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On Friday night, I was brimming with excitement. I'd be going to Saint John on the morrow for a weekend of dance. I went to bed early, but was too excited to get to sleep. The weekend began too early. At 5:00, after maybe five hours of sleep, f00 and I were on our way. The car, borrowed from my sister, was crammed to overflowing with all sorts of pretty glittery things: Turkish hip scarves, Indian silks, Afghani jewellery, bindis, Arabic cds, Egyptian bedlahs, and my own hand-crafted ghawazee coats and giant tiered skirts.
When we arrived, around 7:45, it was difficult to set up. We were being swarmed by an avalanche of dancers. They all wanted my stuff! Well, I was more than happy to sell it to them. That morning, I sold every last bit of my Afghani jewellery, plus a few gorgeous Indian textiles I'd had for over a year. It was nice to see the stock finally move.
Then the workshop began, and the tide of dancers pulled back. I didn't have the money for both days of workshops, so I wasn't dancing on Saturday. Instead, I sat in a comfortable chair overlooking the dancers and worked on an orange tasseled tribal belt. Down below, brightly-coloured synchronized dancers pirhouetted and shimmied. I was feeling very, very tired. The lack of sleep plus the week of malaise I'd been experiencing was kicking in. My stomach felt bad, and I had to piss about every minute and a half. My lungs were contemplating throwing an asthma fit, and to top it off, my calves felt like someone had been beating on them for a few hours with a rubber mallet. All in all, I felt like absolute shit.
Still, when I saw Jalilah Zamora explaining a neat little hip twist with a side kick, I stood up to try it for myself. f00 was my critic, and told me when I was getting it right. Then, my motion must have caught everyone's eye through the window, because suddenly, everyone was staring and pointing at me. Marilyn, the organizer of the event, waved for me to come and join them. I felt guilty, like I had just stolen some knowledge, and picked up my sewing to show her I was busy. But she waved again, and then started walking toward the stairs.
I ran to meet her. She insisted I come down and join them, and I explained that I'd only paid for one day of the workshop. But she wasn't to be deterred, and demanded I get my sparkle-covered butt down there. So I did. And for about fifteen or twenty minutes, I danced along with everyone else. And then it was break time, when all the dancers returned to the vending area.
Those fifteen minutes had increased my exhaustion to heroic proportions. I felt like I'd just wrestled the Nemean lion, or just finished a danceathon. Yikes.
When the break was over, I didn't return to the dance floor. I was just too bushed, and I still had a big performance that night. Normally, I don't get stage fright. I may not be the best dancer in the world, but I know I give a good show. But this time, it was different. When I'm sick, I do get stage fright. I worry that I just won't have the energy to be entertaining, to have good technique, or to ensure I won't experience a major fuck-up. As the day progressed and my already enormous exhaustion grew, so too grew my apprehension.
When the day's workshop and vending was over, f00 and I went to the cheap motel where we were staying. It's called the Balmoral, and is a dingy little cabin and motel set-up. We had a tiny little cabin with "Tracadie" emblazoned on the front door. Bright pink plastic flowers hung gaily on the stoop. The doors were open in an attempt to air the place out. It had been shut up all winter, and we were the first tenants of the year. It smelled a bit musty, but not too bad. I collapsed onto the bed and had a fitful sleep.
f00 woke me up about 90 minutes later. I awoke in a panic. It was dark, I didn't know where I was, and my heart was pounding somewhere in the vicinity of my epiglottis. "Wha? Wha? Wha?" I asked.
"You have to get up. It's time to go do your show."
Thankfully, f00 got the shower started for me, and I slumped under the water, still muddled by Morpheus. Gradually, the water percolated through my muzziness, waking me up. I got changed into some clean clothes, and we were off. We stopped for a bite to eat at Subway, and while f00 ordered the food, I wandered over to a nearby corner store to buy some much-needed caffeine. I needed every boost I could get for the night.
One grilled chicken sub and vanilla Coke later, I was back at the Knights of Columbus Hall, and getting into costume and makeup.
I was wearing my seven-tiered giant gold and black skirt, matching choli, and metallic gold pants and head scarf. It's a stunning costume, and I'm very proud of making it. I may not be able to afford the Pharoanics or Madame Abla bedlahs of the less cash-strapped dancers, but my own costume designs are nothing to sneer at. Knowing I looked good made me feel considerably better. The nap had helped a lot, too.
