Workshop Review and Picspam I: Tribal:Pura Bloomington
I just edited and uploaded a bunch of pictures from my digicam, so bear with me: there are several photo posts ahead.
First up, Tribal:Pura was this weekend. Big big kudos to dreadful_red and d_c_m for a stellar organizing job. I know how much stress and crap you guys were going through, but both the workshop and show all came off flawlessly from a participant's perspective. I'm proud of ya!
aislinggheal arrived Friday night, as I was still sewing coins onto my coin bra. Saturday morning, with the bra not yet finished, we headed over to the workshop. Can I just say how weird, and yet nice, it was to wake up in my own home, have some breakfast, and drive 10 minutes to a major workshop? I also don't think I've ever been at a workshop that big (75 people) where I knew so many of the people in attendance. There was a great turnout of local dancers, including lots of dreadful_red's and d_c_m's students, as well as dancers from all over Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and beyond. I finally got to meet several people from my flists here and on tribe.net, though there wasn't much time to socialize.
It was so exciting to see Carolena again-- my first time seeing her in person since dreadful_red, annie_cat and I spent a week in San Francisco studying with her and FCBD nearly three years ago. I certainly didn't expect her to remember me, but during one of the breaks, I mentioned that week to her, and after a few memory jogs, she remembered our visit (or so she said, anyway. ;) I'm quite sure that she didn't really remember anything specifically about me, but she did say that it was nice to see that I had kept with the dance and was still doing it. It was great to meet Megha for the first time as well. The morning workshops focused on aerobic warmups-- 20 minutes of doing fast tribal moves in a big circle around the room, which had me panting-- and stretching, then working on cues and combos in small groups. At lunch, I went to the Trojan Horse with aislinggheal, kendokamel, annie_cat, Angie, Thalia, and one of dreadful_red's students whose name I stupidly keep forgetting (the really tall one with the sweet green fringe belt.) I was stitching coins to my bra at the table while we waited for our food. The afternoon sessions consisted of a lecture by Carolena on anatomy and muscle movement (during which I sewed coins to my bra), which was really interesting; a workshop on stage presence by Megha, which I found a little... not disappointing, but just not what I was expecting/hoping it would be; and a floorwork workshop by Carolena. I participated in this last one, but took it easy, as I had neglected to get kneepads, it was late in the day and I was tired, so I wanted to save some energy for the show. Still, I got some good ideas of technique to work on, and some validation that what I've been doing thus far in my recent experiments with floorwork are on the right track and aren't going to break me horribly (I hope.) I went along for about 2/3 of it, then left to go do some shopping.
Speaking of shopping... Carolena and Megha had some lovely shiny stuff for sale at the workshop, but the big draw was Father Dunn. I didn't have nearly enough time to fully peruse his vast selection, but that's just as well. Rather than buying a hoard of smaller purchases from him like I did at Starwood last summer, this time I only made one purchase-- but it was a doozy. I've been developing an obsession with Turkoman jewelry lately, and I ended up buying a pair of 19th-century Turkoman silver and carnelian cuff bracelets. They're gorgeous, and fit me far more comfortably than the less expensive modern ones he had (which would also probably have turned my skin green-- these don't.) I'm turning 30 tomorrow, so I considered this my birthday present to myself. They're mine, my own, my preciousssss! Also, as at Starwood, he gave me a discount. Yay Brad. There were other vendors at the show that night (including the fabulous carpe_jugulum's Exoskeleton Cabaret), but I didn't get a chance to look at any of their stuff.
After the workshop, aislinggheal, hecubuscathead and I headed back to my place to decompress and get ready for the show. (And in my case, sew the centerpiece ornament onto my bra.) I'd told dreadful_red that I'd get to the Waldron early to help her herd dancers, and was planning mainly to just do my makeup and hair at home and then bring my costume to put on at the venue, since we weren't performing till the second half. Somehow or other, the three of us were hanging out, munching, and being mellow with plenty of time to spare, and then some kind of time-space wormhole occurred and we suddenly had like 20 minutes before we were supposed to be at the Waldron, and none of us had makeup on yet. Eeep! We ended up getting there late, and I felt bad for being a flaky flunky, but all was more or less okay. I started getting into costume, which was fine until I began to build my turban. Even though I've been able to do it pretty well in all of our rehearsals, I just could not get it right-- either it was too unstable, or too low in my eyes, or too round, or too mushroom shaped. I took it completely apart and started from scratch probably 3 or 4 times. I know Carolena says on the Makeup & Costuming video that the turban is the hardest part of the costume, and no matter how good you get at it, it's always fussy and time-consuming and sometimes just refuses to behave... but that didn't help me any at the time. I finally had to beg dreadful_red to exercise her mighty turban foo on my base cloth to get the form right, and then built carefully and minimally from there. In the end, it wasn't quite what I'd wanted, but it worked and held fast. Meanwhile, I missed the entire first act of the show, which really bummed me out. I could hear that the audience was lively, which just made me wish all the more that I could have been watching, and I felt really bad for missing my different_drum troupemates' solo numbers. :(
Then intermission came, and it was time for the Dark Side Tribal girls to get ready. We did a bit of grounding and centering during intermission, and then we were on! For all the costume stress, I wasn't nervous at all about our actual dancing-- I felt really prepared for that aspect of the show. The audience was fabulous, responsive and welcoming and sending great energy back at us. I had one bobble in my lead section in the first number, but no big deal. There was one really scary part of our set: hecubuscathead had borrowed a veil from me, and it tried to assassinate her midway through the first number. Ack! But she fended off doom with aplomb and recovered brilliantly, and on we went. There were very few other minor oopsies for the rest of the set. And I have to say that, even with imminent death from below, it still felt like one of the best group performances I've ever been part of. We got a lot of positive comments from other dancers afterwards, which made me happy.
