Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

On Saturday, I hopped a Greyhound to Toronto to go see the Matadors with my old friend Chris. When I arrived, I couldn't reach her on the phone, so I decided to just walk in the direction of the venue, calling her at every phone booth I saw. The streets were cold, and mobs of people in Hallowe'en attire clustered throughout the city. I kept on walking and calling, but to no avail. Finally, I called her friend Jean and was told to go to her place. I got the address, and started power-walking, stopping and asking directions from two friendly-looking fellows outside of Java. They told me I had a long way to go, so I caught a streetcar to what I thought was the nearest intersection, and got off.

I knew only very roughly where Jean's home is, and my city map didn't show this part of town, so I had to get directions. It was dark by this point, and I couldn't see any pedestrians, so I began walking in what I thought was the correct direction. Noticing a police car parked on the other side of the street, I jaywalked in a most brazen fashion over to the passenger side and tapped on the window.

The cop was on a call, so he held a finger up for me to wait, and I stood patiently until he rolled the window down for me.

"Excuse me, sir," I said. "I appear to be a bit lost. Could you please direct me to *** Street?"

"Oh," he said. "I don't know where that is. Hang on."

He called it in to the dispatcher, and was given some rough directions.

"Hop in," he said. "It's too cold to walk. I'll take you there."

And so I got a free ride with the cop, which is much more economical than flagging down a cabbie, I must say.

At long last, I found Jean's place, and met up with her, Chris, and Chris's fiancé Mike. Jean was dressed at Erzabet Bathory, Chris as a sexy French maid, and Mike as Teen Wolf. I got changed into my red, black, and gold tribaret costume, and we cabbed it over to the Matadors show at the Kathedral.

The club was full. Very full. The band started shortly after we arrived, and they played a bitchin' set. I've never been to a psychobilly show before, and I would like to go to another. The crowd energy was high, and the stage theatrics were over the top with a giant zombie Jesus barfing bubbles, toilet paper, water, and smoke over the audience. And I just adored the guy playing stand-up bass. He was really rocking out.

When the show ended, I was exhausted. Just utterly shagged out. My Friday night had been rather epic, after all. But the night was still young. It was about midnight, and my hosts had no intention of slowing down. So we ended up in another taxi on our way to yet another party.

The next party was in what looked like a small industrial park, and we walked through several sketchy-looking alleys until I saw the most enormous party I'd ever seen. I think it may have been the biggest party in the province, and everyone in Canada may very well have been there. Although it was cold out, there were so many people standing outside the warehouse that the body heat made the air warm. Still, I was bundled up in my warm sweater, black leather trench coat, and carrying my overstuffed purse and knapsack. I was so tired I could barely walk. The world was a surreal blur, and I was being crowded and jostled by the huge swarm of partiers.

I saw Chris approach someone dressed as Thriller-era Michael Jackson, and the next thing I knew, she was demanding I show him my costume.

"I can't," I whined. "I have all this shit, and it's too crowded for me to put it anywhere."

But my complaints went unheeded, and my purse and knapsack were hauled off by my friends. "Show them!" said Chris.

"Fine," I said, and unbuttoned my coat. My sweater was still tied on. I untied it and opened it.

This next moment amuses me. Where a moment before I'd been caught in a noisy press of souls, I was suddenly surrounded by a buffer of air and silence as everyone saw my costume. I hadn't anticipated such a frigging dramatic response! Michael Jackson said, "You must dance for me!"

"What? When?" I asked.

"My set is up next. Will you dance on stage?"

"Sure," I said.

He turned to Chris. "And you'll dance, too, right?"

She agreed with reluctance, and we followed him inside, where it was even more crowded.

I think there may have been close to a thousand people at the party, all told. It was absolutely overwhelming. I forced my way into the throng, staying close behind Michael Jackson who was carrying my bookbag high above his head.

The inside looked like a gutted warehouse with a second story. The stage was the second story, with the wall knocked out and no railing in place. A narrow, treacherous stairwell (also without a railing) went up to the stage. Chris and I followed him upstairs, and we stashed our stuff in a backstage room. I ditched my coat and sweater, adjusted my costume, and turned to Chris. "What kind of music do they play, anyway?"