Last year, during the workshop with Hadia, the mood of the dancers was quite different. The observation area was filled with dancers, sharing quiet conversations about the performances in progress, and listening to behind-the-scenes gossip with Hadia. This year, very few dancers took advantage of the bird's eye view. Many of them broke the unwritten rule that dancers should not be seen without a cover-up while not performing. In full eye-catching glitter, they gauchely took seats amongst the audience. I didn't want to distract the audience with my presence. Neither did I want to give away the element of surprise. I stayed in my coverup upstairs, far from the maddening crowds, and far from the other dancers.
The show was less organized this year than it was last year. There was no program. I didn't even know who I'd be dancing after until about halfway through the first part of the show. So I don't know the names of many of the dancers, or what the music was they danced to. There were many debut performances, and lots of new faces. I didn't see a lot of the usual performers. Only one dancer represented Moncton, which is unusual. Moncton generally has a huge contingent of dancers, like Sephira, Nada, Jeanine, and their students. I only saw one dancer from Maine, Abira, and she didn't dance. She always performs! This was anomalous. Saint John had several troupe shows which were very tight.
The dancer who'd travelled the furthest was from Victoria. I think her name is Oriana. She did a lovely show, and despite costume problems (her heavily beaded and fringed hip scarf came halfway off during a drum solo), she took it all in stride. I really liked her costume and fishnet-looking body stocking.
Stacey did an energetic Turkish number, which is nice to see. As long as I've known her, she's always had very large dance movements, much more suited for Turkish dance than Egyptian raqs sharqi, in my opinion. As she danced, a couple of teenaged girls roamed into the observation area with me. "She dances like one of the dancers on tv!" squealed one of them.
"She has a beautiful belly," gushed the other one. "How old is she?"
"Probably about 30," I guessed. I remembered that she is a little bit younger than me, "And she has a couple of children, too."
The girls were very impressed by her dancing and her figure. I don't think they were dancers themselves, but the daughters of some of the Saint John troupe members. Hopefully, Stacey will have inspired them to start dancing.
Jalilah did a Ghawazee dance a bit later, wearing a traditional glass-beaded dress. She was as gaudy as a Christmas tree. She looked great! She did the little hip twist and kick step she'd demonstrated earlier that day, and I saw I wasn't the only one who'd been inspired to get up and try it for myself. Way at the back of the audience, I saw a boy of about 11 or 12 years of age move back across the floor and try to emulate her movements. I guess that's proof of how great a move that is!
I was the sixteenth performance of the night, right before Jalilah's closing number. I went downstairs and stood off in the wings. I watched as the one Moncton dancer did her veil dance to some music by Ben Folds Five. It was the only obviously non-Middle Eastern and non-Turkish music of the night, and it worked very well. The dancer (I've forgotten her name) wore a skirt she'd made in the costuming workshop I'd given a few months back. It looked wonderful under the stage lights, glittering, layered, and almost sheer. Like all of Sephira's students, her veilwork was excellent, and although she was nervous, she did a very good job.
As the song drew to a close, I got rid of my coverup, lit my candles, and stood erect. My music started, and I solemnly took the stage.
Now, I had planned on doing a lot of floorwork, and when I first saw the stage layout, I was a bit more nervous. The performance area was on the same level as the audience, who did a half-circle around the performers. You see, floorwork works best with a linear audience. Another of the cardinal rules of belly dance is that you never do floorwork with your crotch facing the audience. It's just tacky.
So throughout the evening, I was trying to figure out the best way to do my dance without Sharon Stoning some poor audience member. Not that there was a big danger of that, because I was wearing an enormous skirt plus big harem pants. Still, it's the principle of the thing that matters. I eventually came up with a solution.
As Ofra Haza began earnestly singing love song scriptures from the Song of Solomon, I slowly made my way to rear centre stage, back very close to the curtains. I eased myself down into modified splits, with a front knee raised, and held the candles aloft. Then, using every bit of strength I had, I inched my way down into a backbend to the floor. Backbends to the floor should look as light and lacking in energy as a feather floating downward on a calm day. That's the hard part, because they require a lot of strength through the quads, abs, and butt. And the last two or three inches are the killer. It takes supreme force of will not to suddenly crash and thump at the very end.
But somehow I succeeded. And I even managed to come right back up out of the backbends, leading with my pelvis. And I managed to do it again, and again. The caffeine had done its job! I laid on my back and placed a candle on my stomach. Ofra sang some more, and my stomach rippled in accompaniment. And then the first screw-up happened.
My candle tipped. I heard the gasp of the audience, but somehow, I languidly moved the candle back into position without having any wax spill onto me or my costume. I was lucky.
