Holiday Hafla…

We held our Annual Holiday Hafla at bellydance on Wednesday, December 18,2024. It was an evening of performing for each other.

Our Holiday Hafla celebrates another year of dance on the last class before Christmas; then we break for the holidays.

My dance partner Kathleen and I performed in front of our students for the first time in two years.

I used to be such a seasoned performer that I seldom got nervous, but after making such a huge comeback since May, I was.

Did I have something to prove? Not to my students but to me.

Kathleen has stuck with me through it all and while I needed to do some serious crawling back up to where we were, poor Kathleen had to also since I slowed us both down.

At this point we are happy where we are at and all the filming and critiquing ourselves we do on Saturdays has paid off.

We are however, not even close to where we were before covid. Our goal in 2025 is to regain our speed again both in dancing and zilling.

Please keep in mind, we dance 100% improvisation. We pick a sing and decide how we are going to start the song such as set, walking in, or facing each other.

Other than that neither of us had any idea what will happen. That’s the beauty of improv we don’t have to remember anything when we dance.

After we performed the songs that we chose I was not thrilled with my performance. Kathleen was “on” to say the least, meaning she performed well.

I was in my head too much which is something I tell my students all the time not to do.

I was trying too hard and didn’t really enjoy myself at times where Kathleen danced like she was having a ball.

When I watched our performances I cringed at how many blunders I made from thinking too hard.

Fuck!!!!!!!

I watch everyone with my critical teacher’s eye but I am the hardest on myself down to the tiniest details such as lifting my eyebrows when I spin.

The day after I watched the two performances I rewatched and decided I did a fair job considering I couldn’t dance fast at all before May.

I was having fun at a lot of points in our songs but there were a couple of areas I didn’t feel comfortable with.

Luckily, that was when Kathleen stepped up and hit home runs.

Of course there will always be technique we need to improve and we always need to shimmy more, but for the most part we were together and in each other’s energy.

We’ve been dancing together for 21 years we better be in each other’s energy. Lol.

I am sharing our two songs we danced to which I hope you enjoy watching.

Another goal of mine is to film with my go pro camera since my iPad camera sucks! This I will have to learn more about and get better at it.

I would also like for us to perform for our students more regularly so we can get back into performance mode or we can put up videos of us on YouTube monthly.

Either way, I am so looking forward to getting back to dance tomorrow with Kathleen and start another round of classes on Wednesday night.

Happy Friday! I didn’t remember today was Friday until about 3 pm this afternoon. 😂