Amy - The Right and Kind Reverend

Where have I been? Buying a house! My awesome parents decided to give me a chunk of change and tell me to get busy buying a house while the interest rates are good. So I spent March - May looking, hoping and freaking out about ever finding a home I liked and could afford. And then I found one! The buying process was tough but I had a great Realtor and a supportive cast of friends, some of whom helped us move this past weekend (THANK YOU!).

Some things I wanted in a house were wood floors for dancing, with the bonus of having space to hula hoop indoors. OK, and radiator heat, a nice big front porch, and a kitchen that was either spacious or open to a dining area. Well, I got all of it! And not only is the living room large, it's large enough to be our interior performing space for the Inappropriate Hafla, if need be! The house is a foursquare, and at some point the wall between the living and dining room was taken out so it's one big room. I mean, not immense but a nice size for a hundred year old house in a leafy urban neighborhood, without being some huge, hard-to-heat, space-wasted-on-two-people kind of place. Here is a picture, with the foyer and front door behind and to the left of the camera, looking down the space to the fireplace that was added in the mid-1970s. Blogger is being a PIA, but you can see the first set of pictures over here.

So now I'm living in a house full of boxes and Very Concerned Cats, but eventually that will clear out and I'll be back to practicing and classes. This weekend I'll be taking my third workshop with Ali of n.o.madic tribal (and maybe an ATS workshop with Megha money and time permitting), and I need to get back to my classes, and there is a hafla to plan. To the dancing!

Naima totally reminded me that we picked a day for our 4th Annual Inappropriate Hafla! It will be Labor Day weekend on Saturday September 4th. We wanted it to be over the summer but August is full of Pennsic, Charm City Tribal, Bellypalooza and Amel Tafsout, July is full of Tribal Synergy workshops and vacations, and June was just too close to everything else. Hopefully we'll have a good turn out, considering it's a holiday weekend. Also, we may have a new venue. We all LOVE Lyra's big yard but the possible new venue has an indoor performance space option if the weather turns against us.


So, dancers, start your engines! What craziness will you bring to the table this time?

Yesterday I headed down to the southern part of our state to attend Troupe 'Hip'notic's annual Summer Solstice Hafla. The Hafla is a gathering of dancers, friends and family who get together to socialize, perform, and welcome in the summer months (which for many of us are dance intense!). Kallisti was not dancing, though Flissy performed with her other troupe Verve Tribal (a fun ATS piece to a Gogol Bordello song). We saw all sorts of dancing, different styles and skill levels, as the idea is for everyone to get together and have fun and enjoy themselves. There as an after party at Becca's house, with dance talk and good food and cute dogs and Becca's awesome new dance studio. The only problem is that 'Hip'notic is based 1 1/5 hours away from where I live, so we don't get do hang out more often.

As the show started I had this realization that I would not have wanted to be anywhere in the world at that moment but there, at that hafla, watching those dancers and hanging out with people I love. I had this sudden overwhelming feeling of being so fortunate to be doing what I am doing with the people I am doing it with. I was incredibly peaceful. Dance can be stressful. I worry about doing a good job, learning new things, finding the time and money to do what I want, trying to get people to appreciate what we do. Sometimes the fact that most of the dance scene is "for dancers, by dancers" can be frustrating when you wish a wider audience would take note of what's going on. Not that I don't like that aspect of belly dance! No, I love it, but sometimes it can be annoying.

At that moment yesterday, though, I was perfectly happy to be a part of one area belly dance scene at one of our regular local events, cheering on the dancers, being inspired and entertained. Seeing beautiful people dressed up in their gorgeous costumes, having a good time doing something they love? Isn't that a sight we should see more often?

There is a flyer taped to a utility pole on my street, advertising a local "repair collective" of licensed, skilled workers who are available to hire for all sorts of repairs and jobs. While talking up their skills they also add the extra enticement of low rates, which they describe as undercutting the rates of their competitors.

Whoa, wait, undercutting?

If you've been in the belly dance scene for more than five minutes you've heard the stories of dancers losing gigs and other dance opportunities when another dancer, sometimes talented and sometimes not, comes along and offers to perform at a lower rate than the established performer. It's ugly. It's stupid. If you really are dying to dance go check out your local shows and haflas before stealing another dancer's job and performing for peanuts. One day you might be looking at the situation from the other side of the equation.

Though I know competitive pricing is all a part of running a business, it still made me stop to see the word undercutting used so casually. Hell, used with pride! I've been conditioned to think of undercutting as a sign of bad quality and clueless or malicious behavior. Perhaps this repair collective is made up of a bunch of wonderful, talented, hardworking people but their advertising language really turned me off. Something like "Give us a call and ask about out competitive hourly rates!" would have been a much more positive way to say, "We work for cheap!". And as someone who is about to buy a house, I am all about the cheap but not at the sake of quality and not if it screws other people out of a job.

This past weekend Flissy and I danced as part of a neighborhood art festival in Baltimore. We've been renting space from the neighborhood dance school for the past year, and before that our studio as at their previous incarnation in another part of town. We really like working with them and were happy to do a short performance as a part of their dance showcase. We shared the stage with tiny tap dancers, a capoeira group, and an amazing pop and lock artist.

I'm posting the middle and last song of our set, please excuse the low volume in the last song. If you follow the video back to Youtube you'll see the first part of the set, where Flissy and I had a moment of zill fumbling. We've only been working on zills for about 6 months so I'm pretty proud we're doing so well!