Here comes guess work and crystal ball gazing. Right now I am at a very exciting phase in my career. I think this is going to the page that will constantly keep changing so for now let me start somewhere. 

I have been flabbergasted by the sheer scale of success of the Urban Gypsies. Some sort of Pandora's Box was opened up with this one! After a jam packed summer season to performing only to main stream public audiences at outdoor festivals mostly, I am amazed at how well they have done! 

The members of the troupe have been inspired by my own "home made" outfits so they have tended to do likewise. What they found was that they revealed abilities they never thought they ever had! Also by foraging about and piecing things from Oxfam shops, Grandma's drawer and all sorts of diverse things like that so they foraged around and came up with the most unbelievable collection of original ideas. Absolutely fantastic! Low slung bras and bare bellies can look daft in bright sunlight or gray overcast lighting with such a mixture of people, young and old. Instead I got a very powerful and uniting look of individual creativity. Earthy colours and the avoidance of glitz forced people to go a different direction. And what I got was a very powerful collective force of creativity. In Liverpool where we performed on several occasions on busy Saturday afternoons to teeming masses of people out shopping for the day, we found that they were glued throughout our entire 20 min' set, well past the "novelty factor." The teenage girls fascinated by the tribal face markings, the street traders in full flow with faraway stories that this mad bunch of Gypsy women have invoked, and so many said that there was this hypnotic and memorizing power about it all. I was really surprised to what an extent the everyday Liverpool people rather than your speciality audiences could sense this. No wonder Liverpool is being nominated as the City of Culture. In Manchester one person asked "Are you the Talaban?"  So all round this mad bunch of Gypsy women went, and now I have nearly 30 of them to deal with, frightening but so exhilarating as well. 

My overall impression with the Post War Westernized belly dance scene is that it can't make up its mind as to what kind of sport it is. Is it a participation sport or is it a Spectator Sport or is it a bit of both and in which case what is the slant? Line dancing rapidly grew in popularity a few years ago and that was a participation sport. So was Yoga that started in the 60's roughly. But in belly dancing people are trying both and succeeding in neither terribly well is my opinion. So belly dancing hasn't as yet taken off as Line Dancing, Yoga, Martial Arts and so on as a participation sport, and neither has it taken off as a Spectator sport either since the ending of the Burlesque, there have been no what may be termed as "mainstream" Shows involving Belly Dance for the public so far as I can see. Do you agree with this or have you any opinions? Let us know, I would be interested. I will add more thoughts very soon for now, enjoy Dancing in whatever form, just do it! 

 

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