The Cabaret Connundrum
This entry was posted on 1/5/2011 5:54 PM and is filed under Dance.
The Cabaret Conundrum
Part One: Warrior Princess
Spring 2009
I love cabaret costumes. I love sparkle and glitter and flowy, filmy fabrics. I love slinky lines and tops that make me look like I actually have cleavage. I love thigh-high slits and tight, ornate skirts with cut-outs around the hips. I love 20-inch beaded fringe and pearls and sequins and crystals that shimmer under the lights. I love velvet mermaid-skirts and chiffon sleeves and beaded gauntlets and satin circle skirts and full-length evening gowns. I love rhinestones and gems and delicate jewelry and shiny tiaras.
Yes.
The Warrior Princess loves tiaras.
I was never Daddy’s Little Princess growing up. I was Daddy’s Fishing Protégé and Mommy’s Little Artist. I was a tomboy. I would only wear frilly dresses when I had to and my hair was cut short until I was fourteen. On Free-Day Friday, I was that lone girl who forewent jump-rope and hop-scotch in favor of playing floor hockey with the boys. My first heroine was Jana of the Jungle with her groovy throwing-necklace and prowling tiger. I loved building forts in the woods or the snow, I could outrun most of the boys in my class, and I preferred action figures over dolls or Barbies. I was as likely to play with Ken as with Barbie, and my favorite action figures were Han Solo, Darth Vader, He-Man and Skelletor. Of course, I also dug the fact that Princess Leia wielded a blaster and killed Jabba in a shiny gold bikini, and my She-Ra, Princess of Power always kicked butt.
For you see, within my power-propensity always lurks the princess. In high school, I was an All-State volleyball player and captain, as well as a cheerleader—another indication of this tomboy’s susceptibility to The Shiny.
Mmmm…Shiny... Glitter. Sparkle. Sequined, beaded, encrusted—
Focus.
Anyway, as I was saying, I love my cabaret costumes as much as I love my tassels and textiles, and I love the music that traditionally goes with them—all of them. I love the deep, heady pulse of Tribal drums, the flirty bounce of Turkish pop, the mournful soul of Arabian flutes, and the guts of anything labeled “Gypsy.” I even love the chorus of “screaming cats on a coffee-grinder.”
But the princess in me loves the sweeping, elegant orchestrated music of raqs sharqi.
There is only one problem. The moves that traditionally go with this music and this form of dress are about as sweeping and elegant on me as ballet was. In college, I was a jazz dancer, a tap dancer, a funk dancer, a fiery Latin ballroom dancer. I, of course, started with ballet. I’m very glad I did, because it gave me the posture and line and basic vocabulary from which to spring—OK, launch with all thrusters fired into the dance forms that truly suited me. The modern dance I studied was taught by my ballet teacher and was heavily influenced by that style, rather than some of the more robust, powerful styles, so I liked it, but I still had some of the same problems as when I was standing at the barre, trying to pretend I was The Swan.
I do not possess the graceful flow of a ballerina. My grace is more in line with that of a great cat or a serpent. The undulation of powerful muscles rippling beneath velvety fur…the hypnotization of a serpentine body snaking through the undergrowth, spiraling into a tidy ball of latent energy, watching, waiting with forked tongue a-flicker, head weaving, glossy eyes focused with lethal intensity…coiling-coiling-coiling...for the strike!
I am athletic, not voluptuous.
I am energetic, not tranquil.
I am powerful, not subtle.
But dagnabbit, I am sucker for a Mohammed Abdel Wahad tune or a Jalilah’s Raqs Sharqi album!
So of course, I have to ask--if this music speaks to my soul, why should I not be allowed to dance to it, even if I am not dancing in the style that traditionally goes with it? Dance is, after all, a fluid, evolving entity which…blah-blah-blah…[insert soap-box rant here].
Of course, I am allowed. I can choose to dance to it any ole way my heart desires. But there are repercussions, and I’ve been reaping them for many, many years.
