Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Bellydancing in Blackpool. Raqs Britannia!

It has been quite a whirlwind since I arrived back in UK.

Wed and Thurs nights I danced at Morocco Restaurant, Edinburgh. I really love dancing in Cairo for many reasons- but i was blown away by emotion from dancing to a restaurant packed with only my students- that 1st night, the cheers and applause after my 1st dance literally forced me to actually run from the stage in floods of tears.... What a welcome! Thank you to all of you who came along and made those 2 nights sooooo special for me. Maybe someone with a camera that night will have some good shots I can include in here....?

Then it was a train journey (on my birthday) down to Blackpool to attend the Raqs Britannia Festival. I had been asked to teach and perform. The 'Bellydance Superstars' were doing the performing on the sat night, and the bulk of the teaching over the weekend... but the friday night show was to be the 'best' of the UK performers and i had been asked to represent Scotland. It was lovely to see so many dancers perform who's names i had heard for years but whom I had never seen. I was very nervous about dancing, feeling i had chosen a piece of music that just wasn't strong enough... but in the end the audience went wild and i received a LOT of positive comments afterwards, so i guess i did ok. Would love to see a video of it, anyone out there film it?!!! Have to say though- I REALLY missed having my band with me. I have become spolit- CD is just not good enough anymore!!!! Oh- and Tracey (one of the organisers) even arranged a birthday cake for me which was very unexpected and very sweet. It was a lovely way to spend my birthday.

A whole weekend and I didn't fully attend one single workshop... I taught mine on saturday morning- 8.30am!!!!!!!!!!! positively unhumane time to be teaching, esp the morning after your birthday. Grr. Anyway- it went really well and I think my favourite comment from it was ' I was too tired to dance this morning, but now, after your class, I feel all ''Zingy'' and ready for the rest of the day!'

So I spent a lovely weekend networking (also known as chatting to all my bellydance friends!!!!) One wonderful surprise was seeing Emily (aka Shahla) perform an Iraqi dance. She was wonderful- really full of energy and fun. It was great to see her again after all these years (I was her 1st bellydance teacher, years ago) She has really come on and is the only dancer in the country who can perform Iraqi dance and is doing really well for herself in London. I felt very proud of her- she always was a good dancer- but she has come a long way. Beautiful.

Oh- and to read lots and lots more about this weekend- check out Annette's blog all about it on http://raqs-britannia.blogspot.com/

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