I got to watch the rest of the second act, which included some truly outstanding performances, including prosewitch doing her slinky slow fusion with the best sly smile on her face; Troupe Taleeba kicking butt with gorgeous sari-fabric costumes and flurries of veils and movement; the gorgeous Sahira doing some jaw-dropping tribal fusion with a tray of lit tapers (tapers!) on her head; and finally getting to see haflagirl in action with Blue Lotus Tribe, who were every bit as joyous and stunning as I'd heard. The grand finale, of course, was Carolena and Megha performing together-- they did a slow duet, then Megha did a slow-to-fast solo, then Carolena did a drum solo with much of her signature amazing ab work, then a fast finale duet. They played zills, which made me realize that I hadn't heard any other performers use zills the entire night. They also had a few new moves that I hadn't seen before, and that was cool.
And afterwards, there were pictures! Many, many pictures. I only got a few.
Dark Side Tribal ~ left to right: me, hecubuscathead, and dreadful_red
Dark Side Tribal with Carolena Nericcio and Megha Gavin ~ left to right: hecubuscathead, me, Megha, Carolena, and dreadful_red
Sahira (r) with Carolena Nericcio (l)
Blue Lotus Tribe with Carolena Nericcio and Megha Gavin
A few more pics over here.
First up, Tribal:Pura was this weekend. Big big kudos to dreadful_red and d_c_m for a stellar organizing job. I know how much stress and crap you guys were going through, but both the workshop and show all came off flawlessly from a participant's perspective. I'm proud of ya!
aislinggheal arrived Friday night, as I was still sewing coins onto my coin bra. Saturday morning, with the bra not yet finished, we headed over to the workshop. Can I just say how weird, and yet nice, it was to wake up in my own home, have some breakfast, and drive 10 minutes to a major workshop? I also don't think I've ever been at a workshop that big (75 people) where I knew so many of the people in attendance. There was a great turnout of local dancers, including lots of dreadful_red's and d_c_m's students, as well as dancers from all over Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and beyond. I finally got to meet several people from my flists here and on tribe.net, though there wasn't much time to socialize.
It was so exciting to see Carolena again-- my first time seeing her in person since dreadful_red, annie_cat and I spent a week in San Francisco studying with her and FCBD nearly three years ago. I certainly didn't expect her to remember me, but during one of the breaks, I mentioned that week to her, and after a few memory jogs, she remembered our visit (or so she said, anyway. ;) I'm quite sure that she didn't really remember anything specifically about me, but she did say that it was nice to see that I had kept with the dance and was still doing it. It was great to meet Megha for the first time as well. The morning workshops focused on aerobic warmups-- 20 minutes of doing fast tribal moves in a big circle around the room, which had me panting-- and stretching, then working on cues and combos in small groups. At lunch, I went to the Trojan Horse with aislinggheal, kendokamel, annie_cat, Angie, Thalia, and one of dreadful_red's students whose name I stupidly keep forgetting (the really tall one with the sweet green fringe belt.) I was stitching coins to my bra at the table while we waited for our food. The afternoon sessions consisted of a lecture by Carolena on anatomy and muscle movement (during which I sewed coins to my bra), which was really interesting; a workshop on stage presence by Megha, which I found a little... not disappointing, but just not what I was expecting/hoping it would be; and a floorwork workshop by Carolena. I participated in this last one, but took it easy, as I had neglected to get kneepads, it was late in the day and I was tired, so I wanted to save some energy for the show. Still, I got some good ideas of technique to work on, and some validation that what I've been doing thus far in my recent experiments with floorwork are on the right track and aren't going to break me horribly (I hope.) I went along for about 2/3 of it, then left to go do some shopping.
