asked if I was still
comfortable doing it on my own, I simply replied that I was used to dancing in front of loads
of people and that it wasn’t a problem, and he said yeah but remember this is people you work
with. So what? But then I could see where he was coming from, a lot of them would have
no idea what to expect from one of their colleagues who organises power supplies wiggling
around with half the usual amount of clothes on a Thursday afternoon. I think there’ s reason
for a bit of fear there?

Long story short I did it. I was on after the Dangleberries at about 6.30pm. People had just
started drinking so to say it was a stiff crowd was a bit of an understatement. I brought 3
tracks, its bloody hard picking music for a non-bellydance audience I tell you. You can’t
go too weird or mizmar-y or they often just won’t take to it. Despite what I’ve just said there, I
started off with Upper Egypt Ensemble, then slooooow Saraab and then El Enab by Saad as
an upbeat one with the intension of getting people to join in the dance.

The area I had to dance in was long and they had put out circular tables with chairs, but the
centre was obscured by trees and these low wooden plinth things round them so I couldn’t
stay in one place. I worked my way down either side so people could see and then stepped up
onto a plinth for a time (and nearly fecking slipped on my harem pants and broke myself!)
and finished back on the floor. I focussed mainly on the people I knew and they were smiling
back at me, after the short slow solo to Saraab I shimmied my way in amongst the tables to
try and get people up to dance with me. Thankfully the receptionists and some others (both
men and women) came up to the front and it was great fun. Tough crowd man, but I did get
plenty of props from the wee girl that serves on the coffee bar who couldn’ t believe how
brave I was for doing what I do and wished that she could too. I asked what was stopping her,
and mentioned that bellydance is for every body shape and size and a good way of boosting
your confidence. I always like to spread that message to as many people as I can. I hate
dancers who are so up themselves that they don’ t want to share this wonderful hobby and
artform with others.
Later I received many compliments and how much people enjoyed it and how different it was
so I can count that one as a success.

Getting back to the topic, I think it’s less nervousness about dancing in front of people, and
more about fecking up the routine and letting the troupe, my family, Richard and myself
down. I rely a great deal on what my close friends and family think of my dancing.

You know I was never this outgoing when I was a kid; I’d completely shy away from any
sort of public speaking or having to perform in Christmas shows at school etc. Sometimes
I forget about that, my aunty mentioned it after the show and it reminded me how far I’ve
come. I have to thank Joanie for allowing me to grow some balls in the safe and encouraging
environment of my first bellydancing class. Speaking of Joanie she has a wonderful sold-
out show coming up this Saturday at The Bridge in Easterhouse. Sarasvati will be dancing
something a bit different as usual!

Samantha Emanuelle Workshops - October

Again thanks to Doris and Celia of Borders Arabic Dance, we were graced with the adorable
presence of a fantastic tribal fusion dancer in the shape of Sam! Ali and I had to get up at the
arse-crack of dawn to get down to Peebles in time for the 10am workshop and other dancers
came from far and wide such as Bex, Dawn, Alexis and Tamsin who were also to perform at
the evening showcase in the Eastgate Theatre down the road.

We started with a video of various awesome and inspiring sea creatures and jellyfish to gain
a basis for the workshop outcome. We were then given a vigorous arm swinging and brain
melting warm up which I am using now in my practice. We paired up and gave each other a
good back massage, punch on the ass and pinch round the ear lobes to get the creative juices
flowing which was fun.

Transformed into curled up sea creatures exploring our new dance environment for the first
time, we used just an arm or just a leg to furkle about and find dimensions and spaces that I
personally had never explored in my dancing before. It made me feel like I had been limiting
myself and been so 2D in the movements I choose. The visual help from imagining that my
wrists are made of cork and that I need to move my arms and hands like im pushing against
dense water really helped.

We explored mirroring in pairs using dime-stopping and ticking, and learned a short sea
creature based choreography. There was also a part where in pairs we worked out two 8
counts of our own which encouraged us to be a bit more creative and Ali and I came up with
some nice moves which we will probably use in some future troupe routine.

