Busy dance weekend

Where is time going it's been so long since my last post I can't believe it! Life has really been busy with classes, having sales in my eBay store, new orders coming in, greeting card orders, card class, kitchen remodel and dancing.


The weekend started out on Friday night when I taught a card class for 12 wonderful ladies, what a great evening of fun. Thanks Amber for hosting the night. These crafty women breezed through the 2 Christmas cards, Christmas microscope ornament and surprise box. This is the second card class I have taught and we are growing each time. We do this every 3 months and it's so much fun!!!

Below are the two Christmas cards we made. The first card is a snowman shaker card with dry embossing and the second card is a pinwheel card with a microscope slide embellishment with micro bead frame.




Saturday I had the opportunity to take a dance workshop from Carrie Konyha at the new Playa de Anaya studio. Excellent workshop! The topic was Drum Rhythm Dance Combinations and I loved it. My only complaint 2 hours wasn't long enough!!! :-) We covered 4/4, 2/4 and 8/4 rhythms plus putting the combos and ideas into a drum solo. It was so nice to take a workshop for a change and work on cabaret moves and style.


The workshop ended at 5:30 and it was a rush home to get ready to perform at Maui Wowi with Rachel and Melissa. We performed a dance I taught a year ago to the Blues Bros. version of "Do You Love Me". What a fun routine this dance is and my partners in this dance were awesome! Enjoy the clip below of our performance. Thanks ladies let's do this again next month :0)



It's another busy day today so I'm off to enjoy it...

Intermediate Tribal Class Videos

Wow two blogs in one day; hard to believe :-)

I had a chance to make the video for both groups in the intermediate tribal dance. Both videos are below.

Group 1

Group 2

Hope this helps lady...

Classes Started Finally!

After being off from teaching my Mesa Art Center (MAC) classes for 6 weeks we are finally back in session!!! I have been working on 5 new choreographies for my classes and it's finally time to show them off.

I already posted the double fan veil dance that my intermediate cabaret class will be learning. I took all the fan veils to class that Gail, Debbie and I dyed and they were a huge hit. The biggest complaint I had was it was too difficult to pick just one :-)

The class went very well mainly focusing on fan veil technique and how to open them especially with the left hand. If you'd ask my students they would say the fan veils and left hand won that first go around :0) I thought they did awesome for the first night.

My beginning cabaret class on Tuesday night is filled to the brim. They are learning an American style dance and ladies the video is up; yeah! I filmed the routine in my dance room shooting the camera into the mirrors so you can see me from front and back. It might be confusing when I'm out of the camera but when I'm going to the right in the mirror you will be going to the right.

The beginning cabaret class on Wednesday is learning single cane and no one was injured the first night of class!!! Sometimes these canes can fly! We concentrated on cane technique the first night and they did fantastic. Only one cane went flying to the back of the room and only a couple of heads and legs were hit by the cane operator; not bad!

I was keeping the beginning tribal class routine a secret I wasn't sure how they would take learning a dance to Michael Jackson's "Thriller"; they loved it! The first part will be tribal moves and we will end with "Thriller", a perfect time of year for this dance. The beginning tribal class is huge!!! We are like sardines in the dance room so when we start doing the monster & zombie walks we won't be able to move to far; thank goodness in tribal style we are use to dancing close together :-)

The intermediate tribal class was a riot, they love the dance. We can really break out of our shells on this one!!! I've had a lot of fun creating the dances for the tribal classes I love tribal fusion! Ladies the videos will be up soon on these dances.

Thursday night was my 2nd Thursday of the month class in my home studio and this month's topic was 7 veils. A dust storm decided to move into town around 6:30 but everyone was a trouper and they all showed up for class at 7:00; ladies you are wonderful!!! Mother Nature must be very upset with me for some reason she broke up our class last month also but with rain not dust. At least this time she finished blowing the dust around by the time we were ready to go outside and work with our 7 veils.

I showed a performance by Tamalyn Dallal I had on a DVD. This to me is the best example of dancing with 7 veils; her performance is awesome. You can watch Tamalyn's performance on YouTube, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-eeJAj23eU. Everyone liked the class so now I guess I need to choreograph a dance with 7 veils :-0

I received in my order of dance swords today. This is something new that I will be selling now. Heads up for my intermediate cabaret dancers we will be learning a sword routine next session starting in January :-)

Everyone have a great weekend...

Fan Veil Routine

It's been a while since my last blog; life has been a little crazy. All my classes have gone for the 13 week session starting tomorrow night; yikes!!!! It has been over a month since we have had classes at the Mesa Art Center (MAC); way too long, I'm ready to get back teaching again!!!

I have been teaching several workshops during the interim plus classes at my home studio; thank goodness :-) Last Saturday was Tribal Fusion Indian Style and it was our first class back outside and it was still a little to warm to hold class outside; sorry ladies. I taught the class a short dance using about 10 different Mudras and several poses. I took the dance from the ATS blessing or salutation that is done before each performance. I explained to everyone the meaning of the salutation; it is so beautiful… We thank Mother Earth for her beauty and apologize for stomping on her. We thank our teachers for their knowledge. We thank our sister dancers for their support and we thank the audience for watching. Each gesture is represented in the blessing within the dance. I added more to the dance still keeping the meaning. I was so pleased to hear that they liked the workshop; hey!!!

This Thursday night will be the 7 veils class which should be a blast. It's hard enough to dance with one veil at times and we will be dancing with 7!!! It will probably take us an hour to put the veils on and that's the entire class; oh my I didn't plan well on this one :0) Thank goodness it’s starting to cool off so it will be in the 90’s by Thursday.

I finished choreographing the double veil routine I will be teaching my intermediate cabaret class. I had this braining idea to put it on video so my class will have something to watch to help them practice. Okay I live in Arizona and it's still over 100 degrees outside, there is a slight breeze today and no make up; what I wouldn't do for my students :-) I really don't have an area to film in my house so it's outside on my patio. Just standing outside doing nothing you start glistening (you know dancers glisten we don't sweat) :-) So you will see in the video I'm having a difficult time sliding the fan veils off my shoulders. Thank goodness the breeze was not a factor. The katydids were making their noise they must have liked the music ;-)

The music is from the CD Caravans by Armen Chakmakian and the song title is Bird song, the journey.



My husband is such a sweetie to film me; what a great guy, I'm so lucky to have him. He does a fantastic job filming it must have been all that practice from having our TV show The Joy of Belly Dancing. He knows how to follow me pretty well without ever seeing the dance.

The fan veils I'm dancing with is one that we dyed lasts week. I was amazed how loud they are when I snap them open. I still need to work with these fans to get them loosened up so they open easier they are still really stiff. The fan veils flow really well and so much fun to dance with.

The flirty skirt I'm wearing I just got in stock. Rukshana out did herself with this batch of skirts. She went to LA to the garment district and found some fabulous material. I'm finding it very difficult to resist getting one skirt in each color and pattern!!!!

Back to work listing more items in my eBay store and Shimmy Bliss website...