Saturday, June 9, 2012

Things videos cannot tell you...



Oh, yeah. This is a good example.
So much of Oriental Dance gets lost once you only experience it through a video. To KNOW a dancer, you have to experience her live. See her closely, almost feel her breath, as well as the musicians and all the details cameras still fail to perceive and reproduce.

I was experimenting a new "assaya" *(Saiidi stick) this night as my other two "tahtib assayas" hab been stolen. The stolen ones had been gifts of my dear teacher Mahmoud Reda and held a huge emotional value for me. But...the show must go on, so they say. And it does.


One of my dancers brought me this huge "assaya", heavy as the original ones but much longer and totally wrong for this stage. I spent the whole dance set terrified of hitting one of my dancers, breaking the head of one of my musicians in two pieces (or more) or breaking the candelabrum above my head. After I actually broke it *( and THAT it is visible in the video, thank you very much), I spent the rest of the dance set afraid to step on the glass, slip and fall on my butt. I remember moving while, delicately, checking the floor to know where I could and could NOT step. Tricky, VERYYYYY tricky.
 Still FUN!

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