Funky Town

Would you believe the Funky Town in question is Seward, AK? And even though it was said that what happens in Seward stays in Seward, I'm so going to blog about what happened in Seward.

My good bud Lori got the ball rolling for a dance weekend in Seward, beginning with a First Friday performance. The theme was "Art in Motion," so what better art to display than dance? So a small group up us took over the Seward Playhouse for a two-hour set.

This, of course, was with Sofia in tow. She's quite the good little show-biz baby. No problems on the road trip down, and she hung out in her bouncy chair for quite a bit of the performance.

The performance was a blast, and we finished with a bang. A, um, long bang. For those of you not familiar, there's a style of bellydance called American Tribal Style. When you learn the vocabulary of movements and cues, you can dance improvisationally with anyone else who has the same vocabulary. So to finish the show, I got up on stage with the Seward girls to perform some tribal. Little did we know that Lori put in a THIRTY MINUTE SONG. When the first beads of sweat started dripping off our noses, we started to wonder how much longer the song would go. When our first, second and third winds had come and gone, we really started to worry. Finally Lori decided to mention how long the song was! Eventually, someone faded the volume out, but by that point we had been performing to this song for a solid 25 minutes. Hey, at least the calories burned on stage totally balanced out the calories we consumed later in pizza and M&Ms!

The next day I was slated to teach a three-hour workshop, and that too was a success! Everyone pitched in to help with Sofia, and the girls worked their butts off to learn my choreography. Here's the promo flier I made:

And a few shots from the Friday night show:

One of the things I love so much about these photos is the progression within them. The shot in the promo flier was taken when I was about three months pregnant with Sofia. My first pregnant performance was in Seward. And now, a year later, here I am! Teaching and performing still with Sofia in tow. Makes me pretty happy.