Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Las Vegas Belly Dance Intensive 2012

Hi everyone!  I recently got back from Las Vegas where I intended the belly dance festival and intensive. This post will mostly cover the bellydance portion of the trip, with the Las Vegas portion in another post.

 It was so special!  In addition to taking some really cool workshops I also bought a brand new prop called arcs - (imagine a really long veil on a hoop), and danced on stage at the festival ATS style.  For those of you who aren't into belly dance ATS stands for American Tribal Style.   A style of belly dance that is largely improvised.  When you know the moves and the cues - you know enough to dance along.  It was fun, but I realized I forgot some cues!  :-)

I got to meet -

 Princess Farhannah!  She liked my dress which was lime green and neon pink. 

I also got to meet - 



Shira.  
Way back in 1996 or 1997 when I first had the idea to check out this bellydance thing... Shira's website is one of the first I found.  I'm also featured on Shira's side project Bellydance Plus!

Went to a lovely belly dance show, as well.  Totally amazing.  

The following is what I wrote to the event's coordinator, which goes into more details about the classes in particular.   


Greetings LVBDIF!  First off, thank you for organizing such a wonderful and enjoyable event.  As someone who took a lot of business psych classes, I know that feedback is crucial, so I wanted to give you my thoughts on the classes and events I went to. 

Class 1 - Upper body dynamics with Namira - 
Fantastic class.  It stayed true to it's description as Namira taught us about the meaning of dynamics and showed us some combos to demonstrate dynamics in the context of upper body moves. 

Class 2 - Around the World Choreography with Cera 
Huge disappointment.  I'm a Christian - so when Cera told us that one of the moves we learned was used by an African tribe to worship their serpent deity - I left for a small amount of time hoping that the whole worshiping of serpents would be over when I came back.  I arrived only to discover that we were now learning a whole dance from this serpent worshiping people. I left.   I would have greatly appreciated a disclaimer before registering for this class.   I would have registered for something else. I do hope that in the future if classes like this are offered there is a disclaimer or warning of some sort. 

Class 3 - Free your feet with Elizabeth Strong 
I really did enjoy Elizabeth.  She's very kind and down to earth but I did find the title of the workshop a little misleading.  I expected it to be about footwork for the tribal dancer - instead we learned part of a choreography.  It was a bit intense for the time allowed.  I did like that Elizabeth kept checking in with us though. 

Saturday night show 
- What an enjoyable event.   I liked that we were able to vote on contestants.  Great variety of dancers.  Though I did hope to see ATS represented as well. 

Class # 4 Shimmies and Layers with Heather Shoopman 
What a fantastic class and instructor.  Relaxed happy vibes from this class.  Material was challenging but not impossible, explained in ways that made it easy to understand and a joy to learn.  Heather was very nice later and let me copy her notes. 

Class # 5 (forget the title) with Fuego Fusion
Thumbs up!   Way up!  Easily the most fun class I took while there.  Edgy, original and oh did I mention.... fun?!  The opening was attention getting and a nice way to demonstrate their point.  The lecture was much needed, and the choreography tied in to theme and was taught in an easy to learn fashion.  

vendors and through the day performances were lovely!

Thank you so much again and I hope you find my comments helpful. 

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