"Funk," she said.

Ok. I can do that. I danced to metal the night before. Funk will be a piece of cake in comparison. Michael Jackson (who was actually Russ) came back and asked us to take the front of the stage when they started their first song.

I looked at the stage with trepidation. It was very crowded and very high up. I'd have to be exceptionally careful not to lose my balance. I didn't want to attempt stage diving.

When the band (Mercy Now) took the stage, I saw we'd have even less room to dance than I'd thought. Chris took the spot at the top of the stairwell, and I took centre stage between the vocalist and the bassist. And then it began. My dance space was about half the size of a standard bathtub, and I managed neither to fall nor bash into the musicians. Where I'd just been exanimate, I was now flooded with energy as the crowds cheered and danced and took photos and just had a great time. I realized almost all of them were getting too much of a good upskirt view, but no matter. There was naught that could be done about that, so I just danced my damned ass off. I danced until my once dry hair hung in lanky soaking ropes across my neck, back and face.

I'm not sure how long the set was. Maybe an hour. Photographers kept sneaking up the stairwell to get better shots, mostly of Chris and I, but also the band. I took a couple of breaks during the set and took a few pictures myself, but the set-up wasn't ideal for good band photography.

You can see photos from my night here.

Afterwards, we went back to Chris's and I crashed and slept the hardest, deepest sleep I've had since I had mono all those years back. It was awesome.

And then I came back home.

How was your weekend?

I begin this post in the perhaps futile hope that LJ is working properly. If not, well, I guess this post will have to be saved for later.

I've been a very, very busy beaver. After teaching a dance class on Friday and having a late-night gaming session, I left bright and early Saturday morning for Toronto. We spent the day at the Ontario Science Centre, which was entertaining for a variety of reasons including:

• the claustrophia chamber. This was an upright, roughly coffin-sized room where an overbearing male voice talked about slaves coming over on cramped slave ships, people in over-crammed prisons, and other tales of the invasion of personal space. While this went on, one wall started to meander its inexorable way toward me. I think this was supposed to freak people out, but I took advantage of the situation to practice my chimney climbing. Unfortunately my shoes were too slippery on the walls to do this effectively.
  
• the checkboard floor. A sign in front of this floor warned people only to step on the black squares all the way into the room. Being the obstinate sort, I walked on the white squares, or one both black and white, and when I got to the end of the room, was pleased to discover some sort of morality lesson about how I probably conscientiously walked only on the black squares. Nonconformists of the world, unite!
  
• the water piano. It's an outdoor pipe organ that works through magic. I say this because fountain technology is sufficiently over-my-head to become indistinguishable from magic. Yeah, that was an Arthur C. Clarke reference.

The next day, snowy_kathryn and I attended a dance workshop with Irene Dowd, who is truly a god among dance kinesiologists. For four hours, we learned her Orbits program as implemented for the hip. The program is designed to work the hip joint as thoroughly and as evenly as possible. I thought I had an excellent understanding of my hip mechanics, but Ms. Dowd put me in my place and left me sore in places I've never been sore in before.

On Monday, still aching from my workshop, I taught two dance classes and (perhaps foolishly) took a fitness class focusing on abs and glutes. Oh, my poor glutes. They were already so very sore, but I put them through another round. I suspect my butt would get sore after doing one hundred and forty "dirty dog" leg lifts on a good day. On my post-workshop-ache day, I worried I may not be able to walk home. But I did. And I even had energy left over for yesterday....

Yesterday I went back to Toronto to go hang out with my old university pal Chrissy. We were on our feet for a solid ten hours. We walked from the bus terminal to Kensington back down to Queens Quay and the Skinny Puppy concert!!! I don't think I used enough exclamation points there, so I'll add a few extra for good measure.

!!!!!

There.

The show was opened by two acts: Otto von Shirach and White Mice. I'd never heard of either before, and although White Mice aren't to my liking (death metal/noise), I am impressed by Otto von Shirach's crazy IDM/industrial sampling and his frenetic stage show. The man is a loony, and a highly entertaining loony, at that. He wore a black spandex superhero suit, complete with a cape, a Zorro-style mask, and a spandex tighty whities. His muffin-topping combined with the outrageous Sue Johanson sex samples created something ludicrous, but in a good way. I am in the process of downloading his free mp3s as I type.

