GenCon 2010: more performing awesomeness than ever!
This marked my fourth year attending GenCon as part of Different Drummer Belly Dancers. There was much fun had, as in previous years, but this year was truly a blast in that I feel I leveled up as a performer.
We spent all summer choreographing our 15-minute set that served as the pre-show for the costume contest; this is probably our biggest gig of the year, as our audience numbered hundreds. We were also asked to dance for the audience of a panel on "The Guild," since many of the actors were attending the con as media guests, and we were planning to dance to their song "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?".
Additionally, we would perform 5 roving sets around the con, teach a handful of workshops, and decorate and staff a booth in the exhibit hall. Even if I tried to scrape by with the minimum, I was looking at at least 5-6 hours of dancing spread out over 4 days, with the attendant commitment of getting in costume (another 1-2 hrs per day), warming up, stretching, cooling down, and being present at the con as an entertainer (not to mention, representing the geeky side of belly dance).
Not only was I up for the challenge, I met it and brought the shimmy! My troupemates and I were "on" for all of our performances, and I felt like I inhabited my performing personas very comfortably, despite having to wear them for longer than usual (not to mention having to wear false eyelashes for longer than usual, ugh, I dislike having to be in sustained contact with eyelash glue for long periods of times). We did great at our roving sets in the hallways of the con, engaging our audience and making some tip money. We rocked both of our large pre-planned performance. We sold our shiny wares at our booth. We got stopped every 2 seconds for pics as we wandered the con.
It's sometimes hard for me to be "on" as a performer, since I'm kinda introverted, but something just clicked, and I was able to smile and make eye contact with complete strangers, and even initiate conversations, without feeling shy or awkward. I think part of it was adrenaline, and part of it was coming into my own as a performer. I also learned a very important equation: for every 15 minutes of warming-up/stretching that I neglect per 1 hour of performing, I need to lay on the ground to stretch my back for at least 30 minutes. Ugh. Ended up feeling sore after the con, and had con-hangover too, and sleep deprivation... but I was averaging 6 hrs of sleep a night, which was not too bad, all things considered.
I also performed hooping a whole bunch, both during our roving sets and just to entertain people in line for various things, and people LOVED IT. This was interesting for me as a performer, since I've only been hooping for 7 months and I view myself as technically only-kinda-sorta good at it... but add in the dance and performance background, and I can keep a ground entertained for a while. So that ended up being a lot of fun.
(somebody caught a video of me hooping, yay!)
Besides all the dancey stuff, I got to hang out with friends, and meet new friends, and go out dancing at clubs (as though I hadn't gotten enough dancing in during the day, right?). Sadly, I did not get to play any games; the little free time I had at the con went to browsing the exhibit hall (and supporting some of the artists there) and just trying to make sure I was adequately fed and hydrated. When I did have some spare time, I found myself too tired and frazzled to focus on learning a new game system, so demoing anything was out of the question. Oh well, maybe next time.
We've already got 2 noteworthy videos from the con, filmed during our performance prior to the panel on "The Guild". We'd already choreographed our dance to "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?", but "Game On!" was released, like, a week before GenCon... so we were able to come up with a tribal improv set to it!
The crowd loved both dances: here's Avatar and here's Game On.
Better yet, we got @theguild to tweet about our videos, so now more people are viewing them than probably would have before... so, I don't know if we're nerd-famous quite yet, but at the very least, I'm really pleased that the people on the show liked our dance interpretations enough to share them!
On to the pics; a teaser, then more below the cut:
me with my troupemates in front of our booth:
Hm, lots of the pics friends found of me are on people's flickr accounts so I can't necessarily post them here... so here are some links if you're interested:
me and T-Kitty doing a roving performance
Me and Pan (with him, obviously, dressed as steampunk Abe Lincoln
this is a pretty neat one of me hooping, hoop in mid-air!
another hooping shot
more hooping
one of me and T-Kitty doing a roving performance (this time, different costumes!)
Anyway, those pics are most of the highlights, I'm sure there are more floating around somewhere. I was happy with all of our costumes and all of our sets; man, that was just a really professionally satisfying experience! I'm so happy to be a dancer, in large part because my art form is so accessible, and so many people can relate to it and love to watch us dance (and join us)!