Sure, I’m La Tejedora. I’m The Weaver. I’m the Warrior Princess, and I may appear brave and strong and unaffected with a sword in my hand or bounding around amidst swirls of fabric or cocking one eyebrow in an expression that says, “Yeah, bay-bee! Who loves ya?” But the truth is, I shed my fair share of tears and have more than once boxed up all my costumes with the intent of quitting after being lambasted for what I do.
“That’s not belly dance!”
“This is about sensuality and glamour. Belly dancers are supposed to be sexy. Are you going to do anything that corresponds with this theme?”
“You don’t do it right,” uttered in a heavy Lebanese accent and said with squinty eyes and a curled lip. “You only dance because you are in little town of Colorado. You’d be nothing on East or West Coast.”
“Too skinny, too muscular, too flat-chested...”
“There’s more jazz in her than belly dance.”
And some days, that’s true. I am a fusion artist. Always have been. I have never called myself a traditional Middle Eastern dancer—or a traditional anything, for that matter. I have an entire dissertation on what it is that I do and don’t do entitled “Tejedora” on my website. The only thing pure about my dancing is my heart, but that doesn’t seem to matter to some people. Some only see that I am wearing a bedlah and dancing to classical Egyptian music, but not dancing classical Egyptian style. Perhaps they missed the program note calling it, “Dance Orientale Tejedora Style” or “American Cabaret” or simply “Zill Dance.” Or perhaps they have other motives for their malice.
Whatever it is, I have suffered a relapse into my former complex of fear, insecurity and self-condemnation because I “don’t do it right.” Give me a tassel belt and Tribal hair-ties and I’ll burn the stage up—not as a Tribal dancer, but as La Tejedora. Give me a 25-yard skirt and throw on some raucous Karsilima, and my soul will rocket out of my body with every movement. Put a sword in my hand and adorn me with a heavy-metal bra, and I feel armored against condemnations.
But put me in a cabaret costume and take away my props, and suddenly I am rendered nekkid and vulnerable. Squeak! My shimmying turns into shivering.
In a recent discussion, another dancer said, “Well, if you saw someone in traditional Japanese dress, dancing to traditional Japanese music, wouldn’t you expect them to be doing traditional Japanese dance?”
I suppose that would be my initial assumption if there was nothing telling me otherwise, just as someone in Tribal costume advertises in the first seconds of stepping out on the stage, “This is not going to be traditional raqs sharqi. This is contemporary fusion. It may even be experimental.” This is why I’m a big fan of program notes, because education goes a long way. It’s why I also feel safer wearing the fusion costumes, whereas I don’t when I am wearing what is still considered a uniform of tradition—let’s face it, a tradition of which, in the grand scheme, I am pretty ignorant. I have never had the opportunity to study in Egypt, Turkey, etc., nor have I studied under a teacher from one of these countries of origin long enough for that style to truly become ingrained in my Western trained, martial artist, tomboy’s body. So I dance what I know and I dance what I feel. And that is all.
This doesn’t change the fact that I adore my sequins and I can’t stop swooning to Alf Leyla wa Leyla no matter how many years I listen to it. Equally true is the fact that, over the years, I’ve developed a complex about cabaret, which wreaks havoc on me every time I try to don the glitz.
I suppose this is partly because it has been in those sparkly, bead-encrusted realms that I have received some of the harshest criticisms of my career. Those who have been the cruelest were bejeweled nightclub divas, glamorous traditionalists and foreign men who had really wanted me to linger extra time at a table, flirting with them in exchange for the waft of dollar bills. It seems that there is no room in the dance world in which they exist for someone who doesn’t abide by the modes of operation that they’ve always known.
The Tribal world has not attacked me in such a way. Although I sometimes wear many of the trappings of a Tribal dancer, they seem to take note of the fact that I do not advertise what I do as American Tribal Style or even Tribal Fusion. Perhaps they can allow me my corner because theirs are modern, fusion styles too, and because they’ve had to fight just as hard to find a place to dance their dances. They are my grandmothers, my aunts, my cousins in dance. Because of the paths they have paved, I can do what I do outside of my own living room.