I've wanted to see Puppy for almost twenty years, and the wish finally came true last night. I'm astounded that Nivek Ogre can sustain such a high level of energy for so long. He clearly loves what he is doing and is a consummate showman. He was doing his thing for a good ninety minutes, and from looking at the tour schedule, it looks like he'll be doing this on a nightly basis, without any nights off, after very long bus rides, for a ten-day stretch. Yikes.

I can't say I favour oHgr's new hair-do, but he's still on My List. And much to my glee, they performed "Worlock", which is one of my all-time favourite songs. I couldn't see cEvin Key too well (in fact, I thought he was drumming until I got closer and realized that no, that was him going mental on the Star-Trek-light-panels-of-doom which comprised his synth banks). I don't know who the drummer is, but he's really good.

Nivek wore some crazy contraptions, as usual. He came out covered in some sort of fake blood hydraulic system. Bright tubes wrapped around and trailed behind him as he did his crazy thing all over the stage. His face was covered in gunk from the first time we saw him, and on top he wore a white wife-beater which progressively became stained with blood. His pants were black and pretty straight-forward aside from the white plastic codpiece with what looked like a wrapped summer sausage dangling beneath. I still have no idea what that was supposed to be. It didn't exactly look phallic--just bizarre. Later on, he put on a chrome mask. The front looked a bit like Darth Vader, but with a long antenna sticking out of the mouth or nose. When Nivek bobbed his head, the mask jolted up and down, revealing his face.

I couldn't really see cEvin, but he wore a hat (and presumably other clothes, too).

And today, after about four and a half hours of sleep, I came back home in time to watch snowy_kathryn graduate, and then go and teach my first dance class at the senior citizens' centre. I think I'm going to enjoy teaching the older ladies. They're a lot more high-energy than many of my far younger students.

And now, the final test, when I click on the "Post" button and see if all of this typing was for naught...

(It worked!)

Ticketmaster is a scam. I just bought a ticket to see Skinny Puppy in June. The tickets are listed as $29.50, which is quite reasonable. I've never before encountered a place which told you your grand total only after your payment had gone through. My total ended up being $43 (which is more than I can really afford). What the heck is a convenience charge, and why is it $8.75?

Still, I've loved Puppy since the mid-80s, and am relishing the thought of finally getting to see them live. Oh yes!

Are you going?

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I went to Toronto on Saturday to attend two dance performances: Tedd Robinson's REDD (a contemporary dance piece) and Denise Fujiwara's No Exit (a butoh piece). I must admit, I am not a fan of REDD. Although there were elements I enjoyed (Robinson is a wiz with fabric draping), overall, I found myself literally falling asleep while he was onstage. Robinson's hour-long performance was broken into three parts. The first part opened with him coming on stage with a crooked walking stick. He began doing a quick side-to-side sway with his hips. Then he stopped, balanced the stick on his head, and resumed the hip movements. A man in the audience was very impressed by this rudimentary balancing act and yelled out "Bravo!" I suggest he check out a raqs saif, raqs shamadan, or Moroccan tea tray performance to be truly blown away by dancers with stuff on their heads. The rest of the performance consisted of Robinson reading text written on large bits of fabric, occasionally wrapping the fabric around himself kimono-style. He talked about country living, and bears in the woods. The whole time I watched and listened, I couldn't help but think he sounded like a city slicker talking about something he'd never experienced. It just did not ring true. Then again, I grew up on farms and in forests, living off the land, so go figure. If I were to dance city living, I'll betcha it wouldn't ring true, either.

The next piece he did was his most interesting. He came out with a blinding kimono. It was covered with reflective sequins or paillettes, so glaringly bright that the kimono seemed electrically powered. After posing reflectively (in both senses of the word), the odd, off-kilter music began to blend with an Irish ballad. He stripped off the kimono, and underneath was wearing a kilt and sporran. This is the only time he evoked a physical reaction from me. I laughed at the incongruity. And then he did a stomping sort of dance.

