Snow in the Grapevine

There is a pass in the mountains between Bakersfield and Santa Barbara called the “Grapevine”; the pass is twisted and curvy like a grapevine. And it snows there in the wintertime, much to the delight of Wilson’s niece and nephew. We were driving back from Bakersfield last weekend when the kids saw the snow. I remembered how exciting the first snowfall was when I was a kid, but these kids were getting really excited. They wanted us to pull over on the freeway just so they could touch the snow! I mean, snow was a big deal when I was a kid, but not that big of a deal. Well, it turns out that they had never touched snow before. I guess that’s growing up in Southern California for you (but don’t get me wrong, I love Southern California).
When I was a child, growing up in Canada, we would always make a snowman right after the first snowfall. It was a tradition. Even if we had to scrape all of the snow off the yard just to make a snowball. This resulted in some dirty looking snowmen- all covered in dirt and with sticks and grass poking out.
We decided to pull over on the Grapevine. There was an off-ramp and a little side road, so it was okay. And once again, the snow was scraped off the ground, right down to the dirt, to make a snowman. Only, there really wasn’t that much snow, and the snowman ended up being only six inches high. But hey, you’ve got to work with what you’ve got.
The ride home was spent singing and listening to Christmas carols, and eating peppermint chews. I never thought that Southern California could remind me so much of home.

Rock-a-Belly

Call it what you will (my favourite label is “rock-a-belly”), but rock ‘n roll and belly dance make a great combination. The first time I pushed the genre was in 2006 with Wilson Gil and the Willful Sinners. The band commissioned myself and three other dancers (Jazmin, Julz, and Alex) to belly dance with machetes at one of their shows. As a bonus, the band also hired a fire eater. You can’t get much sexier than that- belly dancers, machetes, fire, and rock ‘n roll!
Since then, some of my best shows and choreography have involved rock music. If you think about it, the genre really works. Both rock music and belly dance can be sexy, edgy, raw, and full of energy. Just swap the head banging, skinny rock guy for an undulating, sultry woman. Not a bad trade if you ask me! (Kidding. I love those skinny rock guys).
The first show I produced in San Francisco featured “a night of belly dance and rock ‘n roll” and was a huge success (we sold out). I didn’t have a fire eater for that show, but I did have eleven dancers and two killer bands (Castles in Spain and The Ferocious Few). I wish there were some funny stories to tell of that evening, but everything went off without a hitch. And I guess that’s a good thing, because there’s always a slight chance that something could go wrong when mixing drunk, rowdy bar goers with scantily clad women. Luckily, everyone knew how to rock out in an appropriate manner- you can look, but DO NOT TOUCH the belly dancers!
My current project came to me via the social networking wonders of Facebook. A Middle-Eastern rock band from Palestine called “Khalas” emailed me, a Canadian belly dancer living in Berlin, to ask if I would dance to one of their songs and film it for their website. I am truly in love with online social networking and how it’s creating this wonderful web of artists from all over the world. How many cultures can we combine here? Well, the guy who’s going to be filming the video is part Egyptian, part French, and part several-other-nationalities, so apparently as many as we damn well please. That’s the beauty of pushing boundaries and combining genres that at first don’t appear to go together- what you get in the end is something international, something that breaks down stereotypes and culminates in a new sense of “togetherness”.
To see videos: Avaishya/FerociousFew
Avaishya/Alodiah/FerociousFew