happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to me! Happy birthday to PJ – teaching in mexico that’s me! 
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BIRTHDAY
Petite Jamilla
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Stefanya
I am still enjoying the Southern California rainy spell. This has been a great time to be inside and experiment with new choreographies. I am so grateful to be feeling so inspired.
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UPDATES
Petite Jamilla
LOVE love L-O-V-E the new picts posted under “live shots” from the Shanghai performances!!! Check them out! ALSO so excited about my workshop weekend coming up this week Jan 30 and 31st in La Paz Mexico!! We’re gonna be Spinning, Double Veiling AND Drum Solo-ing! DONT MISS IT! go to Calendar for full details on registration and location…
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Layla
damn!!! i can’t go!!!! i’m too far away!!! ’cause i’m from Mexico City…. please, come back soon to Mexico City!!!!
*Layla Kauket*
PS: thank you so much for replay my last coment ^^
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Pragmatic Peggy's
Petite Jamilla
In London this past year we did 5 shows at the Bloomsbury Theatre for a week run with an amazing turn out but i think often times the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in order to keep our company functioning and running smoothly so the shows look polished requires a bit of organized chaos behind closed doors. This particular day was no such exception. Moria was sick and taken to the Doctor by Stevo our tour manager, so we were ‘on our own’ in a sense – MOMENTARILY. Miles was there along with our awesome London crew but they were in up to their ears with merchandise and a sea of hip scarf’s and couldn’t waste a second playing mommy to us as they needed to get everything ready to sell by showtime. Brian, our sound engineer, bus driver, and assistant manager was there to help out, answer questions, and be our ‘go to’ guy. We’ve performed at the Bloomsbury many times before and we’re no strangers to the theatre layout. Dressing rooms are on ground floor, and floor 2 along with Green Room (coffee, tea and snacks/ general lounging area for the company), and stage is 3rd floor. Dinner, because this theatre is at a university site, is in a separate building in their cafeteria. In the past, they open a little early, you grab your lunch tray, pick your dish and drink, take a sit, eat and be merry. Schedules keep our wheels turning in BDS. A delay in anything throws a wrench in our entire day effecting tech rehearsal time, sound engineering, hair and make up and general preparation for the show. There is no room for error. We run a tight ship. But during our dinner time on this particular day, the odds were against us. WIth curlers in our hair, one eye with fake lashes glued on and one eye naked, lunch trays in hand – we eagerly awaited our dinner server to show up. We waited and waited and waited. 15 minutes later (this is an ETERNITY in BDS time), the lady comes at her regularly scheduled time unaware of our special programming needs only to be met with panic stricken faces concerned that we just might have to perform with one eye naked and one eye complete if we didn’t start eating right away! We quickly one by one troll through the line asking for what we want and don’t understand why you can only have the salad if you get fish, not pasta. Or why the ‘vegetarian dish’ is a sausage of coriander and sweet potato and we try to work our sisterly magic by trading one another for what someone else got after our disappointment from the set menu. See, we try to cut dinner options to a minimal in our own setting to prevent this very thing from happening. We usually offer a red meat dish, and a fish dish, with some steamed veggies, potato’s of some sort, and salads. So for us the choice of pasta and looking at a salad, but not being able to ‘get it’ – is foreign. It’s out of our norm. Sitting and scarfing our food down in 10 seconds flat we began feverishly discussing how this delay was now going to push our dancer tech rehearsal back, then effecting Issam’s sound check, and delaying our make up/hair and preparation time… Lauren and i looked at each other and lost it laughing! We began remembering how things like this always seem to happen anytime we’re left unsupervised for longer than 10 minutes by Stevo, and we began to realize how ridiculous we must look to that lady and all the people on the outside who don’t operate under the same intense scheduling that we do. Let’s just analyze this from her perspective for a moment: She shows up to work at her regular time to be met with a line of 20 (including crew) oddly fashioned women and men who must be starving because they are panicked about eating right away and don’t understand the concept of a set menu; which to her knowledge is how every day runs at her job and unintentionally, we just made her job so much harder! It became so obvious to us how funny it must be to watch us take everything so seriously in such weird make up and the fact that we’re panicked about food! OF COURSE even though tech rehearsal was delayed, THUS CHANGING THE REST OF OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM for the evening, Moria came back from the Doctor feeling better, Stevo re-joined us, everything got accomplished and we put on a stellar show met by a generously applauding audience to kick off our week run at the Bloomsbury Theatre! ! Sometimes it’s better to bend like a willow tree than to stand unwavering like an oak tree because that humor and ability to adapt can get you through things less stressfully in life!
