2021 has begun, and the pandemic is still an issue. We had a holiday surge of cases and another stay at home order. My Patreon is going strong and I currently have a great group of students in my $10/month troupe tier, and I have also become a Team Leader for Shimmy Mob, a worldwide bellydance flash mob event that happens annually and I have participated in since 2018. This is my first year being a Team Leader.
Usually I start the year with new choreography in my two-three in person classes. This year I'm still teaching online, and my recreation center has recently opened as a covid-testing site, so clearly there won't be any classes there any time soon. The dance studio I used to teach in has not reopened since the pandemic started.
This in mind, I have many projects on the horizon for this year. I am creating new choreography keeping in mind the restrictions for teaching online, including space, and facing forward for most moves (as opposed to facing different areas of the stage), I'm planning online haflas and another park dance film shoot.
What is a dance film shoot? I had the opportunity to film two different park socially-distanced performances with my local students, using 3-4 cameras, including short plots, character development and choreography. It was great! My husband was my cameraman, I directed, produced, choreographed and edited the pieces. I love the way they turned out. I even cut together trailers for them and they debuted on YouTube at several online haflas in the fall.
I had the pleasure of dancing in a handful of online haflas (dance parties) last year as well, some live, which sort of replicate the feeling of performing live, and some via pre-taped video. The live shows are exciting and unpredictable, but feel like performing for live television, with tech rehearsals, and of course the challenges of live shows, like music playback issues, and video tech issues. However, I was very impressed with a lot of the volunteers who put together the shows, particularly the Night in the Global Village crew, and how well they handled it.
The Shimmy Sirens of Zoom, an online bellydance troupe who met through Shimmy Mob (see my blog entry on Shimmy Mob), performed together at several online haflas this fall. We started out by doing Shimmy Mob dances, but branched out into performing Halloween and Winter holiday routines to match the themes of the online haflas we performed in. We performed five different dances in addition to two Shimmy Mob routines.
My online classes have taken on the feeling of live TV if you are viewing them, with me using a microphone, an audio mixer, my studio and lights. If you take my online classes, it should still feel like my traditional classes, I'm dancing in front of a mirror with my back to you so you can follow along. I look forward to teaching online until the pandemic is over. I have taught a total of 55 online classes in 2020, usually two a week, from May until December.
The shows I was involved in for 2020 online included: a Night in the Global Village (including Sun 'n Fun; the Stars Are Out; Holiday Joy; and Halloween); Virtual Cairo ShimmyQuake, Cafe Raqs End of 2020 Show, Hips that Go Bump in the Night; Virtual Winter CairoShimmy, the Night Before Christmas Virtual Variety Show, The BellyDance Bundle Showcase, Emerald Hips Holiday Hafla, Week of Winter Wonders, plus the Instagram challenges, 21 Days of Bellydance and 12 Days of Bellydance.
photo credit: Haunted Fairytale poster by Jessikah; Jessikah's Johara Dragons flyer (Night Before Christmas) by Lynda Reina Jenkins; Sun N Fun flyer and Shimmy Sirens of Zoom flyer by Yalayna, photo of Jessikah by Scott York photography
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