After some lunch and cake it was Honky Tonk time. It’s a choreo most of us had seen Sam
perform in Youtube videos and is pretty fast paced. We would learn a chunk, move on, run
through a couple of times, learning another chunk, run through etc which worked really well.
By the end I was sweating like a sweaty thing but felt really energised and fulfilled. Sam is
another great teacher who teaches you the root of a movement and gets you to feel which
muscles you are using to make the movement, which I think is the best way of explaining it to
someone.

After the workshop I headed to the Eastgate with Doris, Celia, Amanda and Sam to check out
the lighting requirements for the show with the staff. That was pretty cool as Sam pointed out
it’s not often as a dancer you get the chance to specify what kind of lighting you want.
We rushed back to the Robertson household to get make-up on for the show and a quick bite
to eat thanks to David. The standard of the show was really good with such a wide variety of
styles and abilities on display.

For my solo I had to follow Meg first of all, which as most of you know is near to impossible
as she is such a star. I had been humming and hawing over what song to use for weeks
and was going to go for a slowish Faith no More track but the week before settled on the
appropriately named ‘Slow’ by Rumer, a Radio 2 favourite I believe (she sounds a lot like
Karen Carpenter).

This next sentence might sound like some sort of lame excuse - As I’m so tall and gangly
I have difficulty making quick sharp movements and being able to adequately pull off
any ‘hip-hop’ -esque combos is hard for me personally. I try and do too much and it just looks
ridiculous, not like when Sam does it. Small dancers are such lucky bastards, I hope they
know that.

Anyway, I decided a while ago that I should stick to slowish or moderate speed songs for
now so I can use my lankiness to my advantage and strike some elegant poses. Not sure if I
managed that or not as I haven’t seen the video yet, however Sam did pay me the ultimate
compliment and said after the show that I held the energy right through my arms to my
fingertips which is good enough for me! Also Shelley Skipper said I looked like a Mucha
girl which was cool!

As for watching the show I particularly enjoyed Shimmer’s ATS, Alexis’ emotional fusion
piece, Bex’s vampire theatrical fusion, Tamsyn’s gypsy skirt, and of course Sam’ s pieces
which ended the first half and the end of the show. We all had a good laugh although missed
out of the drunken guys flailing around with isis wings in the street after we left.

I hope I can take some more workshops with Sam in the future. It would be great to do her
intensives down in Exeter but it’s so bloody far away. Maybe I can time it with a holiday as
I’ve always wanted to go to Dorset/Devon area and stalk Hugh Fernley Whittingstall and
search for fossils at Lyme Regis :D

Gaslight Faeries – August/October

At the beginning of this year we started planning and working out our next show,
which was to materialise as The
Gaslight Faeries. We were originally going to have it in April but shit piled
up and we were all busy with work and other commitments so it ended up being in
August instead. We had managed to get use of the Britannia Panopticon Music Hall in
Glasgow, which is currently being restored and is full of ye olde music hall character.
We had to pick music that fitted with the time period the music hall was active
1890s to 1930s which made it a tough job. We were allowed to get away with stuff if
it 'sounded' as if it was from the period so that was a bit of a relief or we would have
been struggling to find stuff we actually liked never mind it being historically
accurate.

We decided to try and tie-up the show with a theme of different dance styles from
around the world, like we were a rag-tag bunch of gypsy travellers.
Laura had seen me as the Dragon-Lady, a western stereotype of Asian women in
films around that period - they were always sleekit murderous temptresses, and seeing as I had managed to finally buy a sword from overseas the other year (thanks
ketene :)) I decided that I should probably give it a debut. I found
a couple of oriental/eastern sounding drum tracks and spliced them together with
cutting edge technology - go me.

I practiced loads, bought Belladonna's sword dvd to learn interesting moves and
incorporated floorwork into my routine. I’m not insanely flexible so I knew I
couldn’t do crazy backbends or anything like that with the time I had to rehearse,
however I decided to compensate for this by making the dance slow and (hopefully
reasonably) controlled instead. Hopefully ill be able to post a video of it sometime in
the future. Anyway I got around to feeling fairly confident about performing it and
was encouraged by Ali and Laura's comments who vetted it before the show.