The third dance consisted of Robinson showing up onstage with a giant stick balanced on his head. He talked about being a professional balancer. And then he stuck the stick upright in the stage, rearranged his t-shirt and some more wrapped/draped cloth so he looked monk-like (he actually was a Buddhist monk, by the way), and sat under the stick. That was the end.

As the lights faded and before the applause began, a man in the audience said in a loud voice, "I can't believe I paid money for this."

Although I believe the man's response was unconscionably rude (it was obvious to me that Robinson had been crushed by the outburst), I understood where he was coming from. This performance had come across to me as self-aggrandizing, second-rate performance art. Other people in the audience, however, would disagree. I heard much laughter during the performance (and not the derisive sort, either). So maybe I just didn't get Robinson's art. I don't know. I do know I'll never choose to watch another of his performances. I am glad I didn't pay money, though. I was seeing the show on trade (I volunteered to hand out surveys in exchange for watching the performances).

Up next was Denise Fujiwara's No Exit. This was the real reason I'd come to the show. I've done workshops with Fujiwara before and found her kind and knowledgeable, and the workshops illuminating. I'd also attended the Can-Asian Dance Festival (one of her pet projects) and it was excellent. So I wanted to see the butoh choreography she'd built around the Sartre play, No Exit.

I was not disappointed. Although I'd never read the play (bad Shan--not doing the research before seeing the dance!), I have a passing familiarity with Sartre's works and philosophy. And I certainly wasn't sleepy during this performance.

The performance has no dialogue, but the story-telling is visceral. Three individuals die and go to hell: a small room with three chairs, a table, and a knife. The mood is oppressive and crushing. Sasha Ivanochko's character is Inez, hate-riddled and malevolent. Miko Sobreira is Garcin, traumatized and neurotic. Rebecca Hope Terry is Estelle, sexually desperate and unappealing. The three interact in an ugly romantic triangle, reaching for one another in cloying, violent desperation before turning on themselves and one another.

Hell is other people.

Performance-wise, my eyes were constantly drawn to Ivanochko. Her face, body, and movements barraged me with palpable waves of emotion. It was hard to pull my eyes away from her to the other dancers. That being said, the others were also very strong performers, but it is difficult to share a space with such an incredibly strong stage presence.

---------

Afterwards, I left to walk back to the bus station. Perhaps influenced by the dance shows, I still felt a mood of oppression and doom. Although it was a Saturday night in the largest city in Canada, the streets were very empty and dark. I walked through ill-lit streets and past construction sites. A few homeless people were preparing for the night, setting up sleeping bags on street corners. A rifled-through purse lay abandoned on the sidewalk. I kept a lot of space between myself and the shadows, striding with purpose close to the street and with my peripheral vision on high alert. One man asked me for money. Another asked me for drugs.

By the time I got home, it was 1:30 in the morning, and I collapsed in bed thankfully.

I ... I think I need this dress. I haven't a clue where I'd ever wear it, but damn. Talk about a sexpot dress....

Pornaments: Merry XXXmas.

Poor Moose: A bull moose gets stuck up in the power lines, way, way up in the air....

Nataraja-asana (Dancer): My favourite yoga asana today. At some point, I mean to incorporate this into a dance, but it hasn't quite happened yet. Maybe it will fairly soon. I can see putting it into a sword dance.

Last night, I watched The Belly Dancers of Cairo. It's an excellent but sad documentary on the state of raqs sharqi in Egypt today. Despite the increasing popularity of the dance internationally, belly dance is dying in Egypt. Through interviews with Egyptian dance legends (eg. Dina, Nagwa Fuad, Lucy), current performers, a Muslim feminist, and a variety of Egyptian men from different walks of life, we can see how dancers are simultaneously loved and reviled. We are given cultural and religious context for this apparent contradiction.

Although raqs sharqi from the golden age of Egyptian cinema is looked upon fondly by the conservative men interviewed, their appreciation is conflicted. Dancers are looked upon as whores, a view reinforced by the dance films shown on a daily basis. Dancers in movies are invariably portrayed as wanton women, or gangsters' molls. To allow a female member of one's family to become a dancer would bring shame down on the entire family. More liberally-minded men may date a dancer, but once they get married, or once she bears children, she will have to end her career.

