As I mentioned at the end of Friday’s post, registration for Waking Persephone is now live! In addition to shopping for workshops, you can apply to vend, perform, or be a volunteer. There’s even a scholarship opportunity for cash-strapped beginner dancers who’d like to attend the event. Definitely go explore the site and start planning your trip, if you enjoy Gothic, Steampunk, Ritual or other niche forms of belly dance, this is the event for you.

I’m really honored to be teaching “How to Build an Engaging Blog Presence” at Waking Persephone. I have to admit, when I applied, I didn’t really expect to get in. I’ve just really been challenging myself to take big, scary steps in my dance career and one of those was applying to teach at an event. I figured it would be good practice for the day when I’m ready to actually teach dance, and I had had some requests in the past to teach about blogging, so I figured hey, I’ll throw my ring in the hat on a lark.

Well, now I’m committed! My workshop is going to cover everything from starting your blog to deciding what topics to write about to coming up with your own special features, like Beauty Blogging for Belly Dancers and Sophia’s Shelf. We’ll also go over technical stuff like moderating comments and dealing with spam. Basically I want to teach you all of the stuff I learned the hard way. And while I will be coming at it from the angle of developing a dance blog, there will be a lot of general good blogging advice, so musicians and artists and anyone else who has blog questions should consider signing up, too.

Of course I’m not just attending as a teacher, I am going to take at least half a dozen workshops while I’m there! I thought I’d list what they were and why I’m excited about them, so hopefully some of you will join me and we can be workshop buddies.

Friday 1pm: Emoticon with Kamrah. I really enjoyed last year’s spooky combos workshop with Kamrah, I think she has a great approach to modifying belly dance movement to suit a character or mood, so I definitely want to learn more from her.

Saturday 9am: Life is a Cabaret, Fosse-Influenced Belly Dance with Inanna LeFay. I’ve wanted to study with Inanna for a long time, and somehow despite the fact that she lives in Phoenix, I have to travel to Washington to finally learn from her! This is going to be a great class, I saw one of her Fosse-inspired choreographies at a Plaza student recital and it was awesome.

Saturday 10:45am: It’s Only Up From Here: Headdress Construction with Elizabeth Joy. More DIY skills? Yes please! I am excited to learn how to make a headdress and the fact that it’s being taught by my super awesome pal Elizabeth Joy of Improv Roulette fame is just icing on the cake.

Saturday 5pm: Playing Finger Cymbals with Modern Music with Nawal Doucette. I dance to a lot more modern music than traditional Middle Eastern music, so I think it would be really cool to learn how to use my zills with non-traditional music. This is just part of my really big zill kick this year.

Sunday 9am: Narrative Bellydance with Somni. These gals did a waaaaaay coooool performance at last year’s WP so I am really eager to learn their approach to storytelling via bellydance.

Sunday 3:30pm: Marketing to Muggles by Natalie Brown. Everyone should sign up for this! Let’s learn how to get people to come to our shows and pay us money and hire us to dance at parties and teach classes, so we can all afford more workshops and more sparkly costumes. I need this workshop more than any other workshop I am taking. Self-promotion is such a slog for me, and I feel like I’ve gotten the hang of promoting towards my fellow dancers, but the general public? No idea.

So that’s my list so far. There’s a couple other workshops that I want to add to my list, to fill up the rest of Friday especially. I just need to remember to leave myself time to eat and shop and socialize!

Are you planning to attend Waking Persephone? Which workshops are you signed up for?