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colleencat7
Oh geez that was sooooooooooo funny!!!!!! I remember Lauen saying, “Who do we think we are?” Next we’ll stop at a cafeteria somewhere along the road in the midwest with curlers in, one eyebrow done, jewels glued on our face, and just lipliner on, and be like, “WE NEED TO EAT NOW……………….NEED TO EAT NOW…………………………NOW.”
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Stefanya
PJ, I love the way you see the world. This post is delightful.
Coleen, I think some nights I have dreams about what you describe. Does that mean that I miss it and I long for the day to be on the Belly Bus again???
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Moria Chappell
Preparing for my workshop in Mexico City this weekend. I’m so excited to be going back!
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Cecilia
Hola everybody!
I’m in Argentina! Eating a lot of food but taking a lot of classes too…
I miss you all!
Besos,C
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Stefanya
I hope you are having a wonderful time!!! See you when you are back.
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Moria Chappell
Moria is tracing Mucha, drinking a mocha, and thinking of what else she can do that starts with the letter M.
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mona
hy evrebody!!!! I’m new hear…My name is Monika…I’m from Croatia..How could somebody become a bellydance superstar?? thanks..please reply..=)))
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colleencat7
Hey there Monika…………………well there are many aspects to be considered……………………. I would say that first immerse yourself in dance classes, belly dance of course, and also classical dance. Ballet technique is an integral part of our choreographies, posture, arm placement, turns, etc. Its probably too late notice but during the first week of Feb. is a week-long workshop with Sabah, our resident belly-erina
which will probably give you all the information you need, technique-wise. Check the calender for more information if your interested in attending. Im not sure when the next auditions will be held but you can also check the calender for that info. Well I hope I was helpful and feel free to ask any other questions that you have……….Happy dancing -
mona
yes you help me..thank you…wheel i really love bellydance and i learn all on my own..little with internet and sometimes i go on workshop in our city..but my problem is that i live faar from some big city and near my place there is no teacher for bellydance…weel and money is problem because is expansive bellydance….but i never lose hope..i know that one day i will meet bellydance superstars maybe i become one of them…xDDD..thank you…live-love-dance
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Miracle for the New Year!
Petite Jamilla
Today in ‘bama on this once warm southern dirt, a cold white fluffy substance is falling from high in the sky and local alabamians are in shock at the very sight! IT IS SNOWING IN ALABAMA!
Ironically, today is also the championship playoff games held in Pasadena CA between ‘Bama vs. Texas! ROLL TIDE ROLL!! Yes, this miraculous snow fall is proving that anything is possible for 2010! Happy New Year from Petite Jamilla! -
Petite Jamilla
Bama 37-21! Roll Tide Roll!!
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Layla
hi there!!!!!!!!!!! I’m from Mexico City and never snows in here, but it’s raining!!! oh wait… tha’t s not beautiful, it’s just anoyin!! and unusual… very unusual…
Well, I need your help!!! dou you know the name of the song that is put in the store?? lol I let you the link, my english isn’t to good http://www.bellydancesuperstars.com/catalog/
I hope you can help me with that ^^
I hope 2010 brings lots and lots of dancing, I admire you sooo much, come back to Mexico City!!!! good luck in your workshop in Baja California!!!!
Hugs and cold kisses from Mexico City!!!
*Layla Kauket*
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Moria Chappell
I watched that game! It was AWESOME! I was sitting in a sports bar in Santa Rosa, CA and luckily I wasn’t the only one routing for Bama…though my date was rooting for Texas…it’s ok, people are allowed to have differences of opinion about these things, right?
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Petite Jamilla
hey Layla! My workshop the 30th and 31st of January is actually in La Paz Mexico, not baja california!
Maybe you can come?! Happy New Years!!
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From whirlwind to recover...the ebb and flow of tour.
Moria Chappell
China was intense for me. After a week of freezing performances in Shanghai, I went to Beijing to teach another week of workshops. But it was even colder there. Dressed in three pairs of pants, three long sleeve thermal shirts, a sweater, coat, gloves, boots, and fur hat, my face was so bitterly cold that I would get a brain freeze just walking down the street. Not to be deterred, I still made my way to The Temple of Heaven and the largest Tibetan Buddhist Monastery outside of Tibet. My workshops in Beijing were more challenging than I had anticipated. I have taught there the last two years and the students were always quick learners so I planned to teach an intermediate course this time. I even decided to push a little harder than usual until the translator had to stop me and inform me that I was teaching a group of bran new beginners! The Chinese are so sweet and can follow along so well that they just let me go and kept up as best they could, never complaining. But as it turned out they knew nothing of Tribal Fusion or what makes it any different from cabaret bellydance. The Chinese don’t have access to youtube, facebook, or tribe, so the common way many of us bellydancers in the West stay abreast of current trends, study old lineage, or simply keep connected isn’t available to this entire country. So I pooled what resources I had with me, namely DVDs and pictures on my computer, and showed them footage of Fat Chance Belly Dance, then Jill Parker, then Rachel Brice, then The Bellydance Superstars with myself, Mardi Love, Kami Liddle, Zoe Jakes, Sharon Kihara, etc. This demonstrated for them at least the beginning understanding of how Tribal shifted so drastically from cabaret bellydance in the 80s and then followed a specific tac in San Francisco until The Bellydance Superstars made Tribal Fusion a global name. I wished that I had more resources with me to show the myriad of other tacs that Tribal belly dance has taken…ethnic, gothic, modern, burlesque…but a least by the end of the workshop the students felt they had a grasp of what distinguishes Tribal Fusion belly dance.