I went up into a side lift, and then back onto the floor with my arms and legs out straight, so that I looked very long and slim on the floor. The candles remained in my palms, and my heels moved into the floor, then a ripple travelled up from my feet all the way to my hands. I was moving, slowly creeping my way along the floor in a caterpillar crawl.
I've never seen this move done in performance, and I'd never done it before in a show. It was my own debut.
As the song drew to a close, I lifted myself out of another backbend, placed the candles in front of me, and blew them out. The swells of my next piece, "The Feeling Begins" by Peter Gabriel lifted me to my feet. My movements were still slow and very serious--very different from my usual light-hearted and flirty pieces. I used undulations primarily. Forward, reverse, side.... It didn't matter, as long as it was powerful, slow, and controlled. My arm movements came from my body, and not from my hands. And then the drumming erupted, and the movements became wilder.
I tore the scarf off my head, and my hair exploded into a dark nimbus. As the zaar rhythm progressed, my hair moved more and more. My dancing was all hair and skirts and turns. I felt like I was losing control--like I was fighting with the music and my own body. It should be no surprise that the zaar rhythm is used for exorcisms. The movements are very strong and violent, and it was during one of these spins that the next screw-up happened.
I stomped on someone's shed bead.
Somehow, I didn't lose impetus. As I turned, I rubbed my poor sore toe against my other foot. The zaar rhythm exorcised the bead from my toe. My spins threw it off into neverland. And when the song ended, my dance ended exactly as planned. With the last sudden thump of percussion, I crashed to the floor. Gasps erupted all around, and then, one beat, two beats later, the applause and cheers.
I hadn't fucked up.
Jalilah finished off the show with a full-length routine. She wore a gorgeous assuit dress (assuit is an Egyptian fabric made with metal hand hammered into lace-like cloth), but like Oriana, was having costume troubles. Her bra strap kept falling down, and it was obviously distracting her. f00 thought that her movements seemed about an eighth of a beat off from the music, and I must concur. Perhaps it was the bra that was throwing her off. Nonetheless, she has an economy of movement that I can only hope to achieve at some point in the distant future. Her dancing is excellent, and she is a very cute-looking woman, so the cutesy khaleegy movements suit her to a T!
Around 11:20 that night, f00 and I finally left to go get some more sleep. We stopped by a grocery store to pick up fruit and cheese for our breakfast, and then we both crashed.
Waking up was hard to do.
When I got out of bed, I almost fell down. Both of my calf muscles had seized up terribly, and I could barely walk. I hobbled around, getting dressed, and then we were off to day two. Once again, I sold lots of stuff, including a huge silver and fuschia veil I'd had for over a year. My sales had paid for all my stock, my trip, my accomodations, and the workshop. And I was still making money! I cleared a couple hundred dollars, much to my delight.
Then the workshop began. My legs weren't feeling a whole lot better. Although I didn't feel nearly as craptastic as I had the day before, I still wasn't feeling very well. And with sixty dancers in one closed-up room, it soon got very hot and stuffy. No one opened the doors. The air conditioning wasn't going.
Although I really loved the choreography Jalilah was showing us, I simply couldn't keep up. I have a terrible time learning choreographies to begin with, but when I'm at the further disadvantage of having a cooked brain, it's pretty much impossible. Still, I did learn about khaleegy dance, something I'd only ever heard about before. It's very cute, with it's shy hair tosses and mincing steps. I can see incorporating elements of that into my dance.
By the time the workshop had ended, more than half of the participants had melted away to parts unknown. Only about a dozen hardcore dance enthusiasts were down there with Jalilah. Although I desperately wanted to continue, I found myself physically and mentally unable. Instead, I moseyed off to the vending area and chatted with more melty dancers. It was much cooler up there.
The workshop ended in a melty kind of way, too. In previous workshops, people had gotten together for a supper afterwards, or made arrangements to meet for a couple of drinks. This time, no one had plans. As far as I could tell, everyone went directly to a nice, cool bath. I felt sorry for Jalilah. At the end of the workshop, she looked like I felt. She was obviously exhausted, and her flight left at 6:00 the next morning. The poor dear needed about twelve hours of sleep, and there was no way she'd be getting it.
I thanked her for the workshop, told her how much I had liked her dancing, and expressed my chagrin at not being able to keep up with it the way I had hoped. And then, despite my own tiredness, she managed to perk me up. In a deep, husky voice which belies her looks, she told me how much she had enjoyed my performance, and then told me the parts she liked the best--proving she had actually paid attention. Her comments were sincere, and not made out of a polite need for reciprocation. Jalilah made me feel really good, and made me put a nice big grin that extended all the way in to my bones.
