Saturday was so busy that I apparently needed both Sunday and Monday to recover from it! It was a really good day but I got up at 7:30am and didn’t get back home until almost 1:30am!
After a long but boring drive to Mesa from Tucson, I spent the first part of the day taking workshops at Fusion Day. First was some skirt work with Cari from Anaya Tribal, which was a lot of fun. As I’ve mentioned before, Anaya Tribal were my first teachers, so any time I’m in a workshop with them it’s kind of like coming home. All that ITS stuff that I don’t use anymore comes back to me pretty quickly. The skirt moves they taught were a mix of things I had learned back when I studied regularly with them, and some new combos. There were a few really fun leader switches, too.
After a short break, the learning resumed with a workshop on dancing to live music, with Yasmina and drummers Patrick T. Butcher and Jim Shane. The workshop started out with some general tips on dancing to live music, from the dancer’s perspective and from the musician’s perspective. We learned good ways to communicate and interact with the band during a performance. There was plenty of Q&A and discussion. Then we got up to dance! The drummers demonstrated a few rhythms with Yasmina providing advice on how one might interpret the rhythm on the body. For the last part of class we were divided into small groups and we each did a mini-show where we communicated to the drummers the basic framework of what we wanted ahead of time and then cued changes during our dance. It was a lot of fun and very educational!
There was also a bit of vending so I bought myself this really cool headpiece.
Then I had a few hours to eat some food and get ready before the show. I felt bad that I didn’t go to the Plaza student recital while I was up there, but that would have left me feeling really rushed to put my face on and/or I would not have had the chance to eat a real meal.
The Fusion Day show featured a really nice variety of dancers in various styles, and more live music. We had a good crowd to dance for and it’s always nice to get to dance on a raised stage. The atmosphere backstage was really nice too, with everyone ooohing and aaahing over each other’s costumes and jewelry. I also enjoyed the chance to see performances by dancers who I know but have rarely seen perform because we’re always at different events.
I went straight from Fusion Day over to downtown Phoenix for the Vraja Productions show. There was a really nice blend of talent on display and I was really proud of how my belly dance friends did, as well as enjoying the performances by the people I didn’t know personally. I also got to see a couple more dance friends who were in the audience, so all in all it was a really good day for catching up with my Phoenix people.
It was really nice to spend all day immersed in dance!