The film touches on how women in the public eye are considered to have questionable virtue. However, there is no mention of Oum Kalthoum, who was considered a national treasure. I can't help but be curious to see if she was considered a floozy at the same time that she was revered.

The documentary ends on a bittersweet note. Although the dance is dying in Egypt, it has spread itself over the world. These non-Egyptian dancers are responsible to carry on the legacy, and to save what would otherwise be a dying art form. And just so we're not without context, the DVD has an excellent features section which contains full-length performances by a variety of Egyptian dancers.

I need to get myself a copy of this. I recommend it to students of all varieties of belly dance (whether traditional Egyptian or any of the more modern fusion variants).

I was terribly afraid I wouldn't make it to see Asala last night because traffic was so bad. I ended up missing the first performance, but no matter. The rest of the show is awesome, and I had an excellent seat: balcony, front row and centre (thank you so much for the ticket, Dharlene!).

First, the negatives (which are few and relatively minor). The lighting is not always ideal. The spotlights shine straight down on the soloists, when an oblique angle would be far more flattering. In one dance, half of the dancers show up in cool blue, then are joined by dancers in warm coral. When the blue dancers are by themselves, they look splendid. But the contrast with the coral is not a flattering one, as the coral makes the blue look washed out in comparison. Also, the male dancers, as a whole, aren't quite as polished and tight in their choreographies as their female counterparts. That being said, they certainly have their share of fans in the audience. There were several shouts of "Valizan!" as he danced.

But despite these quibbles, Asala is the best dance show I have ever seen, hands down. The group choreographies are intricate without being chaotic, colourful without being garish, and the formations complex without muddiness. The show does a superb job of showcasing the various dance styles of the Middle East: mesmerizing devotional Sufi spinning, Khaleegy dances in glittering thobes with subtle movements and grand hair tosses, ultra-feminine and flirtatious Melaya Leff, militaristic tahtiib dances and stage fighting by the men and the contrasting cuteness of the women's raqs assaya, the competitive courtship of the Hagallah, the intricate footwork of Port Said Simsimiyya, and of course the most well-known style of the bunch, raqs sharqi.

But the show isn't just about dance. It's also about the music, and the orchestra is phenomenal. Bassam Bishara's oude taqsim brought tears to my eyes, as did Najwa Tannus's vocal renderings of the epic Inta Omri. And who can forget the insane, intricate drumming of Suleiman Warwar? Zaghareets aplenty issued forth from the audience for that performance.

If you're in the Toronto area, you're in luck. The show continues until December 3. Being dead is your only excuse not to go.

The workshop wasn't at all what I thought it would be. It was advertised as "Combining Bellydance movements with modern dance. Ideal for a dramatic entrance to exciting fusion music." I thought this meant we'd be working on showy entrances and modern (as in Martha Graham or Lester Horton) fusion.

Instead, what I got was a straight-forward Am-Cab choreography not so very different from Jillina's instructional videos. The only modern movement I detected was a chassé (spelled "chase" on the handouts), which is a pretty standard travelling step for raqs sharqi performers, anyhow. And even then, it's more balletic than modern.

The workshop was held at a seedy old 60s-style banquet hall. Half of the room was carpeted, and the other half had tile floor. Fake plants hung from the ceiling, and the fully-stocked bar had engraved plaques listing the names of who I presumed were old-time regulars. It was very dark in there, and not just because I was wearing sunglasses to save the other students from seeing my poor, sick eye.

A sound system with strategically-located speakers made it possible for us to hear the music and Jillina's instruction over the noise of many dozens of coin scarves.

Which reminds me.... I think these should perhaps be banned from workshops. They're noisy, and many of them leak coins and beads which invariably get stepped on. But I digress....

The room was seriously overcrowded. There were about twice the amount of dancers in the room than it could comfortably hold. Throughout the entire choreography, people were getting smacked upside the head, rammed into, and jostled by each other. It was unavoidable, and made this shanmonster an unhappy camper. If I couldn't even stand in one position with my arms outspread, then how am I supposed to be able to do a choreography with lots of expansive arm movements, especially when there are high-speed travelling spins thrown in?