Thank you, Jalilah!
When we arrived, around 7:45, it was difficult to set up. We were being swarmed by an avalanche of dancers. They all wanted my stuff! Well, I was more than happy to sell it to them. That morning, I sold every last bit of my Afghani jewellery, plus a few gorgeous Indian textiles I'd had for over a year. It was nice to see the stock finally move.
Then the workshop began, and the tide of dancers pulled back. I didn't have the money for both days of workshops, so I wasn't dancing on Saturday. Instead, I sat in a comfortable chair overlooking the dancers and worked on an orange tasseled tribal belt. Down below, brightly-coloured synchronized dancers pirhouetted and shimmied. I was feeling very, very tired. The lack of sleep plus the week of malaise I'd been experiencing was kicking in. My stomach felt bad, and I had to piss about every minute and a half. My lungs were contemplating throwing an asthma fit, and to top it off, my calves felt like someone had been beating on them for a few hours with a rubber mallet. All in all, I felt like absolute shit.
Still, when I saw Jalilah Zamora explaining a neat little hip twist with a side kick, I stood up to try it for myself. f00 was my critic, and told me when I was getting it right. Then, my motion must have caught everyone's eye through the window, because suddenly, everyone was staring and pointing at me. Marilyn, the organizer of the event, waved for me to come and join them. I felt guilty, like I had just stolen some knowledge, and picked up my sewing to show her I was busy. But she waved again, and then started walking toward the stairs.
I ran to meet her. She insisted I come down and join them, and I explained that I'd only paid for one day of the workshop. But she wasn't to be deterred, and demanded I get my sparkle-covered butt down there. So I did. And for about fifteen or twenty minutes, I danced along with everyone else. And then it was break time, when all the dancers returned to the vending area.
Those fifteen minutes had increased my exhaustion to heroic proportions. I felt like I'd just wrestled the Nemean lion, or just finished a danceathon. Yikes.
When the break was over, I didn't return to the dance floor. I was just too bushed, and I still had a big performance that night. Normally, I don't get stage fright. I may not be the best dancer in the world, but I know I give a good show. But this time, it was different. When I'm sick, I do get stage fright. I worry that I just won't have the energy to be entertaining, to have good technique, or to ensure I won't experience a major fuck-up. As the day progressed and my already enormous exhaustion grew, so too grew my apprehension.
When the day's workshop and vending was over, f00 and I went to the cheap motel where we were staying. It's called the Balmoral, and is a dingy little cabin and motel set-up. We had a tiny little cabin with "Tracadie" emblazoned on the front door. Bright pink plastic flowers hung gaily on the stoop. The doors were open in an attempt to air the place out. It had been shut up all winter, and we were the first tenants of the year. It smelled a bit musty, but not too bad. I collapsed onto the bed and had a fitful sleep.
f00 woke me up about 90 minutes later. I awoke in a panic. It was dark, I didn't know where I was, and my heart was pounding somewhere in the vicinity of my epiglottis. "Wha? Wha? Wha?" I asked.
"You have to get up. It's time to go do your show."
Thankfully, f00 got the shower started for me, and I slumped under the water, still muddled by Morpheus. Gradually, the water percolated through my muzziness, waking me up. I got changed into some clean clothes, and we were off. We stopped for a bite to eat at Subway, and while f00 ordered the food, I wandered over to a nearby corner store to buy some much-needed caffeine. I needed every boost I could get for the night.
One grilled chicken sub and vanilla Coke later, I was back at the Knights of Columbus Hall, and getting into costume and makeup.
I was wearing my seven-tiered giant gold and black skirt, matching choli, and metallic gold pants and head scarf. It's a stunning costume, and I'm very proud of making it. I may not be able to afford the Pharoanics or Madame Abla bedlahs of the less cash-strapped dancers, but my own costume designs are nothing to sneer at. Knowing I looked good made me feel considerably better. The nap had helped a lot, too.
Last year, during the workshop with Hadia, the mood of the dancers was quite different. The observation area was filled with dancers, sharing quiet conversations about the performances in progress, and listening to behind-the-scenes gossip with Hadia. This year, very few dancers took advantage of the bird's eye view. Many of them broke the unwritten rule that dancers should not be seen without a cover-up while not performing. In full eye-catching glitter, they gauchely took seats amongst the audience. I didn't want to distract the audience with my presence. Neither did I want to give away the element of surprise. I stayed in my coverup upstairs, far from the maddening crowds, and far from the other dancers.