I was a restaurant dancer for many years, so naturally I grew up among the glitter of sequins and the glow of multi-tiered chandeliers upon ornate carpets. The nightclub owners were creating a certain setting and it was my job to provide the kinetic element of that ambience. Although I had a lot of fun and it taught me a lot, I was never fully satisfied there. I was squirmy about the body-tipping and constantly found myself constrained and uninspired in my own dancing. The pieces I longed to create needed a stage, without hampering by passing waiters, derelict carpet fringe, or processions of newly seated patrons. I also got sick of my cabaret costumes. I ached for variety in what I wore, in my music choices, and in my dances.
Oddly enough, it was the cruelty of cutthroat nightclub politics that spurred me from the restaurant onto the stage. I was blacklisted for a time, due to another dancer’s sabotage machinations, and so I had two choices: quit dancing or find another place to dance.
The Dance lives in my blood and my bones, so there really was no question of what I would do. The only question was, “How?” I began producing my own stage shows in the small town to which I had moved, selling out our little theater time after time. In these shows, I finally had the freedom to do what I wished to do, and I shared that freedom with my students and fellow dancers. Our pieces ranged from the glitzy to the gutsy, from humorous to heartrending. They spanned modern, traditional and experimental, and left the audience with a better appreciation for the soulful, widely varied art that is belly dance.
Occasionally, I would don The Shiny, usually out of a desire to have as widely contrasting numbers as possible. But more often than not, I found exuberance in the freedom of other unique costumes that didn’t feel like such a uniform advertising a specific genre—and one that had brought me such grief. I gravitated more toward the earthy and eclectic, and allowed myself the long-yearned-for treat of performing to any music that inspired me.
My dance soul exploded! I finally began finding out who I was as a dancer, and also as a person. When I began taking martial arts, this only added strength and depth to the passionate way I had begun to express myself; conversely, learning to express myself truthfully brought integrity to my martial arts.
And then my marriage fell apart. Everything contracted, tightened, and strained until it cracked and crumbled. For months, I couldn’t dance. I had to pull off my contracted gigs by sheer determination, and it registered in my movements and especially my facial expressions. That famous smile that even the critics could never deny grew forced and my eyes filled with bitterness, my playfulness withered into snideness. I was bitter and hurt and it showed.
But day by day, week by week, I healed. I am healing still. I have found love again and joy. Terpsichore came back from wherever she had frolicked off to, and with her, she brought some shiny new toys that I had forgotten by the wayside—my affinity for Bauble and Bling.
Mmm…Bauble…Sequins and Velvet and Beads, oh my—
Focus!
As I write this, I have recently returned from Majma, the big, wonderful festival in Glastonbury, England. While I was there, some very typical things occurred, followed by several bolts from the blue. Maybe it was the the Henge, the Tor, the Egg, the Well, the Thorn. Maybe it was drinking the holy water and breathing the magik-laced air and treading the soil of Avalon. Maybe it was just time. Although we were at the end of winter here in Colorado, it was spring there. Trees were in bloom, the grass pulsed green, and flowers were shooting up everywhere. Another layer of change had been germinating within me for some time. The seeds had been planted long ago. They have blossomed in certain areas, but this one rough patch has remained plagued with weeds—the prickly type with roots that go deep. Every time I am convinced that I have eradicated them, they spring up again, the moment the rain clouds come.
“That’s not belly dance!”
“My teacher would be mortified!”
“Cute and energetic, but not up to the caliber of the others on the DVD.”
“Belly dancers aren’t supposed to bulge with muscles! They’re supposed to be soft and feminine!”
Rumble-rumble-rumble…FLASH! BOOOOOM...
Against all of the condemnations, I have made an effort to shrug off the “should” and “shouldn’t” restrictions so that I can simply dance. Still, my shows generally go the same way. My fusion pieces, my “gypsy-esque” pieces, and my prop pieces often provoke astounded, gushing feedback. “Wow! That rocked! Passionate! Strong! Powerful! Amazing!” And as for any mention of my straight-up cabaret pieces…
Crickets chirping in the night.
While I was in Glastonbury, it finally hit me why. It isn’t that I am surrounded by an entire world of Tradition Police and nobody can stand the fact that I am daring to bastardize eons of culture and dance history in my one piddly generation. I’m sure there are those who think that, but they are not the wide majority of my audiences.
No, it’s that I’m dancing scared.
