Monday, June 4, 2007

'besque-y weekend

Friday: Rehersal

Saturday: Student Gala and Najwa's wedding!
Braved the madness of the student gala and had a fun time dancing Milaya (cheeky Alexandrian folk-ish dance). We then bolted out the door and into a cab to Najwa's wedding. Najwa is the wonderful female voice behind ASALA's Inte Omri. We were all dressed up in our bestest and then performed Nawaem (big shiny veil number), Yasmina danced a solo, then we performed the end of Inte Omri which was very intense and quite emotional. Yasmina then did a zeffah, and we all joined her to pull the audience up. It was great! Najwa was incredibley generous and had arranged for us all to have the full dinner. It was wonderful to sit down with all the girls and guys all dressed up and just have a nice evening. We then danced the night away with Sulimen on drums adding to the DJ's music. I don't think the men there knew what to do with us...there was a bit of hovering around nervously as well as some staring from afar, and a lot of impromptu dance lessons! Hehe.

Sunday: Teaching and performing in Queen's Park, and the Triple Arabxx Stagette party!
There were no students for my class this day as it was the recovery day from the gala. So Lisa, Maryfer, Yasmina and I all trapsed over to Queen's Park for the drum festival and performed Majnun drum solo to a great crowd. One of the organizers came back and started to talk to us about the possibility of performing in a festival in Tobago! EEeee!

That night was the triple stagette party for Mary, Suzanne and Christina D. We started at Vivance (Joanne's studio) with a wicked potluck smorgasboard, the girls got their makeup done, and then we got some chair/pole dancing lessons which was inevitably hilarious. We all then headed down to Myth for the official party, watched the gorrrgeous Samara dance and got amazing henna done. The best part of this evening was when Emese brought out her "perfect man" costume to perform "Candy Man" and suprised the brides to be with a dance which had them all screaming in laughter. Samara did an adorrrrable Milaya for the second set, having the stagette girls pull three garter's off her upper upper upper thigh.

All in all it was a hilarious and fun evening, the best part being part of an incredible group of wonderful and stunning women, most of Toronto's top bellydancers, all in one room!

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