The show was less organized this year than it was last year. There was no program. I didn't even know who I'd be dancing after until about halfway through the first part of the show. So I don't know the names of many of the dancers, or what the music was they danced to. There were many debut performances, and lots of new faces. I didn't see a lot of the usual performers. Only one dancer represented Moncton, which is unusual. Moncton generally has a huge contingent of dancers, like Sephira, Nada, Jeanine, and their students. I only saw one dancer from Maine, Abira, and she didn't dance. She always performs! This was anomalous. Saint John had several troupe shows which were very tight.
The dancer who'd travelled the furthest was from Victoria. I think her name is Oriana. She did a lovely show, and despite costume problems (her heavily beaded and fringed hip scarf came halfway off during a drum solo), she took it all in stride. I really liked her costume and fishnet-looking body stocking.
Stacey did an energetic Turkish number, which is nice to see. As long as I've known her, she's always had very large dance movements, much more suited for Turkish dance than Egyptian raqs sharqi, in my opinion. As she danced, a couple of teenaged girls roamed into the observation area with me. "She dances like one of the dancers on tv!" squealed one of them.
"She has a beautiful belly," gushed the other one. "How old is she?"
"Probably about 30," I guessed. I remembered that she is a little bit younger than me, "And she has a couple of children, too."
The girls were very impressed by her dancing and her figure. I don't think they were dancers themselves, but the daughters of some of the Saint John troupe members. Hopefully, Stacey will have inspired them to start dancing.
Jalilah did a Ghawazee dance a bit later, wearing a traditional glass-beaded dress. She was as gaudy as a Christmas tree. She looked great! She did the little hip twist and kick step she'd demonstrated earlier that day, and I saw I wasn't the only one who'd been inspired to get up and try it for myself. Way at the back of the audience, I saw a boy of about 11 or 12 years of age move back across the floor and try to emulate her movements. I guess that's proof of how great a move that is!
I was the sixteenth performance of the night, right before Jalilah's closing number. I went downstairs and stood off in the wings. I watched as the one Moncton dancer did her veil dance to some music by Ben Folds Five. It was the only obviously non-Middle Eastern and non-Turkish music of the night, and it worked very well. The dancer (I've forgotten her name) wore a skirt she'd made in the costuming workshop I'd given a few months back. It looked wonderful under the stage lights, glittering, layered, and almost sheer. Like all of Sephira's students, her veilwork was excellent, and although she was nervous, she did a very good job.
As the song drew to a close, I got rid of my coverup, lit my candles, and stood erect. My music started, and I solemnly took the stage.
Now, I had planned on doing a lot of floorwork, and when I first saw the stage layout, I was a bit more nervous. The performance area was on the same level as the audience, who did a half-circle around the performers. You see, floorwork works best with a linear audience. Another of the cardinal rules of belly dance is that you never do floorwork with your crotch facing the audience. It's just tacky.
So throughout the evening, I was trying to figure out the best way to do my dance without Sharon Stoning some poor audience member. Not that there was a big danger of that, because I was wearing an enormous skirt plus big harem pants. Still, it's the principle of the thing that matters. I eventually came up with a solution.
As Ofra Haza began earnestly singing love song scriptures from the Song of Solomon, I slowly made my way to rear centre stage, back very close to the curtains. I eased myself down into modified splits, with a front knee raised, and held the candles aloft. Then, using every bit of strength I had, I inched my way down into a backbend to the floor. Backbends to the floor should look as light and lacking in energy as a feather floating downward on a calm day. That's the hard part, because they require a lot of strength through the quads, abs, and butt. And the last two or three inches are the killer. It takes supreme force of will not to suddenly crash and thump at the very end.
But somehow I succeeded. And I even managed to come right back up out of the backbends, leading with my pelvis. And I managed to do it again, and again. The caffeine had done its job! I laid on my back and placed a candle on my stomach. Ofra sang some more, and my stomach rippled in accompaniment. And then the first screw-up happened.
My candle tipped. I heard the gasp of the audience, but somehow, I languidly moved the candle back into position without having any wax spill onto me or my costume. I was lucky.
I went up into a side lift, and then back onto the floor with my arms and legs out straight, so that I looked very long and slim on the floor. The candles remained in my palms, and my heels moved into the floor, then a ripple travelled up from my feet all the way to my hands. I was moving, slowly creeping my way along the floor in a caterpillar crawl.