Organizers, please bear in mind the size of the venue when selling workshops spaces. Either get a bigger room, or cap the attendance at a smaller number. Thank you.

The workshop began with a simple warm-up consisting of "diva walking" laps around the room, moved on to stretches and pliés in first position, and culminated with some very basic technique. As Jillina explained the mechanics of how to do rib circles and hip slides, I realized I was in for a workshop geared more toward novices, and I began to worry if the money I'd spent had been spent wisely.

Jillina is a real sweetheart. She's friendly, engaging, and eager to help. When she saw students doing a basic move incorrectly, she'd rush over and correct the technique.

Her videos are offered for sale at the workshops for very reasonable prices. The drum solo DVD, for example, complete with accompanying CD, was only $35.

The choreography was broken up into small, manageable chunks which we drilled until we'd gained some facility with them before moving onto the next chunk. At the end of the workshop, all these modules were put together with the song, and voila! We were dancing the choreography (well, except me. My weeks of sick caught up with me and I was completely shagged out by the last half hour, and staggered more than danced).

The choreography itself is fairly simple, with nothing any more complex than a shimmy layered over a reverse undulation. It is certainly not the crazy mixture of daunting combinations I'd get at one of Tarik's, Aziza's, or Morocco's workshops. It is geared more toward beginner through intermediate-level dancers, and as such, it is very successful. If you fit into this category, please take a Jillina workshop! I think you'll get a lot out of it. But if you're any more advanced, you might want to skip it and buy her videos if you want to learn her famous choreographies.

Last night, I watched the Janak Khendry Dance Company perform Chandrakauns, Dream of a Drunken God, and Gayatri. With a few notable exceptions, glittering like diamonds in a dung-heap, it was one of the worst dance shows I've ever seen.

The first dance, Chandrakauns, ostensibly tells the story of the Moon, his beautiful wife the Moon Light, and his children the Moon Rays being the link between heaven and earth. The stage is set with an enormous disk of white on the floor, shaded just so to look like the full moon. It looks pretty nice. But then the dancers come out and spoil it. Well, that's not entirely fair. The wife of the Moon (Kala Vageesan) is a good dancer, and I ameliorated my shocked senses by watching her. I hoped to see more of her throughout the evening, but this was her only performance.

Her presence doesn't stop the choreography from being possibly the most boring dances I've ever seen. Indeed, for all you MST3K fans, this is the Sandy Frank production of dance, with interminable walking scenes. And running scenes. At times, it felt like I was watching dancers do laps around the moon. The story is incomprehensible from the dance (I only know what it's about from the programme notes), and several of the dancers kept fudging their choreography.

The music is ok, but the bridges between scenes are extraordinarily cheesy, with tinkling Wayne's World-esque dream sequence sound effects. The first time I heard it, it made me cringe a little. But it kept continuing. Those twinkling sounds must repeat themselves a dozen times or more throughout the performance, and I sunk deeper and deeper into my chair, curling in on myself, foetus-like.

At the end of Chandrakauns, we were asked to keep in our seats for a little while as the stage was prepared for the next dance. This wouldn't have been too bad, except that we sat in our seats for about ten minutes as the moon was torn off the floor with very loud duct-tape ripping noises. Why this couldn't have been an intermission, I don't know. It is very amateurish, and not the sort of thing you'd expect at a $35 per ticket show. There isn't even any house music to drown out the noises. We all just sat there uncomfortably, stunned after the bad introductory dance, hearing the ripping sounds and hoping beyond hope that the next dance would be better.

It was somewhat better. Well, except for Janak Khendry himself, the artistic director and lead dancer of the dance company. I just don't get it. In the program, his biography is the most extensive. He has trained at prestigious schools in India, and with influential and well-known teachers of Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Manipuri. Maybe once upon a time he could dance, but he really can't now. For someone who's danced since 1955, he has no stage presence or finely-tuned muscular control. His hands and arms are limp and lifeless. His sense of rhythm is abysmal, and he rarely keeps on beat. He can't keep up with the fast parts of the choreographies, and just skips them as the other dancers in the troupe perform them simultaneously. His facial expressions are wanting, and his face is occasionally wracked with twitching little grimaces which I think are supposed to be smiles.