Bit of an interlude from the show here but – most people who have seen me do solos
will realise that I don’t practice or choreograph much before I perform. This of course
has led to some utter shit (ie Sherri hafla and countless others). I also get bored of
dancing to the same tracks easily so always tend to choose something new if there is a
hafla coming up. I don’ t know why I have always taken this attitude as it only leads to
me feeling Ive let myself and my troupe down with the shoddy quality of my dancing.
In the future however im going to crack down and make sure I rehearse adequately
before any performances as I would if it was a troupe routine.

Anyway back to the show. Laura had a Mati Hari story to tell which wrangled
together a conspiring French waiter Antoine and a WW1 officer. Ali was encouraged
to embody Loie Fuller, a famous dancer back in the day with a version of her skirt
dance, but performed with fan veils. Amanada had a cute jewellery box ballerina gone
bad routine which was great fun. Of course we had some group dances featuring all of
us and invited some guests to break up the troupe-based numbers.
It was a good show and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it, however after two runs of it I
do feel there were obvious weak spots and things that I would veto in our democratic
troupe meetings if we did another one :P

The Panopticon night ended up packed. We had no idea as many people would turn
out as they did. We had tried to reserve seats for people who had paid through the
website but the system we tried to use was flawed and we had so many people come
in off the street. It was busting at the seams with people standing and we had health
& safety and fire restrictions from the venue owners to comply with, this left a few
disappointed people who had turned up later on and couldn’t get in.
After the show we had so many positive comments and because so many friends
missed it we decided to run it again in October. We couldn’t use the Panopticon again
unfortunately as they had reached their insurance limit for number of events that year,
so we searched for weeks trying to find a venue which was both affordable to us and
that would have a god ambience and suit the show contents. We eventually got the
QMU which is great for size and it had a proper stage and lighting which was a nice
change.

The show went off without any hitches or tech difficulties and with the exception
of a rogue pastie I think it was pretty awesome. I felt particularly good as pretty
much most of the troupe’s family members and friends were there to see it. Even my
cousins came along which I was equally surprised and grateful about :) Ali’ s hubby
got to finally see her perform a moving and gorgeous fan veil dance which had some
of us welling up with emotion.

You can see some photos of the show here - http://sarasvatitribal.co.uk/gf2.h…
Including this awesome picture of me

A lot of my dancer-friend people on Facebook also seem to have a dance-related blog,
where they write about taking workshops, reviews of shows they've been to, general
choreography woe or inspiration...
So I appreciate those of you left following me on Livejournal probably won't be
interested in me posting on here solely about my bellydancing antics, especially as
I've kinda not posted on LJ for like, eons. But to that I say hoo-hah up yours :P

Im not promising riveting reading or anything to be eloquently worded, im just typing
this as it’ s falling out of my brain.

Soooo there's quite a lot to write about recently, im not short of material that's for
sure.

Sherri Wheatley Workshops in July

Doris arranged to have Sherri Wheatley (a fantastic LA-based tribal bellydancer) to
come to Peebles and host workshops, so we offered to host a couple in Glasgow as
well while she was here. Sherri is such a fun teacher – as well as being a foxy dancer!
Her dancing is technically brilliant with interesting combinations which she explains
with imagery that you can easily understand. Her dancing and costuming has an
earthy, sultry, mysterious tone which suits her well!

We did learn a couple of short choreographies although I’ d need to look at my notes
to try and recall them! My memory is fecking awful. It’ s nice to have combos that
aren’ t just 4 of this and 4 of that,, but that chop up your usual ATS-like movements
and combine them with level changes which gives it a whole new look and feel.
After the 1st workshop we had a hafla/show in the Winchester Bar, it was a bit
sparse in attendance however the crowd were great and appreciative of all the
performances. It was the first time I had seen Bex Priest and Alexis Southall dance
live (unfortunately we couldn’ t get Alexis’ music to work on the crappy CD decks at
the venue so she had to dance to something else) and they are both new favourites :)

Happy Birthday kytheraen, hopefully ill be able to send your presents onto you soon!

Kisses and nibbles,

Xenny McWiggleston



and for everybody else...

Happy Samhain!

To those that enjoy McDonalds (for whatever sordid reason), stop putting that shit in your body weirdos!

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/anti-ho…

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Wooooooooo!

Tomorrow morning I go to Blackpool to learn killar bellydancing skillz from these ladies:

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