I am afraid of that single comment in a hundred by someone who can’t see past the tunnel of what they’ve been taught, is blindly jealous and needs to cut me down, or simply doesn’t like my style and is malicious in the vocalization of it. I am terrified of being bombarded, blacklisted, or maligned once again. In spite of all the strides I’ve made against narrow-mindedness and my own demons, when it comes to cabaret, I have a lingering conundrum—I am still terrified of “doing it wrong.” Even deeper down, I’m just as afraid of success, of posing a threat—to someone’s competitive streak, their insecurities, their Story of what dance should be…whatever.
So what now?
I fantasize about performing some of my uber-fusion pieces in a glitzy bedlah and glam-hair.
I fantasize about dancing some of my Oriental choreographies in heavy-duty, Tribal-ish gear, just to see how it feels.
Most of all, I fantasize about dancing to one of those sweeping, elegant, orchestral songs that calls to my soul while wearing a shiny, elegant, bead-and-crystal-encrusted costume and finally, finally letting my hair down to dance the way I was born to, no matter if I hit a single one of The Classic Raqs Sharqi Points or not.
I have realized that if I’m going to keep dancing in these glitzy costumes, I need to stop hesitating and holding back. I need to feel what I feel and allow the music to move through me, to move me from the inside. I need to just “shut up and dance.”
I can hear one of my oldest and dearest friends now. We use that saying when we are too much in our heads about anything, not just dance. I have started adopting this mantra for whenever the demons start their grumbling, and for when I need to get out of the way of my Muse. She knows what to do. It’s not that my Oriental choreographies suck. They don’t. They may be non-traditional, but they don’t just-plain-suck. It’s that, compared to what happens to my face and eyes and to the very way my cells vibrate when I am dancing from the depths of my soul, uninhibited and unafraid…well, there is no comparison, and that is the biggest reason why my other pieces get such notice while my cabaret pieces get crickets.
Shut up and dance.
Just dance.
Part Two: Wearing the Tiara
My problems with cabaret are not as simplistic as my fears of criticism and the sniper scars of my belly dance past creeping up to bite my fringe-laden butt. Some days I wish they were. But the reality is that the difficulties run much deeper. They are many decades old and they spring from my fears of being feminine. Soft, nice, pretty girls, after all, can be delectable targets, and princesses are notorious for needing to be rescued by some prince or knight.
Unfortunately, I haven’t come by a lot of princes or knights in my time, and so I had to learn to rescue myself. I learned to be my own champion, my own source of comfort and pampering, my own breadwinner and door-opener. I learned to find the romance and excitement of life on my own, to channel my passion into my arts, and to find fulfillment in the wonders of the world. There have been many years in which I lived as my own man—the bacon-bringer, the protector, the handyman, the one who takes out the trash and ejects the spiders—because no body else was going to do it. But that takes a toll on one’s femininity, one’s receptiveness, one’s softness.
So does becoming a Recovering Doormat. I have been the victim, the punching bag, the butt of the joke, the scapegoat. In reaction, I became the survivor, the fighter, and the tenacious, tempestuous growler who balls her hands on her hips, thrusts out her chin and says in a voice that is much too loud for the situation, "No! I won't! You can't make me! You're not allowed to do that to me!"
I am learning new lessons these days—lessons that I have yearned to experience for years. Having delved into my own strengths and power, I am now finding great joy in learning to release, to receive, to open, to soften. For one who is accustomed to striding, it is a novel sensation to sway, stroll, sashay. I have rediscovered a love of flowy skirts, heeled sandals, sun-kissed, shaved legs, and pretty tops. I’ve remembered how luxurious my hair is when it’s down. I’ve found myself wanting to put a hint of makeup on just to go out to lunch—not because I am afraid to be seen without it, but because it’s fun. I crave scents and perfumed lotions and smelly candles and incense. I crave fruit and fresh vegetables, and have sought out the Farmer’s Market for the first time in over a decade. I swoon to mushy love-songs, singing and dancing in my kitchen as I cook. I crave walks under the stars and picnics in the shade of an enormous tree. Night after night, this body from which I exact such a toll is treated to massages and gentleness, rather than the constant onslaught of drilling, performance, practice and martial training.