We spent all summer choreographing our 15-minute set that served as the pre-show for the costume contest; this is probably our biggest gig of the year, as our audience numbered hundreds. We were also asked to dance for the audience of a panel on "The Guild," since many of the actors were attending the con as media guests, and we were planning to dance to their song "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?".
Additionally, we would perform 5 roving sets around the con, teach a handful of workshops, and decorate and staff a booth in the exhibit hall. Even if I tried to scrape by with the minimum, I was looking at at least 5-6 hours of dancing spread out over 4 days, with the attendant commitment of getting in costume (another 1-2 hrs per day), warming up, stretching, cooling down, and being present at the con as an entertainer (not to mention, representing the geeky side of belly dance).
Not only was I up for the challenge, I met it and brought the shimmy! My troupemates and I were "on" for all of our performances, and I felt like I inhabited my performing personas very comfortably, despite having to wear them for longer than usual (not to mention having to wear false eyelashes for longer than usual, ugh, I dislike having to be in sustained contact with eyelash glue for long periods of times). We did great at our roving sets in the hallways of the con, engaging our audience and making some tip money. We rocked both of our large pre-planned performance. We sold our shiny wares at our booth. We got stopped every 2 seconds for pics as we wandered the con.
It's sometimes hard for me to be "on" as a performer, since I'm kinda introverted, but something just clicked, and I was able to smile and make eye contact with complete strangers, and even initiate conversations, without feeling shy or awkward. I think part of it was adrenaline, and part of it was coming into my own as a performer. I also learned a very important equation: for every 15 minutes of warming-up/stretching that I neglect per 1 hour of performing, I need to lay on the ground to stretch my back for at least 30 minutes. Ugh. Ended up feeling sore after the con, and had con-hangover too, and sleep deprivation... but I was averaging 6 hrs of sleep a night, which was not too bad, all things considered.
I also performed hooping a whole bunch, both during our roving sets and just to entertain people in line for various things, and people LOVED IT. This was interesting for me as a performer, since I've only been hooping for 7 months and I view myself as technically only-kinda-sorta good at it... but add in the dance and performance background, and I can keep a ground entertained for a while. So that ended up being a lot of fun.
(somebody caught a video of me hooping, yay!)
Besides all the dancey stuff, I got to hang out with friends, and meet new friends, and go out dancing at clubs (as though I hadn't gotten enough dancing in during the day, right?). Sadly, I did not get to play any games; the little free time I had at the con went to browsing the exhibit hall (and supporting some of the artists there) and just trying to make sure I was adequately fed and hydrated. When I did have some spare time, I found myself too tired and frazzled to focus on learning a new game system, so demoing anything was out of the question. Oh well, maybe next time.
We've already got 2 noteworthy videos from the con, filmed during our performance prior to the panel on "The Guild". We'd already choreographed our dance to "Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?", but "Game On!" was released, like, a week before GenCon... so we were able to come up with a tribal improv set to it!
The crowd loved both dances: here's Avatar and here's Game On.
Better yet, we got @theguild to tweet about our videos, so now more people are viewing them than probably would have before... so, I don't know if we're nerd-famous quite yet, but at the very least, I'm really pleased that the people on the show liked our dance interpretations enough to share them!
On to the pics; a teaser, then more below the cut:
me with my troupemates in front of our booth:
Hm, lots of the pics friends found of me are on people's flickr accounts so I can't necessarily post them here... so here are some links if you're interested:
me and T-Kitty doing a roving performance
Me and Pan (with him, obviously, dressed as steampunk Abe Lincoln
this is a pretty neat one of me hooping, hoop in mid-air!
another hooping shot
more hooping
one of me and T-Kitty doing a roving performance (this time, different costumes!)
Anyway, those pics are most of the highlights, I'm sure there are more floating around somewhere. I was happy with all of our costumes and all of our sets; man, that was just a really professionally satisfying experience! I'm so happy to be a dancer, in large part because my art form is so accessible, and so many people can relate to it and love to watch us dance (and join us)!