Proud as a peacock…

Last night, Callie, Emily, Trish, Maria, and I performed at the Bennington Museum, celebrating the 25th Anniversary of the North Bennington Art Park. 

This was Maria and Trish’s first real performance. They both danced at a few farmers’ market gigs where people only walk by or watch for a minute or two and return to buying their produce and baked goods. 

Dancing at a farmers market isn’t a “feel good” gig because people don’t expect to see belly dancers, and many are prudes who look away as they walk by. It’s not like we are strippers, for fucks sake! 

Maria’s husband and my writing mentor, Jon Katz, attended the performance and was gracious enough to take photos and videos of us. 

Jon, who is an award-winning writer, author, and photographer, did a fabulous job describing the event in his blog Bedlam Farm Journal. Click on the link to read what Jon had to say and see video clips and photos. I just saw Jon wrote a second blog post about the gig; here is the link to that one.

My student Maria, an artist and blogger, wrote about her first performance experience on her blog Full Moon Fiber Art. You can click on her link to read about it and see some photos. 

This was our first performance in over 3 years, and it felt great. I can’t remember when we have ever had such a fun and smooth performance. The setup was easy, the dancing was seamless even though it was improv, and the audience was fantastic and appreciated what we were doing! Yay!

When we rehearsed for this gig, we danced to the music and discussed how we would start and end the two sets, but we left everything else up in the air, the beauty of dancing improv. 

We all danced “in” that moment in time and were present. We were the vessels of the music, but most importantly, we had so much fun together! 

We all knew we needed to remember to smile while we were performing, but after watching the video clips, the smiles were real and not phony ones pasted on our faces. 

My students have improved so much in the last 2 years; their technique is getting better every week. They are dancing tighter together and learning to DANCE; not just link moves together; there is a huge difference. 

I was so relaxed at the gig, something that never happens. It felt like it was everyone’s gig, and each dancer took responsibility for it, not me being the mother hen like I needed to be in the past. We were in sync, not just while dancing but as a whole.

I am incredibly proud of everyone; the buttons are popping on my jacket, which is an old-fashioned saying. I smile when I think of the fun we had and how it really felt like we emerged, coming out from under the big black covid cloud and stepping into the bright sunshine. ☀️

I am truly blessed with my abilities to teach and dance with such a wonderful group of women, my dance sisters. We all have the performing bug now; we need to find more gigs to dance at; that was the only sad part of the night when I realized we don’t have another one lined up. Hint, hint…

Happy Friday, everyone! Cheers!