What happened?
The Warrior Princess fell in love with a Warrior Prince.
As a result of my blossoming strength, I experience freedom. I yearn to relax into my feminine nature, and I yearn to know the love of a masculine man, to let him be the man—to trust him to be a good man and to treat me as I deserve. My sweetheart calls me his Princess and his Gem. And he is absolutely a Prince among many frogs. He is a cop and a black-belt, a big, burly man’s man with a heart of gold, and he treats me as though he has never beheld anything more precious.
“Don’t you think,” he writes in an email, “that maybe your problems with cabaret aren’t just about what other people think and traditions and all that stuff?” He writes this to me while I’m in England, bemoaning my cabaret conundrum. I don’t receive it until the next morning, after I’ve had an almost identical conversation with one of my dearest friends who traveled with me. (He is uncanny like that.) “I mean, cabaret is sparkly and pretty and shiny. Like princesses. And how often have you ever really been treated like a Princess?”
Um...let me count...
But these days, this Recovering Doormat doesn’t accept anything less from a man (which is probably why I have this one), and it is starting to weave itself into my dancing, as every powerful force in my life does. Suddenly, as a counter-weight to my powerful, independent striding and sword-wielding, I long to dust off my sparkly costumes and wear tiaras. I doubt I will ever be one of those subtle, supple dancers who can tell an entire tale in the slightest twitch of her head and one hip-tick. I am much too verbose and flamboyant for that.
But as my youthful dreams of intimate, soulful union with a man are rekindled, within them burns a deep desire to dance. For him. With him. About him. About the woman I am becoming. About the woman I have always wanted to be and finally feel free and safe and inspired to embody.
Part Three: In the Fishbowl
“Oh woe, nobody likes my cabaret pieces,” I have lamented, time and again. “I should just sell all those glitzy costumes and give it up!”
Now, I know this is not true. I know there are people out there who like them, just as there are people who don’t. There are just substantially more people who like my other dances better. And more importantly—I don’t like my cabaret pieces as much as the others because I can’t seem to get out of my head and stop worrying. My audience’s reactions simply mirror this back to me.
For a brief period of time, when I was only dancing in small theaters in safe towns, I discovered the dances that were in my heart and soul. Why? Because I allowed myself the freedom to do so. I just danced and I loved every second of it. I allowed myself the freedom to experiment, to play, to question, to push the bounds and break through my own self-imposed limitations. I once did a sword piece without ever putting the thing on my head. I attached half-circle veils to a Persian coat and danced to a song from Celtic Woman. I tossed on my high heels and fused belly dance and swing dance to Sing, Sing, Sing! Why?
Because I felt like it.
And then my tassely-tushy got put on a DVD. Several, in fact. Seemingly overnight, people started paying me to come and share my knowledge with them and their communities, first across the country, then across an ocean. People Google my name. People favorite my YouTube videos. People write me fan mail. (Fan mail—me!)
Suddenly, I don’t feel so safe to experiment and try out new things. Now I have a Reputation. What if I drop my sword on that new trick that isn’t fully comfortable yet? What if I trip over my skirt and almost face-plant when I’m supposed to be Miss Thang? What if I forget about the existence of dew in places like California that have moisture in the air, my cane slips out of my hand on the most simple of tricks and it is captured forever and ever on an IAMED DVD? (Ahem...)
One of my problems is that sometimes I have the attention span of a pea. I get bored all too easily, especially with my own dancing, and am constantly in search of something new to try—a new style, a new prop, a new move, a new song, a new story to tell. I just don’t have it in me to dance in the same style time after time. I love it all. I want it all. But that means I am more of a Jasmine-of-all-trades and mistress-of-none. Suddenly, as I go through the growing pains of learning something new, my fumbling and stumbling occurs in front of the whole world instead of a little corner of a small town in Colorado where my friends and students love me.
OK, OK, it feels like the whole world, and that is a very daunting thing.
