At the downtown sidewalk art-fest “Art Attack Fredericksburg” yesterday,we were armed with minimal weapons: a drum, our finger cymbals, and our creativity.
Our “attack plan” was pretty loose: using no recorded music, and dancing only to the beat of our finger cymbals, four of us PRISM Dancers performed Tribal Odyssey as follows:
- start as a group circle,
- break into duets,
- come together in a group circle,
- repeat steps 1 – 3 until “done”.
We also added another audience favorite, the Basket Dance. Since I’m the only one who can hold a strong and steady rhythm on the doumbek, I provided the basic Arabic set of Masmoudi Kebir / Segir, and Ayub so my dancers Galiyah, Nashida, and Al-’Anqa could get busy with the baskets.
And that is the performance set that we took up and down Caroline Street, stopping wherever there was a bit of shade and room, and of course checking first with any artists working in the vicinity. We didn’t knock over any easels!
It was a great experience, even though dancing on cement is hard on the body, it was worth it just to demonstrate that we could deliver a unique, impressive, and creative performance of group bellydancing.
An artistic “plus” was the fact that we had also hand-crafted most of our costuming too. Here’s a quick snap of us posing between performances:
posing between performances on Caroline St.
I’m happy to work with dancers who are such friendly entertainers, and who are game enough to try these funny ideas I keep coming up with!
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