Speaking of shopping... Carolena and Megha had some lovely shiny stuff for sale at the workshop, but the big draw was Father Dunn. I didn't have nearly enough time to fully peruse his vast selection, but that's just as well. Rather than buying a hoard of smaller purchases from him like I did at Starwood last summer, this time I only made one purchase-- but it was a doozy. I've been developing an obsession with Turkoman jewelry lately, and I ended up buying a pair of 19th-century Turkoman silver and carnelian cuff bracelets. They're gorgeous, and fit me far more comfortably than the less expensive modern ones he had (which would also probably have turned my skin green-- these don't.) I'm turning 30 tomorrow, so I considered this my birthday present to myself. They're mine, my own, my preciousssss! Also, as at Starwood, he gave me a discount. Yay Brad. There were other vendors at the show that night (including the fabulous carpe_jugulum's Exoskeleton Cabaret), but I didn't get a chance to look at any of their stuff.
After the workshop, aislinggheal, hecubuscathead and I headed back to my place to decompress and get ready for the show. (And in my case, sew the centerpiece ornament onto my bra.) I'd told dreadful_red that I'd get to the Waldron early to help her herd dancers, and was planning mainly to just do my makeup and hair at home and then bring my costume to put on at the venue, since we weren't performing till the second half. Somehow or other, the three of us were hanging out, munching, and being mellow with plenty of time to spare, and then some kind of time-space wormhole occurred and we suddenly had like 20 minutes before we were supposed to be at the Waldron, and none of us had makeup on yet. Eeep! We ended up getting there late, and I felt bad for being a flaky flunky, but all was more or less okay. I started getting into costume, which was fine until I began to build my turban. Even though I've been able to do it pretty well in all of our rehearsals, I just could not get it right-- either it was too unstable, or too low in my eyes, or too round, or too mushroom shaped. I took it completely apart and started from scratch probably 3 or 4 times. I know Carolena says on the Makeup & Costuming video that the turban is the hardest part of the costume, and no matter how good you get at it, it's always fussy and time-consuming and sometimes just refuses to behave... but that didn't help me any at the time. I finally had to beg dreadful_red to exercise her mighty turban foo on my base cloth to get the form right, and then built carefully and minimally from there. In the end, it wasn't quite what I'd wanted, but it worked and held fast. Meanwhile, I missed the entire first act of the show, which really bummed me out. I could hear that the audience was lively, which just made me wish all the more that I could have been watching, and I felt really bad for missing my different_drum troupemates' solo numbers. :(
Then intermission came, and it was time for the Dark Side Tribal girls to get ready. We did a bit of grounding and centering during intermission, and then we were on! For all the costume stress, I wasn't nervous at all about our actual dancing-- I felt really prepared for that aspect of the show. The audience was fabulous, responsive and welcoming and sending great energy back at us. I had one bobble in my lead section in the first number, but no big deal. There was one really scary part of our set: hecubuscathead had borrowed a veil from me, and it tried to assassinate her midway through the first number. Ack! But she fended off doom with aplomb and recovered brilliantly, and on we went. There were very few other minor oopsies for the rest of the set. And I have to say that, even with imminent death from below, it still felt like one of the best group performances I've ever been part of. We got a lot of positive comments from other dancers afterwards, which made me happy.
I got to watch the rest of the second act, which included some truly outstanding performances, including prosewitch doing her slinky slow fusion with the best sly smile on her face; Troupe Taleeba kicking butt with gorgeous sari-fabric costumes and flurries of veils and movement; the gorgeous Sahira doing some jaw-dropping tribal fusion with a tray of lit tapers (tapers!) on her head; and finally getting to see haflagirl in action with Blue Lotus Tribe, who were every bit as joyous and stunning as I'd heard. The grand finale, of course, was Carolena and Megha performing together-- they did a slow duet, then Megha did a slow-to-fast solo, then Carolena did a drum solo with much of her signature amazing ab work, then a fast finale duet. They played zills, which made me realize that I hadn't heard any other performers use zills the entire night. They also had a few new moves that I hadn't seen before, and that was cool.
And afterwards, there were pictures! Many, many pictures. I only got a few.
Dark Side Tribal ~ left to right: me, hecubuscathead, and dreadful_red
Dark Side Tribal with Carolena Nericcio and Megha Gavin ~ left to right: hecubuscathead, me, Megha, Carolena, and dreadful_red
Sahira (r) with Carolena Nericcio (l)
Blue Lotus Tribe with Carolena Nericcio and Megha Gavin
A few more pics over here.