Take this whole cabaret conundrum. I’ve been banging my head against this wall for many years and I guarantee that there are many people who have said, “She should just really stick to what she’s good at.” And many famous artists do that. Take the musician who becomes famous for one thing, then branches out into something different on album three or four and suddenly loses the majority of his or her audience. If they don’t acquire new and adoring fans with this new sound, they can either play what’s in their heart today and risk fading into obscurity, or return to the old style and play those old songs that everybody loves so much.
What is an artist to do?
I think the best ones find a balance. Because there is the Artist and then there is the Entertainer. If I wish to experiment because I’m a learning, growing, evolving human being and artist, then I risk sacrificing the love of my fans—without whom, I may as well stay in my own living room “dancin’ for my own enjoyment.” (That ain’t it, kid, that ain’t it.) I also risk my hosts getting testy with me because they paid all this money and I didn’t live up to the expectation as I break out of my comfy zone on the stage. Let’s face it, you can only practice so many times at home or in front of your local buds before you just have to put it out there, and that is a totally different ball of wax.
The words of Darshaan spring to my mind as I write this. We were at IAMED--not the second time when the dew got my cane. This was the first time when I had a billion (OK it was probably five) snafus with my sword balance because I had literally lost my groove by tying my hair too tightly. Afterwards, I was completely dismayed. My first invitation to perform at IAMED and, to my overly-critical, perfectionist’s mind, I had totally blown it. As I growled about this fact in the back room amidst dancer-friendly munchies and fluorescent lights and cool concrete floors, she tilted her head at me and said, as if it was the simplest, most obvious thing in the world, “What’s wrong with the audience getting to see how hard it actually is?”
BWONG...
That got me thinking.
That got me thinking for many moons. It brought to mind Struggle, the piece that occasionally gets passed about on the internet about the Emperor Moth’s journey out of the cocoon. It was one of those images to which I clung during my days of recovery after the crash. I suppose this is just another example of it. Although I might not have wanted to hear it that night, there is a very special place in my heart for Darshaan for saying that. I repeat it like a mantra now whenever I drop my props, trip over my skirt, or wince over the video of my supposed-to-be-elegant-and-floaty dance on a raised, poorly-lit stage while I was completely blinded by one spotlight and terrified of biffing it off the edge and breaking my neck. (Shijii.)
Of course, nobody else knows that. They only see me falling short of the caliber they have come to expect, comparing me to my best self and to other dancers. I compare me to my best self too, cringing at the drastically different renditions of the same dance and smacking my forehead in disgust. Sometimes I forget that in one version, I was well-rested, surrounded by friends and family, and stable in my home life, while in another I was newly-divorced, jet-lagged, had undergone 36 hours of emergency emails trying to procure a flight that would arrive on time to make the show, bartered and begged in a foreign language to be allowed into the locked baggage terminal for my wayward luggage, raced across an airport toting a broken sword case and a 50-pound bag while having an asthma attack, and then arrived starving and on fumes four hours before the show, thanking God that my costumes and makeup had actually been stowed on the plane.
You know, I still managed to pull off the 90-degree turn under my sword, as well as the new sword-on-the-small-of-my-back trick. Was I shaky and a little off? Absolutely. Did I struggle for every second of those performances? You bet. But am I proud of them? When I have my head on straight, it would make more sense for me to be prouder of those dances than of the ones for which I am so well-known--an easy night amidst a week’s vacation when I was just ON. Swimming in the Great Fishbowl, bombarded with myriad eyes watching your every fringe-swish can have quite the hampering effect upon one’s Muse. Actually, the Muse is fine. It’s the Critic who places strangle-holds upon the Muse for fear of a bad review. And I guess that’s the choice. Do I play it safe and stick to dances I can do in my sleep, or do I constantly grow and create and learn and risk? I am just as much an Artist as an Entertainer, if not more so, so I will always find places to create what I wish to create, and allow those who love it to resonate and those who hate it to grumble.
I just wish I had a thicker skin.
This new blossoming “Star Status” has been an interesting experience for me. It has brought up many insecurities, as well as many curiosities. I wonder how many famous artists have succumbed to this type of fear and played it safe, when what they ached for was to branch off and experiment, to allow themselves the luxury of being a beginner at something, to grow and express their changeable nature instead of always having to cater to “what the masses have always liked.”