I flew home the day before NYE and spent the day unpacking, reorganizing, wrapping presents, celebrating a late Yule with my mom and sister and then before I knew it I was bringing in 2010 with loud Mariachi music in a random Mexican bar in some tiny town called Yelm, WA. Life is funny the way it can pick you up and then put you down in the most unusual places. So now it’s a bit of down time before my workshop in Mexico City next weekend. I love the calm after the storm. I love to fill it with projects that I could never complete on tour. This two week project list consists of constructing a line of Moria clothing, researching ethnic jewelry to write a chapter about Tribal jewelry in belly dance, figure out how to post all my adventure pictures and video to The Bellydance Superstars website, and begin choreographies for our new Bellydance-Indian fusion show—I am SO excited!! When I think about any one of these projects I want to jump out of my skin…and if you have ever seen my caffeinated, you can get a mental image of just how high my skin can leap! It’s a luxury to have this time to work on my passions and I consider myself a very lucky woman. Here is to realizing the fruition of your passionate projects in 2010! I’d be honored to know what your new year’s dancer projects are…
Moria
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Layla
OMG!!!! I’m fro Mexico City and I can’t wait for your workshop!!! I hope I can make it…. this year I already became a teacher, and I’m happy as hell!!!! who knows? maybe some day I’ll be just as good as the BDSS.
Lilililili!!!
*Layla Kauket*
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Khadija
bellydance indian fusion show? tell me more; what do you mean? whose? the tribal girls?
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Moria Chappell
Well, well, well, Miss Khadija…perhaps this is a secret surprise! Guess I blew it by blogging about it huh? I’ve spent the last couple years making 2 to 3 month-long trips to India to study Odissi and about a month ago Miles put a duet that I created with Sonia in the show. I LOVE Odissi/Tribal Fusion, so I’m working on more for the new show this fall. Kami already has her Bhangra Fusion goin on, and Zoe may come up with some Kathak Fusion with her characteristic super spins. Why not make Tribal Fusion an Indian Tribal Fusion for a tour or two…they share a lot of similar roots and can make for some really powerful excuses to stomp your feet and channel your Kali instincts
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Khadija
Very cool. I really like Odissi dance, I’m sure you had a lot of fun studying it.
I saw the pictures of your duet with Sonia and I was very confused. Now I know what that is! So I guess that is going to be on the art of belly dance dvd? If it is, can’t wait to see it! -
Kami Liddle
Wow, Moria, all of your projects sound so interesting, that’s awesome! I actually started taking class in jewelry metalsmithing and will hopefully in the future make my own silver jewelry (since the antique tribal jewelry is getting harder and harder to find anymore!)
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Week-long with BDSS next month!
sabah
It looks like things are all set for next month’s company training week! There is more information posted on the calendar. I am also willing to answer any questions anyone might have…
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Attiya
I’m very excited to be attending, can’t wait to dance with you again!
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Moria Chappell
Sabah, how can I make my legs look like yours?
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Sabah
My legs look the way they do mostly from a series of Ballet and Pilates base exercises I do all the time. It has a lot to do with lengthening while strengthening. I tend to naturally build bulky muscles, so I try to extend and elongate to tone them to be more leaner looking. We will be working on these concepts during the week-long.
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Kami Liddle
Sabah, I cannot wait to train with you next week. You are one of my favorite dancers of all time. Your technique is absolutely superb! Kick our butts!!!!
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colleencat7 10:41 pm on January 29, 2010 Permalink
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well…………………………you’re not my lil’ baby anymore………..you’re catching up.
Lety 1:58 am on January 30, 2010 Permalink
Happy Birthday!!!!!!
Stefanya 11:55 am on February 1, 2010 Permalink
Happy B day Beautifuly lovely Lady!!!!