I've never seen this move done in performance, and I'd never done it before in a show. It was my own debut.
As the song drew to a close, I lifted myself out of another backbend, placed the candles in front of me, and blew them out. The swells of my next piece, "The Feeling Begins" by Peter Gabriel lifted me to my feet. My movements were still slow and very serious--very different from my usual light-hearted and flirty pieces. I used undulations primarily. Forward, reverse, side.... It didn't matter, as long as it was powerful, slow, and controlled. My arm movements came from my body, and not from my hands. And then the drumming erupted, and the movements became wilder.
I tore the scarf off my head, and my hair exploded into a dark nimbus. As the zaar rhythm progressed, my hair moved more and more. My dancing was all hair and skirts and turns. I felt like I was losing control--like I was fighting with the music and my own body. It should be no surprise that the zaar rhythm is used for exorcisms. The movements are very strong and violent, and it was during one of these spins that the next screw-up happened.
I stomped on someone's shed bead.
Somehow, I didn't lose impetus. As I turned, I rubbed my poor sore toe against my other foot. The zaar rhythm exorcised the bead from my toe. My spins threw it off into neverland. And when the song ended, my dance ended exactly as planned. With the last sudden thump of percussion, I crashed to the floor. Gasps erupted all around, and then, one beat, two beats later, the applause and cheers.
I hadn't fucked up.
Jalilah finished off the show with a full-length routine. She wore a gorgeous assuit dress (assuit is an Egyptian fabric made with metal hand hammered into lace-like cloth), but like Oriana, was having costume troubles. Her bra strap kept falling down, and it was obviously distracting her. f00 thought that her movements seemed about an eighth of a beat off from the music, and I must concur. Perhaps it was the bra that was throwing her off. Nonetheless, she has an economy of movement that I can only hope to achieve at some point in the distant future. Her dancing is excellent, and she is a very cute-looking woman, so the cutesy khaleegy movements suit her to a T!
Around 11:20 that night, f00 and I finally left to go get some more sleep. We stopped by a grocery store to pick up fruit and cheese for our breakfast, and then we both crashed.
Waking up was hard to do.
When I got out of bed, I almost fell down. Both of my calf muscles had seized up terribly, and I could barely walk. I hobbled around, getting dressed, and then we were off to day two. Once again, I sold lots of stuff, including a huge silver and fuschia veil I'd had for over a year. My sales had paid for all my stock, my trip, my accomodations, and the workshop. And I was still making money! I cleared a couple hundred dollars, much to my delight.
Then the workshop began. My legs weren't feeling a whole lot better. Although I didn't feel nearly as craptastic as I had the day before, I still wasn't feeling very well. And with sixty dancers in one closed-up room, it soon got very hot and stuffy. No one opened the doors. The air conditioning wasn't going.
Although I really loved the choreography Jalilah was showing us, I simply couldn't keep up. I have a terrible time learning choreographies to begin with, but when I'm at the further disadvantage of having a cooked brain, it's pretty much impossible. Still, I did learn about khaleegy dance, something I'd only ever heard about before. It's very cute, with it's shy hair tosses and mincing steps. I can see incorporating elements of that into my dance.
By the time the workshop had ended, more than half of the participants had melted away to parts unknown. Only about a dozen hardcore dance enthusiasts were down there with Jalilah. Although I desperately wanted to continue, I found myself physically and mentally unable. Instead, I moseyed off to the vending area and chatted with more melty dancers. It was much cooler up there.
The workshop ended in a melty kind of way, too. In previous workshops, people had gotten together for a supper afterwards, or made arrangements to meet for a couple of drinks. This time, no one had plans. As far as I could tell, everyone went directly to a nice, cool bath. I felt sorry for Jalilah. At the end of the workshop, she looked like I felt. She was obviously exhausted, and her flight left at 6:00 the next morning. The poor dear needed about twelve hours of sleep, and there was no way she'd be getting it.
I thanked her for the workshop, told her how much I had liked her dancing, and expressed my chagrin at not being able to keep up with it the way I had hoped. And then, despite my own tiredness, she managed to perk me up. In a deep, husky voice which belies her looks, she told me how much she had enjoyed my performance, and then told me the parts she liked the best--proving she had actually paid attention. Her comments were sincere, and not made out of a polite need for reciprocation. Jalilah made me feel really good, and made me put a nice big grin that extended all the way in to my bones.
Thank you, Jalilah!