I recently had a conversation with one of my friends who is one of The Biggies in our field. She expressed her frustration over the pigeonholing effect that has happened with her career—how she has become famous for a very limited number of things and that this is what is requested of her to teach and perform, time and time again. What she would really love to do is to teach something else, and definitely to perform whatever she wished. She can, of course, but she will risk disappointing her audience—the very people who keep her fed.
So I am curious as to what will happen as I refuse to give in to my fears, experimenting with this rediscovery of Sparkle Lovin’, even though it is not the thing for which I am most well-known, in a style in which I am the most uncomfortable.
Part Four: The Night Sky
Last but not least, there is the moon. Those who know me well know that I howl at it—not just when it is full, but in all its stages. For example, a half-moon gets a half-howl, cut off just at its pinnacle; a crescent gets an equally enthusiastic, but stunted, “Aroo—!”
Starlight, too, is enthralling to me and I find few things more calming than to step outside in a place far from city lights and look up to see the night sky a-twinkle. I can gaze into the nighttime heavens for hours. I don’t have much interest in being able to name all the constellations; I simply love to stare and bask and sigh and wonder what’s out there.
I do have my serene moments, and I find that the deeper I delve into this question of what to do with all my cabaret costumes, I keep being drawn back to the glow of the moon and the sparkle of starlight. I painted my bedroom walls lavender and the ceiling midnight blue with the intention of covering it in glow-in-the-dark stars. (The nagging leak in the roof has prevented me from doing that, but I still dream of it.) My kitchen is cream and sage green with fruit in dusty hues of pinks and purples—a sweet, delicate place with a hint of Tuscan villa in which to cook creations of love. The morning sunlight warms it, making it one of my favorite rooms in the apartment, but as dusk approaches, it takes on a much different quality. There is a high shelf above the tea and spice cabinet, painted the deepest blue-violet. I have strung white Christmas lights along the back wall which I leave up year-round so that in the evenings, I can come in to make a cup of tea with the illusion of starlight above me here in the middle of town. Even the Christmas lights that we strung in the season are still up, mingling their tender glow with the candles that I am constantly drawn to light.
So what does all this have to do with cabaret? It is part of my search to find what I truly want to express while wearing those costumes. The power of the Deep Feminine is profoundly different than that of all those important lessons I learn in exploring the Warrior Princess. It is different, even, than these fledgling experiments into Princess-Period. It goes beyond my sudden affinity for wearing pink and putting on glittered eye shadow to go on a date, or allowing my sensual, flirtatious side to show in my dances, or letting a veil float instead of wielding it like a matador’s cape. It touches upon the regal Queen that the Princess will become. It touches upon the Priestess.
Despite my tromping, exuberant, irreverent, swearing, goofy sides, She does dwell inside me and She yearns to be expressed, especially in my dancing. And just like the Warrior Princess in me longs for her tiara, the Priestess in me longs to be adorned with glittering stars and flickering candlelight. She longs for fabrics that are as filmy as mist and as soft as moonlight. She longs to unbind her hair and invoke the most powerful forces of life.
I am not a bubblegum-bounce dancer, nor am I a bombshell dancer oozing sex appeal. I am far too intense for the former and too reserved and athletic for the latter. I am discovering another layer of what I am. I don’t quite know what it is yet. I only know that it is softer and more open than I am accustomed to being, full of sparkle and joy and sensuality.
Mmm…Sparkle…Shimmer…Glimmer…Glow...
I love my cabaret costumes. I love my raqs sharqi albums and my flirty sproing. I love my tentative, shy exploration into places in myself that have never truly been tapped. I love my striding, powerful Boadicea who brandishes her sword in the face of injustice and tromps all over fears, if only to silence them for a moment’s peace. I love the still, centered place of genuine power inside of me. I love my sword, my tiara and my priestess’ moonstone, and there are days when I love to wear them all at the same time.
**As this is yet another back-logged post, most of the results of this experiment are not yet posted on my YouTube account...but they're coming. *grin* My first try is up - Isistory Part 4 - Triumph (the zill piece and the drum solo). I originally did these two numbers at Majma in my roses & fringe Tribal outfit. You can see the cabaret version from Durango here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/izzytejedora