Maybe he knows he sucks.

I felt embarrassed for him. It hurt me to watch him. Photos of him in the 1950s show someone with a lot more expression, and a New York Times review of him in 1978 praises his "particularly fluid arms." Maybe he's been ill, these past few years. I just don't know. Something terrible has happened, to be sure. It's sad. In Dream of a Drunken God, he looks like an extra from classic Star Trek traipsing around the stage. For a little while, while acting out the drinking of copious amounts of alcohol, he's not too bad. But then he starts to suck again. Fortunately, he is joined by Anthony Guerra, and I had something good to watch. Guerra has a commanding stage presence. He fills the stage with majesty. His movements are controlled and precise, from his convincing fish mudra (the name of which is unknown to me), to the flare of his nostrils and the vibration of total body tension as he acted out a creation scene.

The narrative of the choreography is confusing. It is more or less a battling banjos story, with two gods trying to outdo one another. But somehow, the two enemies become fast friends before once again becoming enemies, with no apparent reason for it. It is utterly baffling.

During the intermission, I toyed with the idea of not coming back to see the third performance. But f00dave's mother has never a big dance production before (aside from the great Karen Kain, back in the day), and is enjoying herself. So we stay.

It's just as well, too, because Gayatri is the strongest choreography of the night. At first, we are worried, because the introduction seems like a more ornate bit of the sign-language karaoke of Napoleon Dynamite. But the next two parts are interesting, with clear narrative structures, and at least some good dancing. Mala Pisharody is bang-on with her head and eye movements, and Sinthujaa Jeyarajah is impeccable with the precision of her arm and hand movements. She's inspired me to drill harder on my arm movements, and to practice the alapadma mudra Neefa taught me this week....

This choreography is the oldest of the three, and I think it's much more familiar to each of the dancers.

So all in all, I wouldn't mind seeing some of these dancers again, but not this company as a whole.

Kiyoshi Nagata is a musician-athlete. He has little fat on his lithe, sinewy frame. He wears the traditional thong undergarment, and the spectacle of his physique is integral to the performance. He stands in a low arrow stance and attack the drum--a giant bludgeoning the moon. It's violent. It's frightening. It's beautiful. His muscles flex, jerk, and release with every hit.

Around him are his ensemble. They are hooded, faces obscured by shadow, and they look like malevolant monks. They beat the drums together, or in syncopation. I am thrilled. I'm witnessing a portentous ritual.

I am an empty vessel, but I am being filled by drumsong. It starts deep in my bowels, making my belly twitch and throb. The big bass drums fill me up to my chest. I can feel the beating in my heart. It changes my pulse. My heart races as adrenaline is released. I feel like I am being chased, but I am sitting in a chair.

Did I enjoy Sacred Tree? ( Yeah, I guess you could say so. )

I was happy to receive my review copy of The Golden Apple: Bellydance Stars of New York the other day. I finally got to watch it last night. This is strictly a performance DVD. You won't find any instruction or voice-overs.

The DVD includes almost an hour of performances by NYC performers Neon, Jehan, Jenna, and Blanca, as well as a jam session with the skilled and talented Taksim ensemble. The production values are strong, and although the camera rarely holds still, cuts and pans are not obtrusive. Face shots are kept to a minimum. The focus is generally on the dancer, or the part of her body doing a particular movement. The sound quality is excellent, whether the music is live (ie. with Taksim's jam session) or canned. If you were so inclined, you could turn the video off and listen to this as though it were a CD.

In general, the dancers have large, expansive movements. Each dancer has her own musical taste. The music ranges from traditional Egyptian to Arabesque hiphop to new age breathy vocals. Although I doubt the style of every performance, costume, and song will appeal to any one person, ( I do believe the DVD is well worth the cost. )

The Ultimate Bellydance Fitness Workout DVD is titled hyperbolically. Although I agree it is not a bad workout, there are better dance workout videos on the market. Better videos have even been produced by the same company.

( The video has several problems. )